Afternoon Briefing Friday 4th July

0:00This episode of the Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwCWC. Staying competitive means getting ahead, not just keeping up. So how do business leaders cut through the noise and focus on what really matters. PwC takes you further with tech, from optimising the systems that put your data to work, to scaling AI from proof of concept to competitive edge. PwC helps you meet tomorrow's tech demands, so you can compete at a speed that rewrites the rules. Discover more at pwc.co.uk Hello, this is your Times Afternoon Briefing for Friday the 4th of July with me, James Kitchen. The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has insisted her former colleague Zahra Sultana has always taken a different view to those in government.

0:46It comes after the MP announced her resignation from the Labour Party after 14 years to co-lead a new party with Jeremy Corbyn. The now-independent MP says the two-party system offers nothing but managed decline and broken promises. But the former Labour leader is said to be furious and bewildered at the way it's been launched without consultation. The former president of YouGov, Peter Kellner, told Times Radio the greater threat to Labour comes from elsewhere. Here we've got a split in a party which doesn't yet exist because Jeremy Corbyn has now not necessarily said he wants to be a co-lead of a new party.

1:20That said, here's the serious point. Labour does have a problem of progressive voters who supported Labour at the last election who are now unhappy with what the government is doing. And what you see these people doing is moving to the Greens or to the Liberal Democrats. Ukraine's President Vladimir Zelensky has called for tougher sanctions to be placed on Moscow after Russia launched strikes overnight. Six of Kiev's 10 districts suffered damage in what appears to be the heaviest aerial attack of the war so far. It comes just hours after Vladimir Putin told Donald Trump in a phone call that Russia will continue to pursue its goals in Ukraine.

1:58The health secretary says the NHS app will become a part of the nation's critical infrastructure, writing in the Times where Streeting reveals every patient in Britain will have a unified medical record on the software within three years. The political correspondent Terence Diasny has been examining the proposals. There might be some people who aren't able to access the app or don't feel confident doing that. Now the health secretary's argument is that that means those people would still be able to get through on the phone lines much more easily than they can do now. But I think the bigger picture is, yes, they want to make the health service more efficient.

2:33This could certainly help with that. The trouble with NHS IT projects in the past is that they have often been very expensive and not necessarily reliable. More than 5 ,000 people have been rescued on the Greek island of Crete as firefighters raced to contain wildfires burning out of control on the southern coast. A small number of people fled the flames by heading into the sea and had to be picked up by local fishermen. Authorities have declared a state of emergency. A vigil's been held near Porto in Portugal for the Liverpool footballer Diego Jota and his brother, who were killed in a car crash in Spain yesterday.

3:10A wake will be held in the city this afternoon, ahead of their funeral tomorrow. And Donald Trump's so-called Big Beautiful Bill of Tax Breaks and Spending Cuts has been passed by the US Congress. The bill slashes health and food safety programs and cancels dozens of green energy incentives. It'll be formally signed into law by the U.S. president later. The Reuters White House correspondent Trevor Hunnicutt says Mr. Trump used a carrot and stick approach to stamp his authority. Inviting lawmakers to his golf course, giving them gifts, all this sort of outreach, and then on the stick side, you know, threatening them, berating them if they weren't in line.

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4:20That's why PwC takes you further with tech, strengthening the data quality, processes and workflows that shape how well AI performs. PwC turns innovation into implementation so you can accelerate from experiment to scale. Discover more at pwc.co.uk. Hi, I'm Katie Prescott from the Times Tech Podcast. AI is already changing business and medicine, but could it also change the way we look after our own health? In a special episode in Paid Partnership with Vitality, we look at how AI, wearables and everyday health data could help shift healthcare from treating illness to preventing it. Listen to the Times Tech Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.