welcome to the bbc news at six. thirteen hostages kidnapped in the 7th october attacks in israel are to be released tomorrow. the group, all women and children, are just a fraction of the nearly 240 people abducted by hamas, which is designated a terrorist organisation by the uk government. they re due to be freed from gaza tomorrow afternoon, with a four day ceasefire scheduled to begin in the morning. there were hopes they would be released today. a number of palestinian prisoners will also be released from prisons in israel. our senior international correspondent orla guerin is in tel aviv this evening. orla. israel has received a list of names of those who are due to be freed tomorrow, and theirfamilies have been informed. they don t know what condition their loved ones will be in. when they are brought back eight israel, they will be brought directly to hospital for medical checks. six hospitals are on standby, with specialist teams and social workers. standby, with spec
good afternoon. net migration to the uk hit a record level last year almost three quarters of a million more people coming to live here than leaving. the figure stood at 745,000 last year, according to the office for national statistics, higher than previously thought. but the indications are that net migration is now slowing. in 2010, the then prime minister david cameron promised to bring it down to the tens of thousands. our home editor mark easton is here with more details. mark. the figure i think most people will be looking at and the one that will raise eyebrows is the right advised net migration figure for 2022. 745,000 more people came to the uk than left, helping push the population of england and wales up at its fastest rate since the baby boom of the early 1960s. now, the latest net migration figure for the year tojune this year is 672,000. down a bit from what we now think happened last year and it looks like net migration is maybe on a downward trajectory. who
record high, and the office for budget responsibility says it would represent the largest fall in living standards since the 19505. our business correspondent emma simpson reports. these reforms will save around two million self employed people an average of £350 a yearfrom april. better than nothing. tuning into the autumn statement at walthamstow market. a good place to test the mood. pensioners seemed happy. him increasing pension, that s good for me. and young workers like the rise in the minimum wage too. 10% more i m going to win i m going to earn. yeah. who wouldn t like it? but other workers said the cut to national insurance isn t enough. not with the way things are at the moment. the cost of living is too expensive. £450, divide that by 12, divide it by the family that you ve got. is it enough? i don t think so. here are the key details. first, that national insurance cut. it s going from 12% to ten for all employees from january. the self employed will see a
have coming from the ons, what we have here is the number of people arriving, net migration, the year ending june 2023, was 672,000 people, so the difference between those arriving and those leaving. a positive figure of 672,000. that was higher than a year earlier, injune 2022, when it was 600,000, so 10% higher, another 65,000 people arriving in 2023 compared to 2022. but the one thing they saying this is that the number was down on the estimate. if you took the december figure, it went up, but then down compared to december 2022. possibly an indication of a downward possible turn of the curve but still, as you were saying, very high figures, particularly if you consider that if you look back to the beginning, of the last election, this latest government, at the point they came in it was 226,000, so very roughly a third of the level it is now. and the promise in 2019 from the conservative government in their manifesto was that overall numbers will come down. we haven t seen
temporary halt of hostilities. hamas says some details have yet to be finalised. the fighting has continued these pictures show a series of explosions in gaza overnight. it s also likely to resume at some point, even if it is paused israel s prime minister benjamin netanyahu has said that his country will continue to fight against hamas, until absolute victory was achieved. aid agencies had already been voicing concerns about the situation in gaza. some trucks carrying humanitarian supplies have been able to cross into the territory this week. but pictures like these showing people struggling to secure bottles of water in gaza indicate how difficult conditions there are. we ll bring you the latest on all of these developments in this programme but we start with this report on the delay to the hostage and prisoner exchange deal from our middle east correspondent tom bateman. well, the sense we had all day was that according to the agreement, the ceasefire would start a