CharlieH

Millions of workers will benefit from a 2p cut in national insurance as Jeremy Hunt announced moves to ease the tax burden ahead of next year’s general election. The Tory chancellor said the 2 per cent reduction in the national insurance rate will save someone earning £35,000 more than £450, and that the change would benefit 27 million people. He also confirmed a tax break for big businesses who invest will be made permanent, something that he claimed was the “biggest business tax cut in modern history”. Mr Hunt claimed it amounted to “the biggest package of tax cuts since the 1980s”. But the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) said the plans mean the tax burden would hit a post-war high by 2028-29. The Independent takes a look at the big winners and losers from the chancellor’s autumn statement: Winners: Workers The chancellor’s big “rabbit in the hat” trick was a 2 per cent cut to national insurance, which will benefit 27 million people, possibly as soon as January. Workers earning up to £50,000 currently pay 12 per cent in national insurance contributions (NIC), so will now pay 10 per cent. It means somebody on the average salary of £35,000 will save more than £450 a year. However, there was no income tax cut. And the OBR pointed out that the fiscal drag process – frozen tax thresholds that mean more low earners who have had pay rises have been pulled into paying the 20 per cent basic-rate income tax – will mean nearly 4 million additional workers paying income tax, and around 3 million more moving into the higher rate bracket. FULL STORY

https://aseannow.com/topic/1312306-forum-back-online-after-cyber-attack/

Former President Trump widened his lead against President Biden to 4 points in a hypothetical 2024 presidential match-up, according to a new poll. The Emerson College Polling survey, released Wednesday, shows Trump holding on to his 47 percent support, while Biden’s fell from 45 to 43 percent. About 10 percent of voters in the poll were undecided. The survey also found that if a third-party candidate were added to the hypothetical situation — such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West or Jill Stein — support for both Trump and Biden fell and the amount of undecided voters increased. Biden’s dip in support is notable because at this time last year, he was leading Trump, Emerson College said in its report. The most significant decrease in backing for the president came from female voters. “Last November, Biden led Trump by 4 points, whereas this November, he trails Trump by 4,” said Spencer Kimball, the executive director of Emerson College Polling. “Several key groups have shifted in the past year: Biden led at this time last year among women by 7 points, which has reduced to a point this year.” The survey also found that Biden lost support from voters of color. Among Black voters, Biden lost 15 points, and among Hispanic or Latino voters, he lost 11 points. The president also lost 13 points from voters under the age of 50, and he’s down 16 points among four-year college graduates, the pollsters found. Generally, voters say they are excited about the 2024 presidential election. Only 36 percent said they were not. FULL STORY

Finland has said it will close all but one crossing point on its border with Russia in an effort to halt a flow of asylum seekers to the Nordic nation, as Estonia accused Moscow of mounting “a hybrid attack operation” on Europe’s eastern border. The announcement on Wednesday came after weeks of tension on the 830-mile (1,330km) border across which Helsinki accuses Moscow of guiding refugees and migrants in an apparent act of revenge for the Nordic nation’s cooperation with the US. From midnight on Friday, said the Finnish prime minister, Petteri Orpo, the only open border crossing of Finland’s eight stations would be its northernmost at Raja-Jooseppi. Estonia levelled similar accusations at Russia on Wednesday, saying Moscow was involved in “a hybrid attack operation” to bring people to its border in an attempt to undermine security and unsettle the Baltic state’s population. Since Thursday 75 people, largely from Somalia and Syria, had attempted to enter Estonia from Russia through the Narva crossing point, the Estonian public broadcaster ERR reported. None had asked for asylum and all had been turned back, the interior ministry said. Estonia has made preparations to follow in the footsteps of Finland and close border crossings if “the migration pressure from Russia escalates”, the interior minister, Lauri Läänemets, told Reuters through a spokesperson. FULL STORY

Israeli and US officials have said a four-day Gaza truce and hostage release will not start until at least Friday, thwarting the hopes of families that some captives would be freed on Thursday. As the wait continued, Khan Younis in southern Gaza was hit by Israeli airstrikes and artillery in at least two waves early on Thursday, Palestinian media reported. Tensions also rose on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon early Thursday, after Hezbollah said five fighters, including the son of the head of the militant group’s parliamentary bloc, had been killed. Israeli national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi indicated the release of at least 50 Israeli and foreign hostages held by Hamas was on track, but would not happen until Friday at the earliest. “The contacts on the release of our hostages are advancing and continuing constantly,” he said in a statement. “The start of the release will take place according to the original agreement between the sides, and not before Friday.” Multiple news outlets later cited anonymous Israeli officials as saying that the halt in fighting would also not begin on Thursday, as had been widely expected. White House spokesperson Adrienne Watson said final logistical details for the release were being worked out. “That is on track and we are hopeful that implementation will begin on Friday morning,” Watson said. It was not immediately clear what caused the delay. The deal had been expected to come into force from Thursday. An Egyptian security source told Reuters that mediators had sought a start time of 10am. Israel’s public broadcaster Kan, citing an unidentified Israeli official, reported there was a 24-hour delay because the agreement was not signed by Hamas and mediator Qatar. The official said they were optimistic the agreement would be carried out once it was signed. FULL STORY

Leaked videos showing four Georgia defendants speaking to prosecutors in the racketeering case involving former President Trump are bringing into focus the ex-president’s desperate grab for power after losing the 2020 presidential race. “The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances,” then-White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino told ex-Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, according to Ellis’s testimony to Fulton County prosecutors a day before she entered her guilty plea. “We are just going to stay in power,” he said. The videos, first reported by ABC News, place Trump at the top of the chain of command of efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia in his favor. The defendants’ proffer statements bolster the narrative Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis laid out in her 98-page indictment charging Trump and 18 co-defendants with joining a criminal enterprise bent on keeping Trump in the White House. “The entire idea behind the indictment is that Donald Trump was driving the bus and doing so in a way that was only intended to secure power,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University. “To the extent that this kind of evidence supports that theory, I think it’s really damning to the good-faith justifications that have been put out by his allies and his attorneys.” FULL STORY

Six weeks after the start of the war in Gaza, the UN security council has come together to back a resolution calling for “urgent extended humanitarian pauses for [a] sufficient number of days to allow aid access” to the embattled territory. The vote late on Wednesday overcame an impasse which saw four unsuccessful attempts to adopt a resolution. Malta drafted the resolution, which calls for humanitarian corridors across the Gaza Strip and urges the release of all hostages held by Hamas. The US and the UK, two potentially veto-wielding powers, abstained on the resolution on the grounds that although they supported the emphasis on humanitarian relief, they could not give their full support because it contained no explicit criticism of Hamas. Russia also abstained on the grounds that it made no mention of an immediate ceasefire, its top imperative. The resolution was passed with 12 votes in favour, and is the first UN resolution on the Israel-Palestine conflict since 2016. The Israeli foreign ministry said it rejected the resolution, prompting the Palestinian representative, Riyad Mansour, to ask the UN security council members what they intended to do in the face of that defiance. The US had last month blocked a similar if broader resolution, but appears to have been persuaded to shift to abstention by Arab states in the face of the scale of the civilian deaths and destruction in Gaza. UN resolutions are in theory legally binding, but are widely ignored, and the political significance lies in the US willingness to back a call for an extended humanitarian ceasefire, putting some pressure on its close ally Israel. The American decision may reflect its frustration with Israel’s campaign, including the attack on al-Shifa hospital, the largest medical facility in Gaza. FULL STORY

Rishi Sunak has staked his political credibility on pushing through emergency legislation to resurrect his high-profile plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, after the supreme court ruled it was unlawful. During a combative press conference on Wednesday afternoon, hastily arranged after the five judges unanimously rejected the proposal, Sunak said legislation would end the “merry-go-round” of legal challenges by setting out in law that the east African country is safe. Amid increasing pressure from the right of the Conservative party to commit to withdrawing from the European convention on human rights (ECHR), Sunak said he would “not allow a foreign court to block these flights”, but declined to say how. “I am prepared to do what is necessary to get flights off. I will not take the easy way out,” the prime minister said, standing at a lectern bearing the “stop the boats” slogan. A parallel plan for a new international treaty with Rwanda would provide “guarantees in law” that people deported from the UK would not be returned to their home countries, he added. While a treaty would formalise the previous memorandum of understanding with Rwanda, Whitehall sources said this could take more than a year and then be challenged in the courts. The supreme court’s judgment, read out by Lord Reed, its president, said all five judges agreed with the court of appeal that there was a real risk of asylum claims being wrongly determined in Rwanda, resulting in people being wrongly returned to their country of origin and facing persecution. FULL STORY

The government's Rwanda asylum policy is in disarray after the UK's highest court ruled it is unlawful. Ministers say the plan to deport asylum seekers and ban them from returning is needed to tackle small boat crossings. But the Supreme Court upheld an earlier Court of Appeal ruling which said the policy leaves people sent to Rwanda open to human rights breaches. The unanimous decision means the flagship policy can not go forward in its current form. The ruling is the latest stage in the legal battle over the controversial plan since it was first announced by Boris Johnson in April 2022. Flights were prevented from taking off in June last year after the Court of Appeal ruled the policy was unlawful due to a lack of human rights safeguards. The legal case against the policy hinges on the principle of "non-refoulement" - that a person seeking asylum should not be returned to their country of origin if doing so would put them at risk of harm - which is established under both UK and international human rights law. Ten claimants in the case argued that ministers had ignored clear evidence that Rwanda's asylum system was unfair and arbitrary. In a unanimous decision, the five Supreme Court justices agreed with the Court of Appeal that there had not been a proper assessment of whether Rwanda was safe. The judgment does not ban sending migrants to another country, but it leaves the £140m Rwanda scheme in tatters - and it is not clear which other nations are prepared to do a similar deal with the UK. In their judgement, the Supreme Court justices said there were "substantial grounds" to believe people deported to Rwanda could then be sent, by the Rwandan government, to places where they would be unsafe. Judgment 'emboldens people smugglers' It said the Rwandan government had entered into the agreement in "good faith" but the evidence cast doubt on its "practical ability to fulfil its assurances, at least in the short term", to fix "deficiencies" in its asylum system and see through "the scale of the changes in procedure, understanding and culture which are required". FULL STORY

Their smiling faces look down from the sides of skyscrapers, walls between Tel Aviv's restaurants and bars and a giant video screen at a shopping mall entrance. More than 240 hostages were snatched at gunpoint on 7 October from their homes or workplaces next to the Gaza Strip, from military bases and a big outdoor dance party. They included some 30 children, the youngest just nine months old. But since Hamas gunmen spirited them away to Gaza, the fates of most remain unknown. For Israelis reeling from last month's bloody massacres, it is an ongoing trauma. "This is the last photo we have of my aunt. She was taken on a motorcycle by two terrorists," says Eyal Nouri, showing me a picture of Amina Moshe, 72, being driven away from Nir Oz, a kibbutz where she lived for 50 years. "No children, no babies, no older women are meant to be part of any conflict. It's something against humanity to kidnap children." Although this is the biggest, over the years, Israel has endured many hostage crises. During the 1980s, the country showed it was ready to pay high prices for its citizens in prisoner swaps with Palestinian and Lebanese armed groups. Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, who later founded Hamas, was freed in one exchange. Even Israeli soldiers' corpses were traded to give them proper Jewish burials. Then in 2006, Hamas kidnapped a soldier, 19-year-old Gilad Shalit, in a cross-border raid. His father, Noam, led a painful five-year campaign to bring him home, stressing the "unwritten contract" between the state and its conscripts. Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister - then as now - signed off on the biggest ever prisoner exchange for a single soldier. More than a thousand inmates were released including Yahya Sinwar, who went on to lead Hamas in Gaza, and apparently masterminded the 7 October attacks. A key figure involved in the Shalit deal sees major differences between the circumstances then and now which he thinks will prevent any comprehensive deal being done. "We had five years and four months to build trust with Gilad Shalit. [Now], we have days. The future of the hostages will be decided in the coming days," says Gershon Baskin, an Israeli peace activist, who led secret backchannel talks with Hamas. FULL STORY

After 31 pages I believe this topic has run its course. If you have any further genuine and constructive points of feedback,you are welcome to email them to Support. CLOSED

Given his money, I would have a rented Harim ! And absolutely NO 1 fixture.

Here ya go again, you can say "define" this define that and end up with a telephone directory of rules because everyone wants it defined even further. Not playing your game mate.

what matter is how its defined here, as per forum rules: 10. You will not post troll messages. Trolling is the act of purposefully antagonizing forum members by posting controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages with the primary intent of provoking other members into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.

The Israeli military is carrying out a “precise and targeted operation” in Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, according to a statement by the Israel Defense Forces. Israel has repeatedly claimed there is a command center for Palestinian militant group Hamas underneath the hospital, which Hamas and hospital officials have denied. Israel declared war on Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza, and launched a “complete siege” of the enclave following Hamas’ terror attacks in Israel on October 7. An estimated 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’ attacks, and 240 taken hostage, most of whom remain captive in Gaza. Since then, Israeli attacks have killed at least 11,180 Palestinians – including 4,609 children and 3,100 women – according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah, which draws on medical sources in Gaza. International pressure on the Israeli government has soared in recent days amid accounts of desperate circumstances at Gaza’s fuel-starved hospitals, and severe shortages of food and water. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday repeated his calls for a ceasefire in Gaza “in the name of humanity. FULL STORY

Suella Braverman has launched an astonishing personal attack on Rishi Sunak, describing the prime minister as weak and dishonest and claiming he reneged on promises to push through a series of controversial policy pledges. In a brutal three-page letter published a day after she was sacked as home secretary, Braverman warned Sunak that she now intends to spearhead a Tory rebellion over the government’s Rwanda plan. “Someone needs to be honest: your plan is not working, we have endured record election defeats, your resets have failed and we are running out of time. You need to change course urgently,” she wrote. Dozens of Conservative MPs are poised to demand that the government quits the European convention on human rights, a move resisted by senior cabinet ministers, if the UK’s highest court rules against sending asylum seekers to Rwanda on Wednesday. Home Office insiders said the government had no plan B in the event of losing in the supreme court, suggesting that ministers were “panicked” over the potential outcome. They warned it was highly unlikely that flights to Rwanda would be able to take off before February even if they won. In her letter, Braverman said that Sunak had failed to prepare a credible backup plan and had ignored her suggestion – believed to be emergency legislation to change domestic law so that the government could ignore the ruling and the flights could go ahead. “I can only surmise that this is because you have no appetite for doing what is necessary, and therefore no real intention of fulfilling your pledge to the British people,” she added. Sunak vowed to continue working to tackle small boat crossings regardless of the supreme court verdict. No 10 advisers believe that only a dozen or so backbenchers are prepared to fall in behind Braverman, while some Tory MPs feel the viciousness of her attack will make it harder for them to publicly back her. FULL STORY

Difference of opinion etc is one thing INSULTS/name calling needs to stop !

Yes ! particularly at U-Turn areas.

Stop at a red light in a car, front of the line, motorcycle comes along your left side. Light changes to green, m/cycle turns right, right across you !

Turning left at a T-Junction without so much as a glance to the right for oncoming traffic.

Petty trolling/bickering exchange removed.

Hundreds of patients, including dozens of babies, remain trapped inside Gaza’s largest hospital as Israeli troops and Hamas militants take part in heavy fighting outside it. What is happening there and why? Where is al-Shifa hospital and how important is it to healthcare in Gaza? The Dar al-Shifa (House of Healing) hospital is a sprawling complex of medical facilities in Gaza City, in the north of Gaza. Located about 500 metres from the coast and a major north-south road, it comprises a group of six-storey buildings that dominate the skyline. With between 600 and 900 beds and thousands of staff, it was the mainstay of healthcare provision locally, with a range of services that few of the other hospitals in Gaza could offer. Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, it has become a shelter for those displaced by the fighting and continuing Israeli bombardment. What are the competing claims about Hamas operations there? Israel claims that Hamas has built its headquarters in bunkers and tunnels under the hospital, effectively using the building, patients and staff as a human shield. Security officials have also said that, after the surprise attacks into Israel by Hamas which killed 1,200 Israelis, mainly civilians in their homes or at a dance party, the senior Hamas leaders have been based in a “command complex” under the hospital. FULL STORY

The Biden White House condemned Donald Trump for promising, if re-elected president, to “root out” opponents within US society he called “communists, Marxists, fascists and radical left thugs that live like vermin”. “Employing words like ‘vermin’ to describe anyone who makes use of their basic right to criticise the government ‘echoes dictators’ like Hitler and Mussolini,” the White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said, quoting Washington Post coverage of Trump’s remarks. “Using terms like that about dissent would be unrecognisable to our founders, but horrifyingly recognisable to American veterans who put on their country’s uniform in the 1940s. President Biden believes in his oath to our constitution, and in American democracy. He works to protect both every day.” Trump is the clear frontrunner to face Joe Biden in an election rematch next year, enjoying vast leads for the Republican nomination in battleground and national polls despite facing 91 criminal charges, including election subversion, and assorted civil trials including a defamation case arising from a rape allegation a judge said was “substantially true”. Trump leads or is close to Biden in numerous swing state polls. The former president spoke in Claremont, New Hampshire, on Saturday, in the middle of the Veterans Day weekend. “The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within,” said Trump, who was impeached, for a second time, for inciting the deadly January 6 attack on Congress in an attempt to stay in power. On Monday, Bates said: “We do not comment in the 2024 presidential election.” FULL STORY

David Cameron has said he wants to support Prime Minister Rishi Sunak "at a hard time", after making a dramatic comeback to government in a major cabinet reshuffle. The former prime minister has been appointed foreign secretary and accepted a peerage to take the post. He replaced James Cleverly, who became home secretary after Mr Sunak sacked Suella Braverman. Lord Cameron admitted it was "not usual" for a former PM "to come back". But he said at a time when the country faced "daunting challenges" in the Middle East and Ukraine, he hoped his experience would be helpful to Mr Sunak's government. "I've decided to join this team because I believe Rishi Sunak is a good prime minister doing a difficult job at a hard time," Lord Cameron said. "I want to support him." Former PM makes stunning comeback The return of David Cameron: What is going on? Suella Braverman sacked as home secretary Later the Foreign Office said Mr Cameron had spoken to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday evening, and they discussed "the conflict in the Middle East, Israel's right to self defence and the need for humanitarian pauses to allow the safe passage of aid into Gaza" - as well as their continued support for Ukraine and the strength and depth of the relationship between the UK and the US. Mrs Braverman's sacking kickstarted Monday's cabinet reshuffle by Mr Sunak, whose party is lagging far behind Labour in opinion polls, after more than 13 years in power. FULL STORY

Assume everyone is trying to kill you, even when stationary ! And you'll last alot longer than most.