A drug rehabilitation service for women and their children praised by Jack McConnell is to shut after its funding was axed. As one of only three residential centres for female addicts and their families in Scotland, Brenda House has been tackling drug abuse for 18 years.

The number of British soldiers, sailors and airmen caught using Class A drugs such as crack cocaine, heroin and ecstasy jumped to 56.9% of those who tested positive for illegal drugs last year, The Herald reveals.

Scottish scientists have discovered a brain abnormality which causes Fragile X syndrome, a common form of learning difficulty, raising hopes that a therapy could be found. The condition affects one in 4000 children and adults, and can cause slow learning and lead to behavioural problems similar to autism.

A man who stabbed a teacher to death in North Lanarkshire eight years ago has been found after he went missing from his home almost a week ago. Anthony O’Brien, 37, was sent to the state hospital at Carstairs in 2000 after admitting the attack on Bill Scott in Cumbernauld.

A teenager who raped a care worker at knifepoint may never be released from jail after a judge imposed a lifelong restriction order on him. Steven Malcolm, 19, is only the second dangerous criminal in Scotland to be subjected to the order, which involves monitoring for the rest of his life.

People involved in the care sector are being offered a free training course. North Lanarkshire Council aims to help improve the communication, number and computer skills of people already working in the care sector or unemployed people with an interest in the work.

A “loud and horrid” scream was heard on the day that Angelika Kluk was last seen alive, the murder trial was told yesterday. Leigh Brown, 47, was washing the windows of her high-rise home which overlooks St Patrick’s Church in Anderston, Glasgow, when she heard a woman’s scream “as though someone was being grabbed”.

Pupils from schools across Scotland will join major names from the world of football at Hampden Park today to stand united against racism. The pupils are meeting to celebrate the winning entries in the schools’ anti-racism competition.

The operator of a Scottish nuclear site has begun checks on whether body tissue was removed from deceased ex-workers without the consent of their families. It follows claims that samples were taken from former Sellafield employees who died in the 1960s.

A row has broken out over the future of a centre for deaf people in Glasgow. A retiring city councillor claims Hayfield Support Services with Deaf People in the Gorbals would be better used as a site for housing or for community groups.