Canada’s reliance on food banks has soared to a grim new milestone, according to data from Food Banks Canada, which says it recorded more than two million visits in March 2024 — nearly double the monthly visits five years ago in March 2019 (that's up a staggering 90%), and 6% above last year’s record-breaking figure.
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• NATO confirmed that North Korean troops have been sent to Russia to aid in its war against Ukraine and that some have already been deployed in Russia’s Kursk border region, where Russia has been struggling to push back a Ukrainian incursion.
• Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says if his party forms government, it will scrap the federal sales tax on new homes sold for less than $1 million and push provinces do to the same.
• Quebec’s national director of youth protection has resigned, days after a media report claimed that educators at a Montreal detention centre for troubled minors had sexual relations with detainees.
• Donald Trump turned to the home stretch of his campaign with a six-hour rally at Madison Square Garden flanked by allies aiming to frame voters’ decision around who can fix America’s woes.
• A 50-year-old suspect is in custody after five people, including three children, were injured in a knife attack near a Beijing school.
• A U.K. judge has sentenced the founder of the far-right English Defence League to a year and a half in prison for contempt of court for violating an order barring him from repeating libelous allegations against a Syrian refugee.
• Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told a Senate inquiry that he had maintained a “death squad” of gangsters to kill other criminals when he was mayor of the southern city of Davao.
