A 52-year-old man will go on trial at Cardiff Crown Court charged with the murder of care worker Beverley Parkhouse. Royston David Moore, of Nantymoel Road, Nantymoel, near Bridgend, was due to appear at Pontypridd Magistrate’s Court yesterday but remained in the cells during the short hearing.

The cancer charity Tenovus appointed Claudia McVie as its new chief executive. She brings 20 years’ experience in the voluntary sector to the charity, which has shops in Newport and Ebbw Vale and a number of committed fundraisers across Gwent.

A Vietnamese man recruited to cultivate cannabis plants with a street value of more than £36,000 at a house in Newport was jailed for two years. Asylum seeker Khan Van Nguyen, 24, of no fixed abode, was recruited at a London hotel and sent to cultivate cannabis plants at a rented house in Newport.

Merthyr Tydfil has become synonymous with ill health – its very name has become a byword for disease and long-term sickness. Such is the extent of the ill health problem in the borough, it regularly tops the leagues that no one else wants to win.