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A beginner’s guide to the taxes you’ll hear about this election season

Retrieved on: 
Mercredi, mars 13, 2024

If you’ve recently entered the workforce or the housing market, you may still be wrapping your mind around all of these terms.

Key Points: 
  • If you’ve recently entered the workforce or the housing market, you may still be wrapping your mind around all of these terms.
  • Here is what you need to know about the different types of taxes and how they affect you.
  • When you earn money If you are an employee or own a business, taxes are deducted from your salary or profits you make.
  • If you are self-employed, you will have to pay your taxes via an annual tax return assessment.
  • The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.
  • The government collects taxes from all sources and sets its spending plans accordingly, borrowing to make up any difference between the two.

Income tax

  • The amount of income tax you pay is determined by where your income sits in a series of “bands” set by the government.
  • Almost everyone is entitled to a “personal allowance”, currently £12,570, which you can earn without needing to pay any income tax.
  • You then pay 20% in tax on each pound of income you earn (across all sources) from £12,570-£50,270.

National insurance

  • National insurance contributions (NICs) are a second “tax” you pay on your income – or to be precise, on your earned income (your salary).
  • While Jeremy Hunt, the current chancellor of the exchequer, didn’t adjust income tax meaningfully in this year’s budget, he did announce a cut to NICs.
  • This was a surprise to many, as we had already seen rates fall from 12% to 10% on incomes higher than £242/week in January.

Other taxes

  • Wealth taxes may be in line for a change.
  • In the budget, the chancellor reduced capital gains taxes on sales of assets such as second properties (from 28% to 24%).
  • There are calls from many quarters though to look again at these types of taxes.


Andy Lymer and his colleagues at the Centre for Personal Financial Wellbeing at Aston University currently or have recently received funding for their research work from a variety of funding bodies including the UK's Money and Pension Service, the Aviva Foundation, Fair4All Finance, NEST Insight, the Gambling Commission, Vivid Housing and the ESRC, amongst others.

Paolozzi at 100: exhibition highlights the revolutionary work of Britain’s leading pop artist

Retrieved on: 
Mercredi, mars 13, 2024

However, his work crossed a range of creative styles including paper collage, lithography, silk screen, textiles, murals and ceramics.

Key Points: 
  • However, his work crossed a range of creative styles including paper collage, lithography, silk screen, textiles, murals and ceramics.
  • Paolozzi’s influence on the 20th century artworld was immense and he helped shape several art movements with his unique insights.
  • For this work Paolozzi is considered an early pioneer of pop art and is often called the father of British pop art.
  • This exhibition is a testament to the breadth of his work and a true celebration of one of Britain’s greatest artists.

Paolozzi the pop artist

  • Paolozzi was appointed as a teacher at the Central School of Arts and Crafts from 1950 to 1955.
  • This approach can be seen in one the show’s highlights, the “tear sheets” in Take-off, one of the original 45 collages from his Bunk Pop Art series.
  • There is an ongoing debate about whether these collages were the first truly pop art works or simply pieces in Paolozzi’s many scrapbooks that were categorised after the pop art movement had been defined.

Silk screen printing as a new art form

  • Paolozzi’s exploration and use of silk screen print making techniques as an art form was ahead of other contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, who latterly was exhibited beside him at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1968).
  • One of the most striking examples of his silk screen work in the exhibition is As is When (1965).
  • Paolozzi exploits the unique colour separation properties of silk screen printing and includes quotes from the Viennese philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s writing.


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Blane Savage does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Ancient scrolls are being ‘read’ by machine learning — with human knowledge to detect language and make sense of them

Retrieved on: 
Mercredi, mars 13, 2024

Using a non-invasive method that harnesses machine learning, an international trio of scholars retrieved 15 columns of ancient Greek text from within a carbonized papyrus from Herculaneum, a seaside Roman town eight kilometres southeast of Naples, Italy.

Key Points: 
  • Using a non-invasive method that harnesses machine learning, an international trio of scholars retrieved 15 columns of ancient Greek text from within a carbonized papyrus from Herculaneum, a seaside Roman town eight kilometres southeast of Naples, Italy.
  • The work of reading and analyzing the new Greek and Latin texts recovered from the papyri will fall to human beings.

Buried in ash

  • Like Pompeii, Herculaneum was buried by the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.
  • But in 1752, excavation uncovered hundreds of papyrus scrolls in the library of an elaborate Roman villa.

Carbonized papyri


Starved of oxygen, the intense heat of Vesuvius’ pyroclastic flow carbonized (but did not ignite) the papyri. Resembling lumps of coal to the eye, 18th-century excavators did not immediately recognize them as ancient books.
The papyri are so brittle that many were destroyed by early attempts to access their texts. Studying them has therefore always required ingenuity. In 1754, a conservator and priest at the Vatican library devised a machine for slowly unrolling them.
More recently, multispectral photography has dramatically improved their legibility. But until now, a non-invasive method that would leave the scrolls intact remained out of reach. Its development marks a significant breakthrough. McOsker notes there are 659 items in the catalogue listed as “not unrolled,” but some of these are parts of scrolls.

Sparking innovation

  • The latter are essential as a reference point (or “control”) for innovative approaches.
  • The competition’s design encouraged transparency and collaboration: data published in the pursuit of smaller goals benefited all competitors.

Text mentions music, taste, sight

  • A PhD student studying machine learning, an engineer studying computer science and a robotics student were declared
    the victors.
  • According to McOsker, the text they retrieved mentions music twice, as well as the senses of taste and sight.

Hundreds of rolls to be studied

  • With hundreds of rolls yet to be studied, the new method of recovering the contents of the Herculaneum papyri is only getting started.
  • The production of scans at sufficiently high resolution can’t be done via ordinary equipment, but requires access to a facility with a particle accelerator.
  • Via current techniques, which involve a fair bit of manual manipulation, fully segmenting one scroll would cost US$1–5 million.

Critical minds needed

  • Their role is to analyze the model’s output of legible ancient Greek — and in so doing determine which approaches are most effective.
  • It requires mastery of ancient languages and ideas as well as the puzzle-solver’s ability to fill in the inevitable gaps.
  • For the challenge truly to succeed, we’re going to need critical minds as well as whizbang technology.


C. Michael Sampson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for 'the Books of Karanis,' a project that studies fragmentary Greek literature from the Egyptian village Karanis.

Fire represents power and control for an Indigneous teenager who lacks both, in Melanie Saward’s compassionate debut novel

Retrieved on: 
Mercredi, mars 13, 2024

“From the moment I got here, I’ve wanted to set the whole of Brisbane on fire,” reflects Andrew, the protagonist of Melanie Saward’s debut novel.

Key Points: 
  • “From the moment I got here, I’ve wanted to set the whole of Brisbane on fire,” reflects Andrew, the protagonist of Melanie Saward’s debut novel.
  • Saward, a Bigambul and Wakka Wakka author, moved to Bracken Ridge in the northern suburbs of Brisbane as a teenager, after growing up in Tasmania.
  • Fire is symbolic: it’s power and control for Andrew, who has precious little control over his life.

Reading as ‘invited guests’

  • Writes Leane:
    Presencing means the recognition that First Nations works are happening in the same ‘now’ as the settler reader.
  • Presencing means the recognition that First Nations works are happening in the same ‘now’ as the settler reader.
  • While my own experience was very different, I recognise the way poverty and deprivation press up against natural beauty in Saward’s novel.
  • As an adult living in Melbourne, I became gradually aware of the economic gap between the mainland and Tasmania.
  • They were reasons I left the state when I was old enough to do so.
  • Despite living in Melbourne for nearly 30 years, I still feel the thread Saward writes about, connecting me to Tasmania.
  • Burn, however, generates a type of “presencing” that allows you to see complexity in the way the past manifests in the present.

Inside family trauma

  • “We don’t know how deep it is,” he said the first time I started wading in for a paddle.
  • If a nice, warm, nearly nine-year-old boy gets in, they might think you’re their dinner.” The tidal pool becomes a recurring image for trauma.
  • We see inside family trauma, how the dynamics are self-perpetuating.
  • We also bear witness to the role institutions play in exacerbating trauma associated with colonialism, such as ongoing disconnection from culture.

Crossover appeal


Burn has obvious crossover appeal for teen and adult audiences, with a strong adolescent protagonist driving the story. So it interests me that this novel has been published as adult fiction. In fact as a young adult author and once-upon-a-time editor of books for teenagers, I puzzled over the decision.

  • When teaching young adult fiction to creative writing and publishing classes, I often ask Dr Lili Wilkinson’s four powerful plotting questions: What does your character want?
  • In this novel, there is nothing Andrew alone can do to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma.
  • The only answer posed to the question, “What does Andrew need to do?” is: light fires.
  • Andrew lights fires which destroy, but Andrew’s fires also offer regeneration and renewal.

‘Who’s your mob?’

  • In Tasmania, Sarah and Andrew try and fail to imagine new futures for themselves, to generate a fantasy of who they might be.
  • New love interest, Tess, makes clumsy attempts to connect with Andrew, and he in turn tries hard not hurt her.
  • This question cuts to the heart of what it means to belong: to family, to Country, to culture and to your own story.


Penni Russon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Pacific Islanders have long drawn wisdom from the Earth, the sky and the waves. Research shows the science is behind them

Retrieved on: 
Mercredi, mars 13, 2024

One man mentioned a black-winged storm bird known as “manumanunicagi” that glides above the land only when a cyclone is forming out to sea.

Key Points: 
  • One man mentioned a black-winged storm bird known as “manumanunicagi” that glides above the land only when a cyclone is forming out to sea.
  • As the conversation continued, residents named at least 11 bird species, the odd behaviour of which signalled imminent changes in the weather.
  • We reviewed evidence on traditional knowledge in the Pacific for coping with climate change, and found much of it was scientifically plausible.

A proven, robust system

  • People have inhabited the Pacific Islands for 3,000  years or more and have experienced many climate-driven challenges to their livelihoods and survival.
  • They have coped not by luck but by design – through robust systems of traditional knowledge built by diverse groups of people over time.
  • Traditional knowledge in the Pacific explains the causes and manifestations of natural phenomena, and identifies the best ways to respond.

Reading the ocean and sky

  • In Vanuatu’s Torres Islands, 13 phrases exist to describe the state of the tide, including anomalies that herald uncommon events.
  • Distant storms can drive ocean swells onto coasts long before the winds and rain arrive, changing the usual patterns of waves.
  • Winds that blow from the east (matā ‘upolu) indicate the imminent arrival of heavy rain, possibly a tropical cyclone.
  • Many Pacific Island communities believe a cloudless, dark blue sky signals the arrival of a tropical cyclone.

The wisdom of animals and plants

  • In Tonga, when the frigate bird flies across the land – unusual behaviour for an ocean species – it signals a tropical cyclone is developing.
  • Another study, which included data on frigate birds in the Pacific, found seabirds appeared to circumvent cyclones, probably by sensing wind strength and direction.
  • Traditional knowledge about insect behaviour in the Pacific Islands is also used to predict wet weather.
  • Across the Pacific, common signs of impending wet weather are found in the behaviours of some plants.
  • This can be explained scientifically by a process in which plant leaves close to protect their reproductive organs from extreme weather.

Planning for a warmer future

  • This is true of the Pacific Islands, where in some places, traditional knowledge is all but forgotten.
  • As climate change impacts worsen, optimal planning for island peoples should combine both approaches.


Patrick D. Nunn receives funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) via the Australia Pacific Climate Partnership (APCP), the Australian Research Council, and the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research. Roselyn Kumar receives funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) via the Australia Pacific Climate Partnership (APCP)

Turkiye Garanti Bankasi A.S.: Annoucement about the issuance of subordinated eurobond abroad

Retrieved on: 
Mercredi, mars 13, 2024

A syndicate of banks consisting of BBVA, BofA Securities, ING, Mashreq, Morgan Stanley and Standard Chartered Bank is authorized by our bank; to hold a series of meetings on February 20, 2024 with investors in Asia, Europe and the United States.

Key Points: 
  • A syndicate of banks consisting of BBVA, BofA Securities, ING, Mashreq, Morgan Stanley and Standard Chartered Bank is authorized by our bank; to hold a series of meetings on February 20, 2024 with investors in Asia, Europe and the United States.
  • According to the availability of the market conditions, the issuance of USD denominated Basel III compliant Tier 2 notes that will qualify as Tier 2 capital pursuant to Article 8 of the Regulation on Equity of the Banks, will be evaluated by our bank following the relevant investor meetings.
  • *In contradiction between the Turkish and English versions of this public disclosure, the Turkish version shall prevail.
  • Contact Garanti BBVA Investor Relations:

Turkiye Garanti Bankasi A.S.: Regarding the Annual Report State of Responsibility

Retrieved on: 
Mercredi, mars 13, 2024

The responsibility statement regarding the year-end annual report of our Bank for the period between 01.01.2023- 31.12.2023, which has been prepared in accordance with the Communiqué on Principles of Financial Reporting in Capital Markets issued by Capital Markets Board of Turkey, is attached herewith.

Key Points: 
  • The responsibility statement regarding the year-end annual report of our Bank for the period between 01.01.2023- 31.12.2023, which has been prepared in accordance with the Communiqué on Principles of Financial Reporting in Capital Markets issued by Capital Markets Board of Turkey, is attached herewith.
  • *In contradiction between the Turkish and English versions of this public disclosure, the Turkish version shall prevail.
  • We declare that our above statements are in conformity with the principles included in the Board’s Communiqué, Serial II Nr.15.1, that it exactly reflects the information we received; that the information complies with our records, books and documents; that we did our best to obtain the correct and complete information relative to this subject and that we are responsible for the declarations made in this regard.
  • Contact Garanti BBVA Investor Relations:

Turkiye Garanti Bankasi A.S.: Selection of the Independent Audit Company

Retrieved on: 
Mercredi, mars 13, 2024

At our Bank’s Board of Directors meeting dated March 01, 2024, it was resolved that Güney Bağımsız Denetim ve Serbest Muhasebeci Mali Müşavirlik A.Ş.

Key Points: 
  • At our Bank’s Board of Directors meeting dated March 01, 2024, it was resolved that Güney Bağımsız Denetim ve Serbest Muhasebeci Mali Müşavirlik A.Ş.
  • (EY) be selected as the external auditor of the Bank for 2024 accounting period according to Article 399 of the Turkish Commercial Code and such selection be submitted for shareholders’ approval in the forthcoming General Assembly Meeting.
  • *In contradiction between the Turkish and English versions of this public disclosure, the Turkish version shall prevail.
  • Contact Garanti BBVA Investor Relations:

Turkiye Garanti Bankasi A.S.: Regarding the Board Decision related to Dividend Distribution of 2023

Retrieved on: 
Mercredi, mars 13, 2024

Profit Distribution Table for the year 2023 is attached herewith.

Key Points: 
  • Profit Distribution Table for the year 2023 is attached herewith.
  • *In contradiction between the Turkish and English versions of this public disclosure, the Turkish version shall prevail.
  • We declare that our above statements are in conformity with the principles included in the Board’s Communiqué, Serial II Nr.15.1, that it exactly reflects the information we received; that the information complies with our records, books and documents; that we did our best to obtain the correct and complete information relative to this subject and that we are responsible for the declarations made in this regard.
  • Contact Garanti BBVA Investor Relations:

Turkiye Garanti Bankasi A.S.: Announcement regarding issuance of subordinated notes

Retrieved on: 
Mercredi, mars 13, 2024

Our Bank has mandated BBVA, BofA Securities, ING, Mashreq, Morgan Stanley and Standard Chartered Bank for an issuance of U.S. dollar-denominated subordinated notes (Basel III compliant) to be sold to real persons and legal entities resident abroad.

Key Points: 
  • Our Bank has mandated BBVA, BofA Securities, ING, Mashreq, Morgan Stanley and Standard Chartered Bank for an issuance of U.S. dollar-denominated subordinated notes (Basel III compliant) to be sold to real persons and legal entities resident abroad.
  • The fixed rate notes with nominal amount of USD 500 million, 10NC5 maturity, redemption date of 28 Feb 2034 and the coupon rate of 8,375%.
  • *In contradiction between the Turkish and English versions of this public disclosure, the Turkish version shall prevail.
  • Contact Garanti BBVA Investor Relations: