Daily Briefing Saturday 12th July

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 Daily Briefing for Saturday the 12th of July with me, James Kitchen. The head of the Unite Union has accused Sir Keir Starmer's government of abandoning working-class communities.

0:44Yesterday, the trade union announced it had suspended the Deputy Prime Minister's membership over her role in the Birmingham bin strike. But Angela Rayner's office insisted she was no longer a member, having resigned months ago. Members of Unite also overwhelmingly voted to re-examine its relationship with Labour over the dispute. Speaking to Times Radio Breakfast, General Secretary Sharon Graham branded the Deputy PM's behaviour despicable. We're the sixth richest economy in the world. We are a£2.5 trillion economy. We don't have to make the poorest in our society pay. And we certainly shouldn't be saying to around 380 workers in Birmingham that you're going to pay for the incompetencies and how we've got to a position of eye-watering debt.

1:27It's about the millions of workers that I believe are turning away from Labour because they are not putting workers first. They're abandoning working-class communities. The preliminary report into last month's Air India crash suggests both fuel control switches were moved to the cut-off position shortly after take-off. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner then began to lose thrust and sink down before crashing into the city of Ahmedabad. Voice recordings suggest there was also confusion in the cockpit. it. At least 260 people were killed in the disaster. The Times' aviation specialist, Charles Bremner, says the fuel switches are only ever used in flight during an emergency.

2:05Because of the dangers of switching wrong switches, there are detents. Each switch has to be lifted a little bit and moved before it's toggled. They can't just be flipped accidentally with somebody dropping a hand down onto them or somebody suggested dropping an iPad onto them. They are designed in this way to make it impossible to move inadvertently. But something seems to have happened and people are at a loss to explain other than a deliberate action by one of the pilots. Two of the nation's most prominent doctors have urged the British Medical Association to abandon a plainly unjustifiable five-day walkout.

2:43The surgeon Lord Darsey and NHS England's medical director Professor Sir Stephen Powis feared junior doctors may never recover the trust of patients if they go on strike again. Up to 50 ,000 resident doctors are expected to join a full walkout from 7am on the 25th of July. They're demanding a 29 % pay rise. But the leading oncologist, Professor Carol Sikora, told Times Radio the strike couldn't come at a worse time. It's summer, people are on holiday, it's difficult to get cover anyway in many parts of the NHS. New doctors are starting, graduations are going on all around the country for the current cohort of people coming out of medical school.

3:20They'll be on the wards in August. And then, of course, winter's never far away. It seems difficult on a hot day like this to think that's true, but it's true. And winter brings its own health care problems in a system that doesn't have the capacity to treat everybody. Donald Trump's told residents in Texas the federal government will help them rebuild after floods hit the central part of the state, killing at least 130 people. The US president has met with officials on the ground in Kerrville to survey the damage. He said American hearts are shattered and filled with grief. And the third heat wave to hit the UK this summer is set to peak later, with highs of more than 34 degrees Celsius possible in some areas.

4:02Amber heat health alerts are in place for the Midlands and southern and eastern England until 9 o 'clock tomorrow morning. 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. 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.

4:47PwC turns innovation into implementation so you can accelerate from experiment to scale. Discover more at pwc.co.uk