Afternoon briefing Wednesday 17th 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. Welcome to the Times Afternoon Briefing on Wednesday, the 17th of December. NHS England says some appointments will inevitably need to be rescheduled as the latest strike by resident doctors gets underway.

0:44The medics walked out for five days from 7am. Daniel Elkiles, the CEO of NHS Providers, says something must be done to break the impasse. It seems quite incredulous to us that the government, who put such a good offer on the table last week, could have been met with such a resounding ballot from the doctors saying we don't agree. So it feels like we need to do something. to unlock this and if external mediation is the thing that will unlock it then please can we get on and do it. The surviving suspect in Australia's Bondi Beach shooting has been charged as the first funerals take place for the victims.

1:21Navid Akram is accused of 15 counts of murder and a terror offence after people were shot as they attended a Jewish festival. More details from the Times' Sydney correspondent Bernard Lagans. There's a further charge of displaying a prohibited terrorist symbol and that relates to the ISIS flag he had displayed on the car in which he arrived at the festival site of the massacre and he has also been charged with having an explosive device inside his car which he intended to place near a building. Donald Trump has ordered a blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela. The US seized a tanker off the country's coast last week.

2:03Since then, exports of Venezuelan crude oil have fallen sharply. Trump has moved thousands of troops and almost a dozen warships, including an aircraft carrier to the region. Katie Balls, the Times' Washington editor, says Trump has backing from senior members of his administration. Marco Rubio supports it as, you know, the son of Cuban immigrants who's from Miami and the sense that, you know, these regimes that they escaped from. But J.D. Vance supports it because you have a situation whereby it's seen as a way to target the war on drugs and therefore you have the two parts coming together. Senior Conservative and Labour figures Nadeem Sahawi and Lord Glassman have united to back a proposal to hold an emergency census.

2:46The idea is to conduct a 10 % national census and full ones in five study areas. Senior Fellow at the Policy Exchange think tank Dr Rakeep Essin has written a report on this. In a country which is rapidly changing in terms of ethnicity, race and religion, I think that we need that fresh, up-to-date population data to identify areas where integration may be very successful, but also where there may be cases of worsening forms of cultural segregation. 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.

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