Hospices are struggling with debts as funding promised by the government has failed to materialise, campaigners say.

Nearly half the extra 40,000 homes the government wants built each year will be social housing, the housing minister, Yvette Cooper, is expected to say today. The government is increasing

Age-based drinking guidelines should be introduced to protect consumers’ health, says an expert. Recommended maximum intakes should factor in age as well as gender, according to Mary Gilhooly, professor of gerontology at Brunel University.

A pioneering new housing scheme has put Hull in the forefront of a new approach in the provision of housing and support for homeless people who have had drugs and mental health problems and are now trying to permanently kick their addiction.

More than 100 protesters took to the streets in a demonstration against a new hospital for adults with learning disabilities and mental health problems. Villagers in Breaston fear that patients at Middlestead House could be dangerous.

A University of Nottingham researcher has been awarded more than £440,000 by the Parkinson’s Disease Society (PDS) to investigate the causes of the condition.

The government is launching a campaign to highlight the forthcoming rise in the legal minimum age at which tobacco can be bought in England and Wales. A website is going live, and this will be accompanied by a mass mailing to 100,000 retailers and online advertising aimed at teenagers.

A brain-damaged man who was not supposed to be left alone to smoke died in a fire at a care home while doing so, an inquest heard. Jason Wardle, who was wheelchair-bound died in a fire in his room at the Priory Grange Potters Bar; a home for adults with mental and physical disabilities.

A string of Cabinet ministers have owned up to smoking cannabis after Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she had used the drug at Oxford in the 1980s.

Overseas doctors face prejudice after suspected failed bomb attacks in London and Glasgow, medics have warned.