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NNC Broadcasting Tower, Omni City Astana-Anders
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~Hello again and good evening to whoever is watching, this is Alexi Gourge and today we have an exciting batch of news coverage for all of you for tonight's broadcast, so without further fanfare, let's begin.

To begin off, in what has surprised many within the country, incumbent Lord President Fide Thomas Rush, has just announced a radical set of economic reforms, entitled the Greater Economic Reform Package Act (2024) (GERPA). With regards to the act, GERPA intends on establishing what it describes as much needed reforms in regard to the Nineth-Four-Five-Year-Plans. This includes arguably some of the most radical pieces of legislation proposed thus far in Fide's Administration. One of which is the establishment of three new different types of government-mandated price controls. Those being: Fixed, limited, and Free prices, in which will be assigned to goods and commodities based on individual assessment of value and necessity, with immediate and necessary goods being determined by the Federal State Planning Assembly, whilst those products in some product group for which there were no substitutes, like foodstuffs, are applied on the average price over a period or a window within which prices were free to fluctuate, and luxury items being able to fluctuate on the whims of the enterprise producing it, respectively.

The other controversial piece of legislation of the GERPA was three-fold, which seeks to implement a new radical form of taxation known as a Negative Income Tax, in which reverses the direction in which tax is paid for incomes below a certain level; in other words, earners above that level pay money to the state while earners below it receives money. In what some economists has called one of the first nationwide implementation of Universal Basic Income, the current plan is to tax those on the upper 10% in terms of income, that being currently those who make over LI790,980 annually, and have the difference give it to the current bottom 20% in terms of annual income, currently those who make less than LI89,077.

It not only seeks to give to poor individual recipients either, but rather also aims to do so with regards to failing enterprises, either state-owned or Communal-owned Enterprises. According to GERPA, it also intends on further regulating the growing private sector of COEs, in which it aims at reducing what it perceives as the excesses of the Nineth Plans. In it, it claims that for now on, the top 10% of COEs within a given Metropolitan Commune will be given an additional income tax known as the Communal Negative Income Tax or CNIX. All revenue from the CNIX will then be distributed by each regional Secretariat of the Economy as dividends towards all COEs which earned a profit during that quarter. 20% of all CNIX taken will be transferred into a new federal agency known as the Federal Communal Enterprise Board, which will be funded by CNIX taxes, and federal and provincial communal funding, which will give interest-free loans to budding Communal-owned Enterprises.

It also claims they will implement a similar program known as the Federal Negative Income Tax Scheme, in which Provincial Communes under financial burden will be allowed emergency benefits from profitable COEs alongside Metropolitan and Provincial Communes, with approval from the Federal Government.
To finish off the GERPA, it also aims to permanently abolish tuition fees, meaning Federal Universities and Secretariats of Education will be constitutionally barred from instituting tuition fees, even under times of significant economic crisis. Instead, it aims to offshoot this, alongside the general change in taxation policies, by instituting the Federal Public Work Scheme (FPWS), in which recipients must perform public work and labour in order to receive benefits. It also aims on having university students, alongside those in grad school, to also perform public work to offshoot the banning of tuition fees, as a substitution for a formal career and job, in which it will be counted on their resume. All of this, according to Lord President Fide was designed to, quote:

" [...] achieve several major aspects of the ongoing Nineth Plans of my following administration. The main tenants are a reduction in inflation. An increased in the production of high-quality products and growth of our national light industries. Strengthening both regional and federal bureaucracies. Strengthening unity between agricultural and industrial workers and populations. And most importantly, the reduction of both regional and economic inequalities caused by the inherent nature of decentralizing productive forces. I felt it would be hypocritical on my behalf for me to be the Lord President of a nation that values an egalitarian society whilst not addressing inequality within the nation itself. I feel this law is as every bit as justifiable as my decision to sign it into law."

Most political and economic analysists seem to be cautiously optimistic of GERPA, with many noting that public service requirement might potentially outweigh the potential downsides of a negative income tax within studies, that being a decrease within the employment for those who get it. However, opposition is still rife, with Leader of the Opposition, Damien Noahs, stating that for the upcoming election, scheduled to begin on October 1st of this year, that he and his party, the National Union Party, will campaign to repeal it, arguing that the act will only reduce potential economic growth and not expand it. Only time will teel to see if the radical reforms are worth it.

In foreign affairs', Federal Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Miotia-Candor, Stephanie Frame, alongside Deputy Secretariat of the Intercontinental Commonwealth, Derek Keiser, is slated to meet with Foreign Affairs Chief, Sayomi Katsura, and Viktor Mikhailovich of INCOM member, Novoroyska, in order to discuss repairing relations following the civil wars in both The Achaemenids and Altikar.

"Through this and alongside other related events, we, the Federal Socialist Republic of Astana-Anders, acting on behalf of all parties of the Intercontinental Commonwealth as a whole, hope to see through this as a testament for improving relations between both ourselves and the United Kingdom of Miotia-Candor and Kjanu."

To cap off this segment for tonight, in what some have been calling the trial of the year, the Vangravan Steamed Hams Affair, in which a local manager of a state-owned Dining Hall, was arrested and charged for substituting store-bought hamburgers for a new dish called "steamed hams", which soon morphed into a class action lawsuit against her, with some believing it to expose the potential room for gross food tampering and misconduct within the service industry. Today, more controversy was added to the affair, when President of the human rights organization, the Astanai Institute for Human Rights (AIHR), stated they would support the defendant, Shalin Young Waltz, in the suit. According to its President, Margaret Richmond, the suit and charges brought against her by the Shermanboro Metropolitan Public Prosecutors' Office, are:

" [...] a gross and almost hysterical misuse of judicial and legal authority and responsibilities on the part of the state department. Whilst I will not make any comment on whether or not she should be punished for the "steamed hams issue", I will say that what the Metropolitan Public Prosecutors' Office have charged her with is a gross breach of constitutional and legal practice, but also sets a bad precedent for human rights within Astana-Anders. The decision to charge her with violation of the National Food and Drugs Tampering Act, the Dining Halls Regulatory Act, and the Malpractice and Tempering of Commerical Goods Act (1978), and the decision to seek 5.5 million Lien in damages is ridiculous to a comical degree, as all such violations are only brought before her due to the fact that it exposed what could have happened if the matter was more serious, rather than what actually did happen.'

" [...] the fact of the matter is that Prosecutor Melissa Granholm, for charging her with such violations, is a dangerous showcase of a slippery slope fallacy within today's judicial system, in which it is only concerned with punishing people in addition to what they did, over what they have actually done. It should already be satisfactory enough to charge her with violating her Terms and Services Contract, misappropriating food, and deceiving the public, but there is fundamentally no need to charge her with serious felonies over what her actions exposed, not what she did as an individual person, with no intent to cause anything that would lead to any normal prosecution would hand her with."

AIHR President Margaret would further add that it would be instead filing a countermotion against the Shermanboro Metropolitan Public Prosecutors' Office, arguing that charging her with several federal felonies in what they regard as state felonies at best and misdemeanors at worse, is a serious breach of both Shalin's right to a free and fair trial, as well as violating her constitutional right to being legally served in a fair and constitutional manor. It also states that it believes that her being served on behalf of plaintiffs that were not directly affected nor even living within Trenchavenue, the affected Metropolitan Commune of the incident, is in violation of legal standards, that unless the crime is related up to provincial felony charges, then one cannot sue another from a different Metroplitan Commune.

The ongoing trial and circumstances have led to much debate online. According to our analytics, the Vangravan Steamed Hams Affair is becoming one of the most talked about trials within SocialBloc. Some have argued she should be charged with federal felonies, arguing that her misusing store-bought meats is a clear violation of the National Food and Drugs Tampering Act, the Dining Halls Regulatory Act, and the Malpractice and Tempering of Commerical Goods Act (1978), which explicitly punishes any handling of food that is not legally stated within state and union contracts, arguing that the potential of causing serious bodily harmed is similar to that of an Attempted Murder charge. Others, however, believe that the decision is only about the potential of what she could've done, as unlike an Attempted murder charge, there was no clear or direct intention on causing harm to another. Others believe that the Shermanboro Public Prosecutors' Office decision to seek compensation is unethical due to the fact that the already pre-existing charges would already be more than enough, with contrarians arguing that it is to seek damages on behalf of those deceived as well from the Vangravan Secretariat of Labour and the Secretariat of Public Safety for not doing enough to prevent the incident and its potential to do worse harm from occurring.

That's it for this hour, coming up next: Secretariat of the Intercontinental Commonwealth, Callahan Rogers, is to hold a press conference later this week, expressing the desire for the establishment of an INCOM Parliament as soon as possible to draft an "organization constitution." More on that, after these messages. ~