Social Issues

The use of food banks in the UK has risen to record highs with more than a million three-day emergency food supplies provided by the Trussell Trust charity last year. As the Trust reveals a continued rise, a separate report estimates more than half of the emergency food aid supplied in Britain comes from independent organisations not included in the charity’s figures Government figures have also indicated a shocking rise in deaths linked to malnutrition.

A black inmate on death row in Georgia was executed on Tuesday despite one of the jurors at his trial admitting racial bias. The Independent reports: Kenneth Fults was given a lethal injection of pentobarbital on Tuesday at a state prison in Jackson, Georgia. The 47-year-old pleaded guilty to shooting 19-year-old Cathy Bounds during a burglary in 1996 and was sentenced to death by a jury in 1997. In 2005, eight years after Fults’ sentencing, one of the jurors signed a sworn statement saying: “I don’t know if he ever killed anybody, but that n***** got just what should have happened.

An assisted suicide bill has been put before Canada’s Parliament and if passed will allow doctors to help terminally ill patients end their own lives. However, the new bill will exclude foreigners from coming to the country to die. However, According to BBC News: People with mental illness and psychiatric disorders are excluded too. Last year, the Canadian Supreme Court struck down a law banning doctors from helping someone die. This bill, which is backed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, must now be studied by committee and then voted on by both House and Senate.

Women were given tents and sleeping bags when they were released from a British prison with nowhere to go due to a shortage of accommodation The disclosure was made following an inspection into HMP Bronzefield in West London. The watchdog report said two women were given tents while sleeping bags had also been handed out amid a shortage in available housing. In the six months prior to the inspection, 103 had left with no fixed address, according to the report from HM Inspectorate of Prisons.

China has condemned the United States’ Human Rights record at home and abroad in an annual report released on Thursday. U.S. politics is corrupted by money and nepotism, with numerous wars in the Middle East providing a glimpse of how the U.S. government views “lives in other countries as worthless,” according to the scathing Chinese Human Rights report.