More mothers will be encouraged to hand over their children to state-run nurseries and go out to work under Labour’s latest drive combat child poverty. Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton yesterday said that Labour’s plans to extend childcare places will provide women with a “world of employment opportunities”.

Care for older people is ready for radical changes in Waltham Forest. As elderly residents are living longer, and are more healthy than ever before, the number of people wanting to move into residential care homes is dropping. Waltham Forest Council maintains the majority of elderly residents want to remain in their homes, with access to care from social services and the health service.

Campaigners for smarter working have offered an immediate answer to some of the problems of the environmental impact of human activity on the globe: the world needs to reform the way it works. The advice comes in the wake of the Stern report which predicted environmental apocalypse if action is not taken now.

Missing sections of a gene, which programmes the manufacture of a chemical to alert the body to DNA damage, almost doubles the risk of prostate cancer, reveals research published ahead of print in the Journal of Medical Genetics. The researchers assessed almost 2,000 Polish men who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1999 and 2005 to see if they carried the CHEK2 kinase gene, or CHEK2 for short.

Women testing negative for the two inherited breast cancer genes are still at increased risk of developing the disease, suggests research published ahead of print in the Journal of Medical Genetics. They should be regularly screened from 35 or 40 onwards, say the authors. The research team assessed the families of 277 women in whom faults in the breast cancer genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 had been identified.

Babies can be exposed to methamphetamine or ‘crystal meth’ while in the womb, reveals an analysis of hair samples, published ahead of print in the Fetal and Neonatal Edition of Archives of Disease in Childhood. Unlike hair, the most commonly used detection methods (blood and urine), cannot register long term use, nor can they always distinguish among different drugs, say the authors. Bleaching or straightening the hair will not erase the chemical evidence it holds.

Education Secretary Alan Johnson today bowed to bitter opposition and abandoned plans to impose admissions quotas on faith schools. In a stunning climbdown, he ditched proposed legislation forcing all new faith schools to reserve a quarter of places for non-believers.

The future of a day centre for the homeless has been secured followed a £70,000 donation by six Leigh churches. Homeless Action Resource Project (Harp) runs the centre in Valkyrie Road, Westcliff, and the money means the charity is able to buy the building which houses it.

Tax on alcohol should rise to reduce binge drinking among teenagers, Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has said. Ms Hewitt urged chancellor Gordon Brown to “really increase” taxes on alcohol, especially on drinks such as alcopops, most popular with young people.

Sir Roy Meadow, the paediatrician struck off by the General Medical Council for giving misleading evidence that helped to convict Sally Clark of murdering her two children, was reinstated by the Court of Appeal yesterday.