Eco-town sites named

The sites of 15 controversial eco-towns were announced last week and ministers were immediately accused of putting most of them in Tory constituencies. The new towns will be low-energy and built from recycled materials and the biggest could provide up to 15,000 new homes. Grant Shapps, Tory housing spokesman, said: “Labour has cynically focused on imposing eco-towns on Conservative constituencies and not in Labour areas.”

The chosen sites are at Rossington, South Yorkshire (15,000 homes); Leeds city region, between Leeds and Selby, West Yorkshire (yet to decide size); Manby, Lincolnshire (5,000); Rushcliffe, Nottinghamshire (yet to decide); Curborough, Staffordshire (5,000); Pennbury, Leicestershire (15,000); Coltishall, Norfolk (5,000); Middle Quinton, Warwickshire (6,000); Marston Vale, Bedfordshire (15,400); Hanley Grange, near Cambridge (8,000); Weston Otmoor, Oxfordshire (15,000); Elsenham, Essex (5,000); Bordon, Hampshire (8,000); Ford, West Sussex (5,000) and Imerys, near St Austell, Cornwall (5,000).

Gordon Brown will press ahead and reclassify cannabis as a class B drug, Downing Street insisted last week. It will mean anybody caught in possession faces a maximum of five years in prison.

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which met last Tuesday, is thought to have recommended that no change be made from the drug’s current class C status. It found no evidence that the higher-strength types of cannabis now used had led to an increase in mental health problems.

‘Hybrid’ embryos

Scientists have created embryos with both human and animal material, it was revealed last week. A team at Newcastle University placed nuclei from human cells into eggs taken from a cow. The results survived for three days, and the largest “hybrid” grew to contain 32 cells. The team wants to grow them for six days and then extract stem cells for use in research. The eventual plan is to create hybrids using the DNA of patients with genetic diseases. Stem cells from such hybrids could then be used to study conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. The House of Commons is to consider new laws to regulate such research when it debates the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

A surge in youth crime has been largely exaggerated, it has been claimed. Nacro, a charity working to prevent crime, says the number of offences rose sharply in the three years from 2003 only because police were taking tougher action against youngsters who would previously have received an informal warning. Nacro says the police are following government targets, set in 2002, to improve the official detection rate.

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