Afternoon briefing Tuesday 24th February

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 Radio afternoon briefing on Tuesday 24th February. The Kremlin says it hasn't yet achieved its war goals in Ukraine.

0:42four years on from its full-scale invasion. To mark the anniversary, the British government has announced 300 new sanctions targeting Russia's oil tanker fleet and pipeline companies which help export oil. The Prime Minister has told Cabinet they cannot let up in their support for Kyiv. It was assumed it would be a matter of weeks before Putin took the whole of Ukraine. That's what everybody believed to be the case. Four years later, the Ukrainians are holding out against that aggression. And we must defeat the falsehood that Russia is winning. Sakir Starmers co-hosted a virtual meeting of Ukraine's allies this morning.

1:22Emma Weber, whose 19-year-old son Barnaby was killed in the Nottingham stabbings, has suggested authorities did not prioritise public safety when they released his schizophrenic killer before the attack. An inquiry which started yesterday heard police did not section Valdo Calacain for an earlier violent incident after mental health teams cited an over-representation of young black men in custody. We have an NHS and probably a police service that are worrying about hitting targets. Rather than saying, why are a particular demographic being sectioned more or being arrested more and looking into the background, why are we just trying to tick beds?

2:02I think they wanted their beds free as well. Cala Cain went on to kill Barnaby, as well as his friend Grace O'Malley-Kumar and school caretaker Ian Coates in 2023. The inquiry is expected to continue until the summer. Streaming services are going to come under regulation in the UK by Ofcom. It means Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney Plus will have to obey similar rules on offensive content due impartiality and accuracy in news. They'll also have to make sure that some of their content has sign language and is audio described. Russell Brand has pleaded not guilty to two further charges of rape and sexual assault.

2:38They relate to two women in 2009. He has already denied five charges of sexual offences against four women, which date between 1999 and 2005, and he'll be tried this summer. And GPs in England will be given bonuses for prescribing weight loss jabs. Mount Jaro became available on the NHS last June, but pharmacists say the rollout has been very slow so far. The£25 million fund is to try to speed up prescriptions, but Dr Rosemary Leonard, a GP in London, says health bosses are restricting how many jabs she can give out. They are controlling how much money we spend on prescribing these jabs because they know once we do prescribe them, the floodgates will open.

3:18I've had patients who said, so what you're telling me is I've got to put on three kilos in order for you to be able to refer me to the weight loss clinic, who are already very overweight, but they've got to get into the morbidly obese zone to be eligible. Don't forget to subscribe to the Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify or listen live to Times Radio online.

3:44This episode of the Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwC. AI is everywhere. In the news, in our hands, but return on investment, not so much. So how do you get beyond the hype and deliver AI that powers reinvention and growth across your business? Strong foundations unlock AI's potential. That'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. Do you keep hearing podcast ads, like this one for example, but always wonder how you actually get involved with them for your own brand or organization?

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