Daily briefing Saturday 8th August

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.

0:37This is your Times News Briefing for Saturday 8th August. It looks like Labour will U-turn on net-zero targets to deal with the cost-of-living crisis. Ministers are planning to relax new rules on electric car sales, which could mean half of new cars sold by the end of 2030 will still have petrol engines. Energy Secretary Miata Farnboulos told The Times the government won't stick rigidly to the pledge of nearly eliminating fossil fuels by 2030 if it means higher household bills. Dr Andy Palmer has spoken to Times Radio. He's the former head of Aston Martin and chief operating officer at Nissan.

1:13It used to be if you were an inward investor into the United Kingdom, you could rely on the UK to have great law, great educated people, consistency and reliability. And with all the flick-flacking, the U-turns that we've seen on this policy over the last few years, most OEMs have lost patience and lost trust in the UK government and the UK as an investment source. A series of errors left a high-risk sexual predator free to murder two sex workers, violently rape another and sexually assault 10 women on trains across London. Simon Levy, who's 40, is a convicted sex offender and is facing a whole life sentence.

1:53The Metropolitan Police, British Transport Police and the Crown Prosecution Service have all admitted serious failings. Labour MP and former Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips told Times Radio how angry she is. I read all of the sorry statements from whether it's the CPS, the Metropolitan Police, that have been published in the last 24 hours. And I just think people are sorry until the next time this happens, when they'll say, our procedures have improved and this won't happen again. I feel such hot rage at the failures in this case. A number of academics from the University of Cambridge are calling for an independent inquiry into how Jason Arday was given his job.

2:35The sociology professor resigned this week after allegations of plagiarism and falsifying achievements. When he was appointed in 2023, he was the university's youngest black professor in history. Nicholas Guyot is a professor in North American history at Cambridge. He's signed the letter calling for an independent review. One of the things we're asking for is to get the university leadership out in front of a microphone and to defend my colleagues for black and brown and those people of colour across the country in academia who right now are essentially being told, show us your papers. You know, why don't you prove that you belong in your job, which is outrageous.

3:11This has been a real mask-off moment, I think, for the culture and for the media. Counter-terror police looking into the murder of Anne Whittakam have reopened an investigation into an attempted burglary that was reported more than a year before she died. A staff member's been referred to the police watchdog for allegedly failing to follow up a line of inquiry into that attempted burglary, which happened in the Greater London area last April. Joshua Kerry, who's 28, has been charged with the murder of Ms. Whittacombe, who was found dead at her home in Devon last month. For more stories like these, listen to Times Radio throughout the day.

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