Afternoon briefing Monday 15th December

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. This is the Times afternoon briefing on Monday the 15th of December. Australia's Prime Minister says two men who attacked a Hanukkah event on Bondi Beach in Sydney acted alone but were motivated by extremism and had explosives in their car.

0:48A 10-year-old girl, a British rabbi and a Holocaust survivor are among 15 people who've been killed. Anthony Albanese says Australia's Jewish community is hurting. What we saw yesterday was an act of pure evil, an act of terror, an act of anti-Semitism. an attack on the first day of Hanukkah targeted at the Jewish community. A dark day in Australia's history on what should have been a day of light. Police say the suspects were father and son and the father was killed at the scene. The British government says there'll be extra policing throughout Hanukkah, which takes place until next Monday. Minister Alex Davies-Jones told Times Radio people should think twice before protesting about the war in Gaza.

1:31I urge everyone to think with caution. about what is happening and how our Jewish community are feeling. And I would just urge anyone thinking about using their democratic right to protest just to be very, very mindful about exactly what they're saying, what they're doing, because as we've seen sadly, when chants of globalised the Intifada are heard in our streets, it does have real-world consequences. The director and actor Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle have been found dead at their home in Los Angeles. Police are treating their deaths as suspicious, with US media reporting they were stabbed.

2:04Tributes have been paid to the 78-year-old, whose films include When Harry Met Sally, This Is Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride. The British Medical Association will announce whether this week's resident doctor's strike in England will go ahead. The union has been polling members on a government jobs offer but has not recommended which way they vote. The strike is due to start on Wednesday. The Prime Minister will travel to Berlin this afternoon for talks about peace proposals for Ukraine. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has suggested his country is willing to drop its ambition to join NATO if the West gives it reliable security guarantees.

2:37The democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai has been found guilty on sedition and national security charges in Hong Kong. The media tycoon is a British citizen who was arrested in 2020 after anti-Beijing protests. The 78-year-old has been held in solitary confinement for more than 1 ,800 days. The Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, who has campaigned for a tougher stance on China, says Beijing is tearing up the agreement under which the UK handed over Hong Kong. To know that there are British judges on the Court of Final Appeal in Hong Kong whitewashing this crime against humanity is really pretty extraordinary.

3:12Judges on our name, judges who have qualified in the UK. So it really is one of those moments where the United Kingdom should be absolutely clear a British citizen has been sentenced for speaking the truth. The government says the conviction is politically motivated. And in cricket, England have recalled Josh Tung for their must-win third Ashes test. He replaces Gus Atkinson, meaning Will Jax keeps his place. However, it also means 22-year-old spinner Shoaib Bashir is left out again. Don't forget to subscribe to The Times News Briefing on Spotify or listen live to Times Radio online.

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