Afternoon Briefing Monday 29th 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. Hello, this is your Times afternoon briefing for Monday 29th December with me, James Kitch. Vladimir Zelensky says a peace plan for Ukraine would involve the U.S.

0:42giving security guarantees for 15 years. Kiev's president has suggested he's accepted the offer from Donald Trump following talks in Florida last night, despite asking for up to 50 years. Mr. Zelensky also warned he has a different position to Russia when it comes to land in the contested Donbass region. Meanwhile, the Kremlin says it's expecting President Vladimir Putin to call his American counterpart very soon. The former British ambassador to Kiev, Lee Turner, told Times Radio any signs of progress are hard to see. It's very difficult to see how we're going to make progress when, although the Europeans and Ukrainians come up with better ideas, where they come up with counter plans, each time that President Trump speaks to Vladimir Putin, he seems to adopt very pro-Russian lines.

1:30And we saw this yesterday, where just before President Trump was due to speak to Zelensky. Suddenly, they announced that he'd been talking to President Putin for two and a half hours. It's a very strange way to do business. The shadow home secretary has told Times Radio, an Egyptian political activist who appeared to call for violence towards Zionists, is a scumbag who should be deported. Allah Abdul Fattah apologised, but insisted his remarks, which also encouraged attacks on police officers, have been completely twisted out of their meaning. The Prime Minister had welcomed the dual's national arrival in Britain after being freed from prison in Cairo.

2:07But speaking to Times Radio, Chris Philp said Fata's apology was insincere. This man, in my view, is a scumbag. And if the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, had our country's interests at heart, she would be today revoking his British citizenship, and as a dual national, she can do that, and initiating deportation proceedings. And if I was Home Secretary, that is what I would be doing today. I'd be revoking his citizenship and deporting him because there is no place in this country for people who express extremist, racist and violent views. New figures suggest the number of GP appointments each month with a four-week wait has risen by nearly a quarter of a million since Labour took office.

2:48Analysis of NHS data found 1.7 million long waits were recorded in November, up nearly a quarter of a million on July 2024. The NHS GP Dr Rosemary Leonard told Times Radio the delays were unacceptable. People say the GPs aren't working. Yes, we are. We're working our socks off. There just aren't enough of us. And we're trying to do more and more online, doing telephone appointments, trying to see how can we make the service better for our patients. But there should be at least 8 ,000 more GPs, but there isn't the money to employ them. We would love another GP in our surgery. We could do with another GP in our surgery.

3:30We have no money to pay them. The police watchdogs investigating after a man was shot dead by armed officers responding to a car crash in Norfolk last night. The county's force says one of the two drivers involved left the scene allegedly carrying a handgun. And there's been a sharp rise in the number of compensation claims related to potholes. The RAC says 53 ,000 were submitted to 177 councils in 2024. That's a 90 % increase in three years. And remember, you can follow The Times News Briefing on Spotify and you can listen live to Times Radio Online. This episode of The Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwC.

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