A clinical trial is to find out whether cheap, readily available drugs can prevent dementia after stroke.

Two charities, the British Heart Foundation and Alzheimer’s Society, are working together to test the approach.

Over three years, a team led by Professor Joanna Wardlaw at the University of Edinburgh will see what effect the drugs have on around 400 stroke patients.

The LACI-2 trial, to be launched during Dementia Awareness Week, focuses on lacunar stroke – a type of stroke that affects the smallest blood vessels in the brain.

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Children across Britain will have the chance to learn to ride a bike in a new initiative aiming to help combat childhood obesity.

Launched by HSBC UK and British Cycling, Ready Set Ride is an online resource built for children from as young as 18 months to eight years old and will introduce youngsters to bikes and the benefits of exercise.

Government statistics show nearly a third of children aged two to 15 are overweight or obese, with younger generations becoming obese at earlier ages and staying so for longer.

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Prize-winning novelist Philip Roth has died at the age of 85.

Roth’s literary agent, Andrew Wylie, said that he died in a New York City hospital of congestive heart failure.

Author of more than 25 books, Roth was a fierce satirist and uncompromising realist, confronting readers in a bold, direct style that scorned false sentiment or hopes for heavenly reward.

He was an atheist who swore allegiance to earthly imagination, whether devising pornographic functions for raw liver or indulging romantic fantasies about Anne Frank.

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