Afternoon Briefing Tuesday 7th October

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. Welcome to the Times Afternoon Briefing on Tuesday 7th October. A student taking part in a protest about the conflict in Gaza today, October 7th, has described comments from the Prime Minister as disgusting.

0:46Sir Keir Starmer is urging students not to attend such protests today. It's the second anniversary of Hamas' attack in Israel. More than a dozen demonstrations are expected to be held at British universities. Writing in the Times, the Prime Minister says such events are un-British. But Anton Paroki from the Revolutionary Communist Party at the University of Sheffield has told Times Radio he disagrees. I think it's disgusting. I mean, is it British to support a genocide? There's a mood of anger in society right now, you know, aimed at Netanyahu, but also at Keir Starmer, you know, David Lammy, because they are complicit in this genocide.

1:20They're supporting the genocide with arms, with military training. IDF soldiers are trained in Britain, also intelligence to Israel. And so I think this anger, it needs an expression. And so we're putting on this rally today really to ask the question of, you know, what next? What next for the Palestinian movement and how can we free Palestine? Israel denies it's committing a genocide and says it's defending itself from a terrorist organisation. The Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick has doubled down on comments about not seeing another white face during a visit to an area of Birmingham. We want to live in a country which is well integrated, where people are living side by side.

1:56We don't want segregated pockets of our towns and cities. We don't want ghettos in this country. I want my kids to be growing up alongside their fellow Brits of all skin colours and faiths. And I'm afraid that hasn't happened in recent years. This is a problem that's got worse in my lifetime, not better. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has defended him. She says she doesn't agree with accusations of racism and says there's nothing wrong with making observations. But the former Tory mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Streets, says Jenrick is wrong about Handsworth, while the Labour Party says his comments crossed a red line.

2:31Police have disrupted a criminal network suspected of smuggling up to 40 ,000 stolen mobile phones out of the UK in the last 12 months. That's about 40 % of all the handsets snatched in London in that period. The Met began an operation last December after finding a box containing about 1 ,000 iPhones due to be shipped to Hong Kong at a warehouse near Heathrow. Former Scotland Yard detective Peter Blexley told Times Radio more about that box. It was labelled as batteries, but when that box was open, there was hundreds of mobile phones in it, and that really was the start of it. The Daily Mail picked up on the story, and they went to Hong Kong and got into the offices where there was thousands upon thousands of phones all ready for onward shipment to China.

3:20And China is, generally speaking, the demand source for these phones. 46 people have been arrested. And back to the Conservative leader who's paid tribute to Dame Jilly Cooper, who died yesterday at the age of 88. Kenny Badenock has told Times Radio she was a fan. I remember reading Polo probably years before I should have read it. The Rude Bits. Did you read the Rude Bits? I read everything. I read Polo and I read Skor. Looking back on it, it's like she was a chronicler of Tory social circles in the shires, the dogs, the horses, the polo I think Rupert Campbell Black was a Tory MP The naughtiness Yes I suppose so maybe that too but she'll be very much missed she was a great author And you can follow the Times News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online This 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.

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