‘Today, the High Court ruled that the benefits cap, one of the Tories’ flagship welfare policies, is unlawful, because it amounts to illegal discrimination against single parents with small children. It’s likely that the Government will be forced to alter or completely scrap their benefits cap, a policy that limits the total amount a household can receive in benefits to £23,000 in London and £20,000 elsewhere in the UK.

High Court judge Justice Collins described the benefit cap as causing “real damage” to single parent families and said “real misery is being caused to no good purpose”. This is the fundamental truth at the heart of Tory welfare policy – misery without progress or reason.

Welfare reform as part of the coalition government’s austerity measures has driven thousands more people into poverty and in many tragic cases, some deaths occurred after individuals were declared fit to work. Austerity was not inevitable. It was an ideologically-motivated programme designed to force the poorest and most vulnerable in our society to shoulder the burden of a financial crisis that they had less than nothing to do with creating.’

Read more: When even a High Court judge says Tory policy causes ‘real misery for no good purpose’, you know it’s crunch time

‘International aid agencies have warned that Ethiopia will run out of emergency food aid by next month for nearly eight million people hit by severe drought.

The agencies said on Thursday that the drought had already forced 7.8 million people across Ethiopia to rely on emergency food handouts to stay alive.

“We’re looking at the food pipeline actually breaking, so the food is running out in about a month’s time,” John Graham, country director for Save the Children, said, adding, “After that, we don’t know what’s going to happen.”

The Somali people of Ethiopia’s southeast say the drought has left no person untouched and spared no corner of their arid region.’

Read more: Emergency food will run out in drought-hit Ethiopia by next month, warn aid agencies

‘Industrial chicken companies are embroiled in the largest controversy they’ve ever faced regarding how they treat animals, with their largest customers—companies like Burger King and Subway—mandating changes. The question now is: will the industry’s trade association, the National Chicken Council, play a game of chicken with its members’ customers, or evolve the industry’s animal welfare standards to meet the demand?

It’s never easy to defend practices like genetically manipulating birds to the point in which they’re having heart attacks weeks after birth, or growing them so unnaturally obese they can barely walk by the end of their lives. There’s no rational justification for slaughtering birds by shackling them upside down and slitting their throats while fully conscious.’

Read more: Will Factory Farm Industry Evolve and Embrace Change—or Continue Practice of Torturing Chickens to Death?

‘At least 12 people have reportedly been injured during the annual Toro Chutay bull-running festival in the Peruvian region of Huancavelica.

Despite its dangerous reputation, every year families flock to the region to take part in the traveling three-day bull festival in Yananaco, Ascension and San Cristobal.

According to local reports, the festival consists of bullfighting, bull running, traditional music performances, alcohol and, for some, a trip to the emergency room.

During Monday’s activities in Ascension, a man standing by a wall was gored by a speared bull and thrown to the ground. Other bloodied men fled the scene while spectators screamed and cheered.’

Read more: Rampaging bulls gore 12 at Peruvian ‘tail-pulling’ festival

‘This week, the Trump administration released a budget so severe it almost makes the House Republicans’ American Health Care Act (AHCA) appear kind. Decades of conservative hostility to the poor have been codified in this budget. It promises to “reform the welfare system” and supplant “dependency with dignity of work,” ignoring the fact that the majority of households on public assistance have at least one gainfully employed adult. In addition to echoing the AHCA’s $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid, the budget calls for funding reductions to food stamps and welfare programs and overall changes to the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit. All of these programs and credits provide critical financial support to poor Americans.

By taking away sources of supplemental and sometimes total income, this budget will make life tangibly harder for financially vulnerable people, particularly those living in expensive urban city centers. Their dollars simply do not stretch far enough on their own.’

Read more: Life is Getting Much Worse for the Poor: Housing, Food and Essentials Eat Up the Meager Incomes

‘Separating elderly couples against their wishes when one or both move to care homes must end, Britain’s most senior family judge has said.

Sir James Munby said it was “simply inhumanity” that couples who have spent decades together can be separated in their final years, the Times reports.

In a speech on Tuesday he said such practices could be fatal.

He urged social workers to apply a “common decency test” and do more to keep couples together.

Sir James, the president of the family division of the High Court, said it was “absolutely shocking and a profound indictment of our society” that elderly, vulnerable couples who wanted to live together were sometimes refused shared accommodation and told, “you’re going to go here, you’re going to go there”.’

Read more: Judge criticises ‘inhuman’ separation of elderly couples

‘Hundreds of thousands of pensioners and disabled people will be denied the homes they badly need because of a “disastrous” Conservative policy, housing chiefs are warning.

A shortage of sheltered and supported housing is set to mushroom because of “crazy” funding rules that are shutting services and crushing investment, ministers have been told.

Older and disabled people – as well as victims of domestic violence and ex-servicemen and women – rely on the homes to live independently and to stay out of residential care, or hospital.

But the National Housing Federation (NFH) is alarmed that housing associations are now refusing to build them because the Government has thrown their future funding from rent into jeopardy.’

Read more: Tory policies will deny homes to hundreds of thousands of pensioners and disabled people, warn housing chiefs

‘Big pharmaceutical corporations are far from having an unblemished record when it comes to their treatment of animals. But recent investigations conducted by the German Animal Welfare Foundation have revealed practices involving horses have shocked even experienced animal welfare experts.

According to the Animal Welfare Foundation, the German corporation IDT Biologika has fostered a lucrative relationship with horse farms in Argentina and Uruguay in order to procure the hormone PMSG, now more correctly called equine chorionic gonadotropin (eCG), for their products. The hormone is only found in the blood of mares in early pregnancy, so farms repeatedly impregnate the horses, and siphon off as many as ten liters of blood in a single session, week after week, over a period of up to 11 months to secure the hormone.’

Read more: How Big Pharma Is Making Huge Profits From Torturing and Killing Horses