COURTS: A police officer accused of unlawfully tasering a naked man who threw a pair of underpants at him during a strip search denied yesterday he had acted out “revenge, anger or retribution.”

PC Lee Birch fired the weapon into the bare chest of Daniel Dove in a cell at Melksham Police Station in Wiltshire hours after a disturbance outside a nightclub.

Mr Birch said Mr Dove tried to punch him with a “classic haymaker” but insisted he did not react by firing the taser in anger.

COURTS: Two ex-members of staff from a residential school have been sentenced to more than 20 years in jail for historic sex crimes.

John Leslie Duncan, 61, from Gateshead, and Kevin Brown, 58, already in jail, were convicted of the abuse they committed against young boys in their care.

Mr Duncan was convicted of 15 charges, which included 10 counts of indecent assault on a male and three counts of indecency with a child, and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

SCIENCE: Artificial skin that could be used to replace animals when testing drugs and cosmetics has been grown in the laboratory for the first time, scientists confirmed yesterday. Scientists in the UK and US produced one centimetre-wide fragments of epidermis — the outermost skin layer — from stem cells with the same properties as real skin.

In future, lab-grown skin could be used for testing medicinal lotions and creams or cosmetics without causing suffering to animals, scientists believe.

CUSTODY DEATHS: There were 215 deaths in prison custody in England and Wales last year — the highest number on record.

The Ministry of Justice figures revealed yesterday there were 74 self-inflicted deaths in 2013, including one on the day of a prisoner’s arrival into custody.

The number of self-inflicted deaths, defined as suicides and accidental deaths due to a prisoner’s own actions, was the highest since 2007.