Gordon Brown said last night that he was “shocked” by allegations in The Guardian that The Sun had obtained details of his son’s cystic fibrosis from a medical file. Rebekah Brooks, now chief executive of News International, was Editor of the tabloid when it published an exclusive story in 2006 revealing the disease suffered by Fraser, who was only four months old and whose father was Chancellor at the time. However, a former aide said last night that Mr Brown did not know at the time how Ms Brooks had obtained the information. And Sun sources denied that the newspaper had obtained details from Fraser’s medical records. Mr Brown and his wife, Sarah, have also been told by police that their details were found in the files of Glenn Mulcaire, the private detective at the centre of an inquiry into the hacking of mobile telephone messages on behalf of the N

Ahmad Wali Karzai, brother of President Karzai and one of the most powerful men in Afghanistan, was murdered by one of his own bodyguards today. “I confirm that Ahmad Wali was killed inside his house,” said Zalmay Ayoubi, spokesman for the governor of Kandahar province, where Ahmad Wali Karzai lived and was head of the provincial council. A cousin of Ahmad Wali Karzai, who asked not to be named, also confirmed to Reuters that he had been killed. Khan Mohammad Mujahed, a previous Kandahar Chief of Police, was also killed by the bodyguard, according to reports, prompting speculation that the deaths were linked to past corruption. The bodyguard who reportedly carried out the killings was named locally as Sardar Mohammed, who was formerly a very close aide.