A North Yorkshire NHS trust is to axe 600 jobs – a third of its workforce – under plans to save £10m, union leaders have been told. Managers from the Scarborough and North East Yorkshire NHS Trust gave the news to staff on Wednesday.

Laws making possession of cannabis a largely non-arrestable offence could be reversed, Gordon Brown has said. The prime minister told MPs a consultation on reclassifying cannabis will be launched next week as part of a review of the entire UK drugs strategy.

The Royal Institute of Public Health is launching a new Level 2 qualification in ‘Decontamination’, specifically intended for those working in care settings – such as care homes, day centres, nurseries and GP surgeries.

The early release of more than a thousand prisoners has failed to solve the crisis that is undermining prison healthcare and prisoner rehabilitation programmes, the BMA has said.

The government will look into reclassifying cannabis as a class B drug, following concerns about stronger strains of the drug. Gordon Brown has announced the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) will look again at penalties for possessing and using cannabis.

The verdict in a ground-breaking case challenging restrictions on the use of Alzheimer’s drugs within Britain’s state health service will be handed down on August 10, a court official has said.

Three care homes are being closed after a culture that was “demeaning to residents” was discovered, the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) has said.

The results of a new survey issued today by The Stroke Association shows that people are more concerned for their wealth than the health of their brain.

Children from poor homes will get free transport to popular schools under plans to weaken the middle-class monopoly on the best classroom places.

The government will ensure that the “fathers, brothers and husbands” who have sex with trafficked girls are prosecuted, Harriet Harman vowed yesterday.