Cheltenham has doubled the number of off-street disabled parking bays in its car parks to 55. Blue badge holders can park all day free of charge in any council off-street car park as long as their badge is displayed.
A man and woman who kidnapped, stripped and tortured a pregnant teenager with learning difficulties have been jailed for a total of 17 years. Tammy McGregor, 19, had hot salted water poured over her wounds and cigarettes stubbed out on her at a flat in Aberdeen.
The supply of contaminated NHS blood products to haemophiliacs in the 1970s and 1980s was "wholly avoidable", an independent public inquiry has heard. Some 5,000 people were exposed to hepatitis C and of these more than 1,200 were also infected with HIV. Victims, and relatives of some of the more than 1,700 patients who died, have been addressing the privately-funded hearing, due to report in late summer. The government has said treatments were given in "good faith".
Elderly people with dementia could be tagged to make it easier to track their movements, a minister has proposed. Science Minister Malcolm Wicks told the BBC the satellite technology could enable them to lead fuller lives and would reassure their families. He said it would give sufferers, who often experience memory loss, "freedom to roam around their communities."
There can be few more emotive questions than the appropriate protective powers of the state over mentally ill people. Cases like that of Michael Stone - who, 11 years ago, bludgeoned to death Lin Russell and her daughter Megan - arouse deep-seated and understandable fears about dangerous men being allowed out on the loose. But set against such cases are stories like that of Randle McMurphy, who in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was destroyed at the hands of a mental institution. It is a fictional tale, but one which too often finds echoes in real-life reporting, which time and again has exposed how ruinous the behaviour of the over-stretched authorities can become once they are freed of the need to be led by the wishes of the patient.
A rail company has defended a decision to have only two spaces at Shrewsbury station's front car park for members of the public who are not disabled. Arriva Trains Wales, which runs the car park, said it follows resurfacing work and the firm is complying with industry regulations over disabled car spaces.
