Photo: Tom Parsons/Unsplash (CC0)
In today’s edition: The Vagrancy Act 1824 has been repealed in England and Wales making rough sleeping no longer a crime, the US murder rate approaches its lowest level since records began, and Arizona’s wildlife crossings are having a huge impact on wildlife-vehicle collisions.
The Vagrancy Act 1824, the law that criminalised rough sleeping, will be officially repealed next week. The Housing Secretary explained the move would encourage a shift “from punishment to prevention” in terms of approaches to homelessness.
Source: LBC
According to new data, this would be the lowest murder rate on record since the FBI started publishing national murder numbers in the 1950s. After a rise in murder rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, they are now approaching a rate of 4 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. However, this is still twice the rate of Canada.
Source: NPR
At the beginning of the early 2000s, you were roughly three times more likely to be assaulted in Scotland than in the US. A radical approach by the Scottish authorities started viewing violent crime as a public health problem – and now sees the country ranked as one of the safest in the world.
Source: BBC News
Conversion therapy is facing increasing scrutiny and growing body of evidence dismissing it as legitimate. Now, under the UK’s draft Conversion Practices Bill, individuals who commit “abusive acts” such as attempting to change someone’s gender identity or sexual orientation will face harsher repercussions.
Source: BBC News
Every year, there are an average of 1,270 wildlife-vehicle collisions in Arizona. In order to reduce this number, the state is building its 27th wildlife crossing which, alongside a large network of underpasses and canal networks for wildlife, have seen the number of reported collisions drop substantially.
Source: Good Good Good
Solar Sharer is a regulated energy offer with free electricity in the middle of the day, which energy companies will offer in Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia from 1st July. Households in Victoria will have access to a similar scheme, called the Midday Power Saver, from 1st October.
Source: The Guardian
French authorities have announced the creation of seven new biological reserves and expansion of two existing ones. Together, they will protect an extra 157,000 hectares of forest as the country works toward putting 10% of its land under “strong protection” by 2030.
Source: Euronews
In Zinave National Park, nine female white rhinos have joined their male counterparts with the intention to rebuild a viable breeding population in the region. After decades of local extinction, their arrival signals the culmination of almost a decade of rhino reintroduction efforts in the park.
Source: Mongabay
The congregation at Trinity Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, don’t always agree on politics. But four years ago, when Reverend John Jackman suggested a new church mission to alleviate medical debt for residents of the wider, there was no dissent.
Source: NPR
Although he has a home of his own, Mike Coffmann, the mayor of Aurora, Colorado, has been regularly sleeping in the city’s homeless shelters since February. His intention is to make sure that the shetlers are “a model programme for serving the needs of the area’s homeless”.
Source: Good Good Good
