The UK medicines regulator is warning people to stay away from pills called BZP, the BBC has learned. The pills are said to offer a “legal high”, but the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has warned they can cause health problems. It has seized thousands of pills in the past year and plans to prosecute importers, sellers and manufacturers.

Thousands of women are being left alone and frightened during labour, a survey has suggested. The poll of nearly 3,000 mothers also found many complained about the noise and lack of privacy and cleanliness in post-natal wards. But overall women were satisfied with their care and four out of five said staff were supportive, the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit found.

Campaigners say the money made by NHS trusts from car parking charges is shameful as some trusts’ income tops £2m a year. According to the list released by the Estates Return Information Collection, 30 trusts are making more than £1m each from their car parks.

Gangs and bullies on the streets of towns and cities are the biggest fear of many vulnerable children, according to a survey of young people in care published today. The study, made public days after two teenagers died in separate stabbings in London, found that a fifth of children said gangs and bullying were the worst things about the area in which they lived.

Soaring GP wage bills and weak financial management in trusts has contributed to the NHS’s deficit crisis, an influential group of MPs has said. The prognosis for the health service is “poor” unless its financial “transparency” is improved and clinicians become more involved in budgeting, according to the Public Accounts Committee.

Cookery lessons and golf also found to work at projects in deprived areas  
They may not be the most traditional of crime prevention techniques, but Indian head massage, golf and cookery lessons are being used to help teenage boys in poor areas “de-stress” and stay away from the temptations of drink, drugs and offending.

Waits for the results of X-rays and other scans in England are often too long, a report finds. The Healthcare Commission found waiting times in hospital X-ray departments had dropped – by 33% for some tests.

UK scientists believe in the future they will be curing babies in the womb of serious diseases with the use of gene therapy. The work is controversial not just because of the ethics but also safety concerns.

Leading retailers such as Boots and Tesco will be invited to bid to open GPs’ surgeries in their stores in areas with too few doctors under an initiative to be announced by the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, today.

When Marie, a young girl from Cameroon, turned up in Manchester at the end of 2004 she was just one of hundreds of asylum seeking children alone in the city looking for help. Her story was harrowing.

{mosimage}Having been trafficked to France and forced into prostitution by her aunt, she fled to Britain with the help of a man who said he would help her escape.

Suffering a range of physical and mental health problems, probably due to the the abuse she endured, Marie was admitted to hospital. In two months she was dead.

A post-mortem examination revealed natural causes.She was 16. Sadly, Marie’s case is thought to be just the tip of the iceberg and part of a growing industry which contributes to the 5,000 child sex slaves recently estimated to be working in the UK by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

This comes as the UK marks the 200th anniversary of the Parliamentary Act to abolish the slave trade. According to Ecpat UK, an organisation which represents charities working against child exploitation, Marie’s was one of 28 known cases of trafficked children in Manchester in 2005.