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Independence Day is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the Declaration of Independence of the United States on July 4, ...
Presented by Rob Hanson, ANU and Data61
Notes [PDF 2.3MB]MP4 234MB
MP3 53MB
Overseas students in Australian higher education: a quick guide
This report begins by outlining key events that led to the establishment of the Commission, including relevant reviews and court proceedings. It then sets out the Commission’s work to date and how it intends to approach its terms of reference.
> Evidence that apologizing doesn’t work
'Not spoilers, wreckers or lunatics': Mark Latham sets sights on schools
Mark Latham wants schools and teachers to be given performance bonuses for strong results
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Deniss Metsavas served for many years with the Estonian Defense Forces and was, at the same time, a Russian spy. In this video for The Atlantic, Metsavas describes how he was recruited by Russian intelligence using kompromat (compromising material).
For years, Metsavas navigated his disparate allegiances. He got married and started a family. But as he grew in prominence in the Estonian Defense Forces, his Russian handlers began to demand highly classified information on Estonia’s involvement with the United States and NATO, specifically with regard to weapons. Metsavas tried to extricate himself, only to find that his handlers would stop at nothing to obtain the intel-including ensnaring a family member in the increasingly dangerous situation.
Watching the video and reading the accompanying article, you get the sense that maybe the Cold War never ended…
- Young, mega-rich - and demanding to pay more tax (1 Jul 2019)
- Labour 'looking at' plan to slash UK inheritance tax threshold (1 Jul 2019)
- Troika Laundromat: inside Europe's latest money laundering scandal (1 Jul 2019)
- America needs to see Amazon's tax returns (1 Jul 2019)
- Serious Fraud Office (SFO) faces questions over decision to drop bribery investigation (1 Jul 2019)
- Corporate debt could be the next sub-prime crisis, warns banking body (1 Jul 2019)
- BIS Report:
Corporate leverage remained close to historical highs, High
indebtedness makes firms more vulnerable (1 Jul 2019)
- Half of all UK income tax paid by top five per cent (1 Jul 2019)
- Why can't we see big companies' tax returns? <><>
- Lawyers warn of Facebook's Libra tax risks in Europe (1 Jul 2019)
- UK Income Tax Liabilities Statistics 2016-17 Survey of Personal Incomes, with projections to 2019-20 (1 Jul 2019)
- UK Income Tax liabilities by income range (1 Jul 2019)
- UK Income Tax liabilities by taxpayer's marginal rate (1 Jul 2019)
- UK Income Tax - Number of individual income taxpayers (1 Jul 2019)
- UK Income Tax - Shares of total Income Tax liability (1 Jul 2019)
- UK Income Tax - Income Tax liabilities by taxpayer's marginal rate (1 Jul 2019)
- UK
Income Tax - Number
of income taxpayers, by country (1 Jul 2019)
- UK Income Tax - In 2016-17, the share of total income of the top 50% of taxpayers (£1,045 billion) was 74.8%, a 49.6 percentage point income inequality between the bottom and top 50% (1 Jul 2019)
- UK Income
Tax - Top 50% of taxpayers were liable for
90.4% of total tax (£174 billion) in 2016-
17 (1 Jul 2019)
- UK Income
Tax - 31.2 million taxpayers in 2016-17,
projected to increase to 31.4
million in 2019-20 (1 Jul 2019)
- UK Income
Tax - Projected 2019-20 taxpayer type
compared to 2016-17:
27.1m Basic* Rate (86.4%), up 0.7m
3.8m Higher Rate (12.2%), down 0.6m
438,000 Additional Rate (1.4%), up 82,000 (1 Jul 2019)
- UK Income Tax - Projections for 2019-20 show the top 1% share of total income increased to 12.8% and the top 1% of total income tax increased to 29.6% (1 Jul 2019)
- UK Income Tax - Projected 2019-20 average tax rates compared to 2016-17: 9.6% for Basic Rate taxpayers, unchanged 21.7% for Higher Rate taxpayers, down 0.1pp 38.0% for Additional Rate taxpayers, down 0.2pp (1 Jul 2019)
- UK Income Tax - Prior to the 2008 recession, income taxpayer numbers generally increased, from 26.1 million in 1990-91 to 32.5 million in 2007-08. Latest SPI data shows an estimated 31.2 million taxpayers in 2016-17, with that figure expected to rise to 31.4 million taxpayers in 2019-20 (1 Jul 2019)
- UK Income Tax - In 2016-17, 26.5 million individuals (84.7%) were Basic Rate taxpayers 4.4 million individuals (14.1%) were HR taxpayers and 356,000 (1.1%) were Additional Rate (AR) taxpayers; In 2019-20, an estimated 27.1 million individuals (86.4%) are non-Higher Rate taxpayers, 3.8 million individuals (12.2%) are HR taxpayers and 438,000 (1.4%) are AR taxpayers (1 Jul 2019)
- UK
Income Tax - In 2016-17, the largest number of taxpayers
reside in the
South East (14.9% of the total), followed by London (13.5%) and the
North West
(10.5%) Government Office Regions. Northern Ireland has the lowest
number of
taxpayers (2.4%) of all the countries and regions, followed by the
North East (3.7%)
and Wales (4.4%) (1 Jul 2019)
- UK Income Tax - In 2016-17, there are three regions where the proportion of Higher and Additional Rate taxpayers exceed the UK average (15.3%): London (23.8%), the South East (20.0%), and East of England (17.5%). By contrast, under-representation of higher and Additional Rate taxpayers is most marked in Northern Ireland (9.0%), Wales (9.5%) and the North East (10.3%) (1 Jul 2019)
- UK Income Tax - The top 10% of taxpayers accounted for around a third (33.9%) of all income in 2016- 17, the top 5% around a quarter (24.5%), and the top 1% around 12.3%. By contrast, the bottom 10% accounted for 3.6% of all income, the bottom 5% had 1.7%, and the bottom 1% had 0.3% (1 Jul 2019)
- UK Income Tax - 16,000 taxpayers have incomes above £1 million, of which 5,000 have incomes above £2 million (1 Jul 2019)
Deadly day for workers refocuses spotlight on industry safety progress Waste Dive
Financial worries keep most Americans up at night Bloomberg
Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes to Face Trial Next Year on Fraud Charges WSJ
Mayor, doctors and social workers arrested in scheme to brainwash children into
believing they had been abused and sell them Independent
How to fight the spies in your Chrome browser
Washington Post: “Is your Web browser spying on you? My recent column about the stark privacy differences between Google Chromeand Mozilla Firefox generated a lot of conversation — and questions from readers about what you can do to avoid surveillance while you surf. The main lesson: If Google is a data vampire, Chrome is its fangs. For most people, not using a browser made by an advertising company is the simplest way to protect your data from thousands of tracking firms, including Google itself. I recommend switching to the nonprofit Firefox, which has privacy-focused default settings that automatically block tracking cookies from ad and data companies, including Google itself. Apple’s Safari andBrave (which has an ad blocker built in) are also fine choices…”
The Atlantic – Everyone seems to have found common ground on the emerging technology. That’s exactly what its makers want: “Your face is no longer just your face—it’s been augmented. At a football game, your face is currency, used to buy food at the stadium. At the mall, it is a ledger, used to alert salespeople to your past purchases, both online and offline, and shopping preferences. At a protest, it is your arrest history. At the morgue, it is how authorities will identify
your body. Facial-recognition technology stands to transform social
life, tracking our every move for companies, law enforcement, and anyone
else with the right tools. Lawmakers are weighing the risks versus
rewards, with a recent wave of proposed regulation in Washington State,
Massachusetts, Oakland, and the U.S. legislature. In May, Republicans
and Democrats in the House Committee on Oversight and Reform heard hours
of testimony about how unregulated facial recognition already tracks protesters, impacts the criminal-justice system, and exacerbates racial biases. Surprisingly, they agreed to work together to regulate it…”
How to speak Silicon Valley: 53 essential tech-bro terms explained
BuzzFeedNews – Google-savvy reputation consultants will cover up arrests, poor customer reviews, and other image-killing content for the right price….
A BuzzFeed News investigation has found examples of executives, doctors, criminals, and even a Russian oligarch all benefiting from search engine manipulation campaigns to suppress negative content. In one example, the search results for Ian Leaf, a famous fraudster from the UK who also goes by Ian Andrews, are being influenced by an Ian Leaf persona that claims to be an expert in fraud prevention. This is a strategy to ensure positive content appears when people search for information about him and his crimes. The dubious Ian Leaf and Ian Andrews personas have also self-published books on Amazon to bolster their credibility and search results…”