A Government race adviser with close links to Cherie Blair is at the centre of a major investigation into an alleged illegal immigrant employment racket. Police and Immigration Service officers stormed the £3.5million home of Nighat Awan on Friday night as part of a nationwide swoop on Indian restaurants, including those owned by her and her husband.

{mosimage}A total of 70 men were arrested in the raids.

Mrs Awan, 51, spoke to police while they carried out a search of her home. Documents and computer equipment are believed to have been removed by officers later.

The raids are a major embarrassment for Labour. Mrs Awan, one of Britain’s richest businesswomen, was last year appointed head of a Department of Trade and Industry-backed group to support black and ethnic minority businesses.

She is a close ally of Jack Straw, the Leader of the House of Commons. In 2004 she was awarded an OBE for her export and overseas charity work.

Three years ago, Cherie Blair was guest of honour at a garden party thrown by Mrs Awan at her former home in Cheshire. The businesswoman and her family have also toured Downing Street.

Two heroin addicts taking part in a new drug addiction treatment have hailed the therapy as “life changing”. The former drug users have this week been taking part in the first pilot trial of Net – Neuro-electric therapy – hailed by addiction charities as a potential alternative to methadone.

One woman has died and two more are unlikely to survive after one of Britain’s worst breast cancer screening blunders, it has emerged. They were among 18 patients wrongly given the all-clear by “arrogant” consultant radiologist Dr Amjad Husien.

{mosimage}His mistakes meant they faced a potentially fatal delay in treatment of up to two years. Some went on to have their breasts removed in surgery which may not have been necessary had they been diagnosed earlier.

Dr Husien, who worked at two hospitals in Greater Manchester, could have been stopped 18 months earlier if fellow doctors’ warnings about his behaviour had been heeded. His “personal misreading” of breast X-rays was never routinely double – checked and women patients paid the price, an independent report found. It said his colleagues had been “immediately” concerned about the way he worked. Although they raised the alarm within months of his arrival at Trafford General Hospital, he was allowed to continue working. Dr Husien’s victims demanded to know why more wasn’t done to stop him.

Fellow doctors lodged a formal complaint about his performance in November 2003, accusing him of being “uncooperative, arrogant, brusque and unkind” with patients and other staff, the report said.

He spent too little time examining mammograms and failed to use scans and biopsies to make a diagnosis. But hospital chiefs took no action, missing the opportunity to uncover his incompetence and serious understaffing in the department.

For the next 18 months, Iraqi-born Dr Husien continued working at the hospital and as a locum at North Manchester General Hospital, until his suspension in April 2005.

An investigation led to nearly 2,500 mammograms being re-examined. They showed 18 women given the all-clear had been suffering from potentially life-threatening breast cancer for at least three months. One woman’s cancer was spotted two years after she was given the all-clear by the radiologist.

A bank to store stem cells from newborn babies was launched yesterday by Sir Richard Branson. Flexible cells from umbilical cord blood can already provide life-saving transplant treatments for blood cancers and immune disorders.

Work by scientists could lead to a non-invasive blood test to detect genetic abnormalities in the womb. Current non-invasive tests – such as ultrasound – are limited, and invasive tests pose a risk to the pregnancy.

National disability charity Scope is pleased to announce the appointment of Jon Sparkes as its chief executive. Jon was appointed acting chief executive in June 2006 and will take up the CEO role permanently from the beginning of February. He joined Scope in March 2004 as Executive Director of Human Resources.

The National Association of Adult Placement Services (NAAPS) has just received funding from the Department of Health for an innovative project designed to enable local authorities to support community members to provide a range of highly individualised services.

Teachers and people working with children are being given guidance on how to identify signs of ritual abuse inflicted in the belief that a child is possessed by evil spirits. 

UK doctors and nurses who work in the developing world would benefit from better preparation for cultural challenges, according to ‘Meeting the Health needs of the poor’, a newly piblished BMA report.

A new leadership association for directors of England’s 150 local authority children’s services departments is launched today, pledged to maintaining the highest standards of care, education and safeguarding for children throughout the country.