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UK Autumn Statement: Jeremy Hunt cuts tax in bid to cheer gloomy Tories

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:01 GMT

LONDON — Britain’s Chancellor Jeremy Hunt offered voters a tax cut — with one eye on a general election.The U.K.’s top finance minister — whose boss Rishi Sunak is trying to defy dire polling for his governing Conservative Party ahead of an expected election next year — announced a two percentage point cut to the main rate of National Insurance as the final flourish in an “Autumn Statement for growth” unveiled Wednesday.Hunt’s Treasury is betting the personal tax cut — coupled with a boost to the national living wage — will be felt widely, in a move the Conservatives hope will boost the pay packets of ordinary workers and ease voter concerns about the cost of living.He said: “If we want people to get up early in the morning, if we want them to work nights, if we want an economy where people go the extra mile and work hard, then we need to recognize that their hard work benefits us all.”National Insurance is paid by all employees earning more...

Israel-Hamas conflict has gone beyond war to ‘terrorism,’ Pope Francis says

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:01 GMT

Pope Francis on Wednesday said the situation in the Middle East has moved beyond war to terrorism. The pope’s statement came after he met with two separate delegations, one of Israelis who have relatives held hostage by Hamas, and one of Palestinians with relatives detained in Israeli prisons. Speaking in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City earlier Wednesday, the head of the Roman Catholic Church said both communities “suffer a lot,” adding that in the Middle East, “we have gone beyond wars” and are at “terrorism,” according to Avvenire, an Italian newspaper affiliated with the Catholic Church.The pontiff has also called for a peace prayer: “Let us pray for the Palestinian people, let us pray for the Israeli people, so that peace may come.” He strongly urged those present not to forget victims of conflicts in other parts of the world, “especially for the dear peoples of Ukraine, the tortured Ukraine.”Pope Francis...

European Parliament kills off landmark pesticide reduction bill

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:01 GMT

STRASBOURG — The EU’s draft master plan to reduce farmers’ dependence on chemical pesticides is dead after lawmakers in the European Parliament voted Wednesday to reject it.Lawmakers threw out the legislation, the Sustainable Use Regulation (SUR), with 299 votes against, 207 in favor, and 121 abstentions. It’s the end of the road for a key plank of the European Commission’s Green Deal, which after nearly a year and a half of negotiations never made it to the last stage of negotiations in which the EU’s executive, intergovernmental and legislative branches hammer out a final deal.“This is a very dark day for the society as a whole and for the environment — and also for farmers who’d be freed from dictums of the agroindustry,” said Austrian Green MEP Sarah Wiener, Parliament’s lead on the file from the environment committee.The Greens and other left-wing parties ended up voting against the final deal after a concerted push by the E...

This beer is made from recycled shower water

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:01 GMT

(CNN) — You wouldn’t know if you tasted it, but Epic OneWater Brew is a beer with a peculiar ingredient: it’s made with water recycled from the showers, sinks and washing machines of a residential building.The beer is safe to drink, thanks to a series of treatments that include microfiltration and ultraviolet light, and it is meant to bring attention to the issue of water scarcity and reuse.“Buildings globally use 14% of all potable water,” says Aaron Tartakovsky, CEO and co-founder of Epic Cleantec, the San Francisco-based water treatment company that made the beer in collaboration with a local brewery. “Almost no buildings reuse that water — that’s what we’re trying to change.”The beer is a Kölsch-style ale — a crisp, light-bodied drink originating from Germany — and was made with recycled graywater from Fifteen Fifty, a 40-story luxury apartment building in San Francisco. But it’s not for sale, as regulations prohibit the use of recycled wastewater in commercial beverages. A...

Warren Buffett donates $870 million to charities ahead of Thanksgiving

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:01 GMT

New York (CNN) — Warren Buffett is donating about $870 million to four family-run foundations ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, continuing a tradition of giving away his massive wealth of about $120 billion.The donations are in the form of shares, with a release from his Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate detailing that 1.5 million shares are going to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, which is named after his wife. Another 900,000 shares are being divided evenly among three charities run by his children.Buffett said the donations “repeat those made at Thanksgiving last year” and that they “supplement certain of the lifetime pledges I made in 2006 and that continue until my death (at 93, I feel good but fully realize I am playing in extra innings).”Last year, he donated about $750 million to the same foundations. He’s been making the same donations yearly since 2006.In a letter to shareholders, Buffett wrote on Tuesday that he and his children “have a common be...

Gallery: Boston’s official Christmas tree arrives from Nova Scotia

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:01 GMT

King Charles III honors K-pop girl group Blackpink during South Korean president’s state visit

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:01 GMT

LONDON (AP) — King Charles III paid tribute to K-pop band Blackpink on Wednesday, giving them honorary gongs for their work fighting climate change by raising awareness among young people.During a three-day state visit by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, Charles made Jennie Kim, Jisoo Kim and Lalisa Manoban honorary Members of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of the group’s role as COP26 Advocates for the COP26 Summit in Glasgow 2021. Roseanne Park (Rosé) was also honored, but since she has dual New Zealand citizenship, her MBE is substantive. In addition to being king of the United Kingdom, Charles is head of state for 14 realms, including New Zealand, which retained the monarch as their sovereign after gaining independence from the former British Empire.The honors were presented Wednesday morning in the 1844 Room at Buckingham Palace. The awards are part of Britain’s honors system, which recognizes outstanding service to the nation and the wider world. Non...

U.S. unemployment claims drop by 24,000 to 209,000, another sign of labor market resiliency

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:01 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell sharply last week, a sign that U.S. job market remains resilient despite higher interest rates.The Labor Department reported Wednesday that jobless claims dropped by 24,000 to 209,000. The previous week’s total — 233,000 — had been the highest since August. The four-week moving average of claims, which smooths out week-to-week volatility, fell by 750 to 220,000.The applications are viewed as a proxy for layoffs. They remain extraordinarily low by historical standards, signalling that most Americans enjoy unusual job security.Overall, 1.84 million Americans were receiving unemployment benefits the week that ended Nov. 11, down by 22,000 from the week before.The Federal Reserve has raised its benchmark interest rate 11 times since March 2022 to slow the economy and rein in inflation that hit a four-decade high last year. The job market and economic growth remained surprisingly resilient, defying pr...

Tiger Woods and son Charlie to play in PNC Championship again

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:01 GMT

Tiger Woods is returning to the PNC Championship, the 36-hole event that has become one of his favorites because of his partner: His son.Woods and 14-year-old Charlie are playing the PNC Championship for the fourth straight year, the one tournament he has not missed during the last injury-plagued four years.“It is an amazing gift to be able to share my love of golf with Charlie and we genuinely do look forward to playing in the PNC Championship all years,” Woods said Wednesday. “Competing together, against a field of so many golfing greats and their families, is so special.”The PNC Championship is Dec. 16-17 at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club Orlando at Grande Lakes.Woods and son were runner-up in 2021, just 10 months after Woods badly damaged his right leg and ankle in a car crash in Los Angeles. They finished seventh in their 2020 debut and tied for eighth last year.Woods is to play next week at his Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas for the first time since surgery to fuse his right ...

Poland’s new parliament debates reversing a ban on government funding for in vitro fertilization

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:01 GMT

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s new parliament began debating the reinstatement of government funding for in vitro fertilization as its first legislation following elections in which the conservative party that had banned it lost control of the legislature. Members of the new centrist majority said in parliament Wednesday that it was symbolic to begin their term with work on abolishing one of the bans introduced by the outgoing right-wing government. “The reinstatement of IVF funding is the first decision of the democratic majority,” said one of their lawmakers, Agnieszka Pomaska. The lawmakers stressed that thousands of childless couples in the shrinking nation of some 38 million were waiting for the return of government support for IVF. State funding was introduced in 2013 by a liberal government led by Donald Tusk, but the subsequent conservative government banned it in 2016 in one of its first moves, saying the procedure involved destroying human embryos. A citizens’ ...