Daily briefing Saturday 4th April

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 Times Radio's Daily Briefing on Saturday the 4th of April. Iran is offering what it calls a precious prize for the capture of a US airman after an F-15 fighter jet was shot down over the south of the country.

0:48One crew member has been rescued, but the other remains missing behind enemy lines, with both sides searching. Speaking to Times Radio, former head of the British Army, Lord Dannett, says the fact they found the other crew member so quickly is deeply concerning. One would assume that the device that he had, which emitted a signal, which indicated where he was, was obviously working, and the rescue helicopters were able to come and find him quite quickly. But it would appear that the other one, if he is still alive, and of course one has no guarantee of that, could well be stranded out there and its equipment issuing no signal.

1:22And therefore the search and rescue helicopters are effectively looking for a needle in a haystack. Three people have been charged after four Jewish charity-owned ambulances were set on fire in North London. They were set alight in the car park of a synagogue in Golders Green in the early hours of March 23rd. Five Metropolitan Police officers have been suspended after firearms were left outside the home of London's mayor. The weapons were discovered by a member of the public, prompting an urgent investigation by Scotland Yard. Sir Sadiq Khan has described it as a very serious incident and says it must never happen again.

1:56Speaking to Times Radio, policing and crime commentator Danny Shaw says the lapse raises serious concerns about basic procedures. This is a really serious mistake to leave a bag full of weapons on the street. I just hope the Met gets to the bottom of it really quickly, takes the appropriate action. If it's just a lapse of concentration, then I don't think this is a call for one individual to be sacked, by the way, but there needs to be some decisive action to ensure that this sort of thing doesn't happen again. The head of Iceland, Lord Walker, has called for shop security staff to be allowed to carry truncheons and pepper spray as they can in Spain.

2:34Major retailers, including M &S, say police and politicians are failing to tackle what they describe as an epidemic of violent theft. Daniel Garnham is General Secretary of the Security Industry Foundation. He told Times Radio security guards are often restricted in what they can do. These people are getting assaulted badly and they're being let down by a lack of police action. but also, let's have it right, the companies they work for and their clients have been telling our security officers not to get involved, to stand back and be, for all intents and purposes, a cardboard cutout. More than two in five voters think the UK should distance itself from the special relationship with America.

3:17Polling for the Times has found the number of people who think Britain is too close to the US has risen by nine percentage points since April last year. The crew of Artemis 2 say they're now closer to the moon than they are to Earth. They've also said they're starting to see features on the lunar surface that can't be viewed from our planet. There's more on these stories throughout the day on Times Radio.

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