Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (AHN) – The Ontario Superior Court upheld Thursday a policy of Canadian Blood Services to ban gay men from donating blood. Justice Catherine Aitken dismissed the constitutional challenge raised by gay groups because the CBS is not a government body, so it was not in violation of the country’s constitution.

Gay men have been banned since 1977 from donating blood. That is considered the landmark year when HIV entered North America.

While Aitken acknowledged that the ban on blood donation appears to be a form of discrimination against gays and bisexuals because they are denied the opportunity to fully integrate into Canadian society through acts of kindness, the risk of lowering safety standards on blood recipients could not be taken.

The Canadian AIDS Society and gay right group Egale Canada said they were disappointed with the court’s decision. The CBS said it was satisfied with the court ruling because it validated their screening processes.

CBS had filed a lawsuit against Kyle Freeman, a 38-year old gay man from Thornhill, Ontario, who lied when he donated blood. Freeman was penalized by the court $10,000 for negligent misrepresentation. Freeman filed a countersuit as a result of that ruling.

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London, England, United Kingdom (AHN) – Britain’s unemployment problem continues to worsen as evidenced by an Office for National Statistics report that almost 4 million households in the country did not have any adult members employed.

The 3.9 million British households with no breadwinners went up by 148,000 from last year.

Such kinds of households went up by 25 percent in the North East, by 23 percent in London and Wales and 14 percent in the South East.

Employment Minister Chris Grayling said that in some areas, because the worsening unemployment problem has run for several generations, the government must now intervene to cut the endless cycle. Grayling pushed for the Work Program, which would provide support to unemployed Britons. The support includes Jobseeker’s Allowance, Income Support, Incapacity Benefits and Employment and Support Allowance.

By classification, 40 percent of households with no breadwinners were single-parent households with dependent children and 37 percent were one-person households.

Unemployed men are the target of a campaign launched Wednesday by a group to prevent the rise of suicide and suicide attempts on the national rail network. According to the Samaritans, deaths and suicide attempts on the rail network went up by 10 percent in 2009.

Rachel Kirby-Ride of the Samaritans said the most vulnerable to suicides were males from poorer backgrounds, jobless or employed in manual jobs. About 6,000 Britons take their lives yearly, of which 75 percent are men in the age ranges 25 to 55.

To address the problem, Samaritan launched the Men on the Ropes campaign to target working-class men in the age range 30 to 50. Network Rail, which aims to cut railway suicide rates by 20 percent, supported the campaign by donating advertising space for Men on the Ropes.

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