The head of the company responsible for the breast implant scandal was arrested today in a dawn raid by French police. Jean-Claude Mas, who ran the now-defunct French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), was detained at his girlfriend’s home in the Mediterranean coastal town of Six Fours Les Plages and placed in custody. Officers immediately started a full search of the property. Mr Mas faces possible charges of homicide and involuntary harm, police said. A second executive from Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) has also been detained. The implants, made with cheap industrial-grade silicone instead of medical-grade gel, were withdrawn from the market in Britain and around the world amid fears that they could rupture and leak silicone into the body. It is not clear what effect the substance, which is manufactured for intended use in mattresses, has on human health if it leaks into the body. Authorities worldwide have been scrambling to develop a commmon public response to the scandal, and furious arguments have developed in Britain about who should pay for corrective surgery. European governments have taken different positions: German, Czech and French authorities say that the implants should be removed, while in Britain the position is that there is not enough evidence of health risks to suggest that they should be taken out in all cases. According to estimates, more than 42,000 women in Britain received the implants,

The Royal Navy may have to buy French fighter jets for Britain’s new aircraft carrier amid growing doubts over the American-designed Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), a senior officer has warned. Admiral Sir Trevor Soar, who retires as Commander-in-Chief Fleet in March, told industrialists that there was mounting concern within the Ministry of Defence about the escalating costs and delays to the JSF programme. In a detailed note of his speech to the ADS Maritime Interest Group, seen by The Times, Admiral Soar warned that US defence spending cuts could jeopardise the deal. He was quoted as saying that Britain might do better to invest in what he called an “interim aircraft capability” and named two potentially cheaper alternatives – the American-built F18 Super Hornet or the French Dassault Rafale jet. The carrier is due to be ready in 2019 but Britain might not

Nick Clegg will today call for tax cuts for low earners as he declares that pressure on family finances is “reaching boiling point”. The Deputy Prime Minister will take the highly unusual step of opening Budget negotiations with George Osborne in public, urging the Chancellor to go “further and faster” in lifting the working poor out of income tax. As official statistics showed that the economy shrank at the end of last year, and pointed to a double-dip recession, Mr Clegg said that hard-pressed families could not wait for financial first aid. “Household budgets are approaching a state of emergency,” he will say in a speech, “and the Government needs a rapid response.” David Cameron and Mr Osborne described the 0.2 per cent fall in output in the last three months of 2011 as disappointing. If followed by further contraction in the first quarter of this