Afternoon briefing Monday 4th August

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 4th of August. A university vice-chancellor has told Times Radio universities don't have the information needed for a government crackdown on asylum claims by students.

0:46Higher education bodies will be punished if they're deemed to be backdoors for asylum claims, with people entering on a student visa to claim asylum when they're in the country. Last year there were 16 ,000 asylum claims relating to foreign students on study visas. Sir Steve West, who runs the University of West England, says the government needs to help universities work out who those people are though. The government is beginning to signal that some of those students are claiming asylum before they even finish. Now we won't necessarily know that unless a student decides to tell us. We don't have the information that the government has and we need to get access to in order to be able to work together on this.

1:26The Conservatives say the plan isn't radical enough. Trains, ferries and flights have been cancelled in Scotland and northern England because of Storm Floris. The Tyne Bridge has been closed. There's an amber danger to life warning covering most of Scotland. There are less severe warnings covering northern England, north Wales and northern Ireland. The Israeli government is planning a new military operation to free hostages in Gaza. So far, the Israeli military has not entered certain areas to avoid hostages being killed by Hamas or being killed in the crossfire. Zofia Gaston is a visiting fellow at the Department of War Studies at King's College London.

2:03She says Israeli and US negotiators are no longer interested in gradual hostage releases. The patience for these sort of staged processes of hostage releases just ended now. So they're really being quite clear on this, that they are not going to do any of those kind of partial hostage release situations again. They want everything, everyone back, all the remains back as well in one fell swoop. A Home Office minister has repeated Labour attacks on Nigel Farage, accusing him of siding with modern-day Jimmy Savills. Jess Phillips' criticism in The Times is similar to that of Peter Kyle, the technology secretary, when he defended the Online Safety Act last week.

2:44The Reform UK leader has demanded an apology. The Times' chief political commentator Patrick Maguire says it's a sign of things to come. It's a sign of two things. The first is that Labour are willing to play dirty or fight back with reform, which is something that people have been desperate for for some time. And the second thing is, yeah, I think it is a sign that reform are setting the terms of debate. If Nigel Farage is criticising a flagship piece of government legislation, it demands a response. Scotland's Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes won't stand for re-election as an MSP next year.

3:17The 35-year-old says she wants to focus on the early years of her family life. The former Finance Minister lost the 2023 SNP leadership race to Hamza Youssef. and in the cricket India have won the fifth test at the Oval with England just six runs short Chris Wokes came out to bat with his arm in his jumper because of his dislocated shoulder it means the series finishes level 2-2 Don't forget to subscribe to the Times News Briefing on Spotify or listen live to Times Radio online

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