Daily Briefing Sunday 17th 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. Hello, this is your Times Daily Briefing for Sunday the 17th of August with me, James Kitchen. The Prime Minister will discuss the next steps in the war in Ukraine when he hosts a virtual meeting of European leaders later.

0:45It's ahead of Wladimir Zelensky's trip to the White House tomorrow, where he'll stress Kiev needs to be part of any negotiations with Russia. Donald Trump met with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, after which he shifted position on the conflict, calling for the need to reach a permanent agreement rather than a temporary ceasefire. It's understood the Russian leader named the heavily fortified Donbass region in eastern Ukraine as his prize for peace. The former Pentagon official Alex Plitsis told Times Radio Ukrainians are living in fear of permanent Russian occupation. It's extreme sexual violence, rape, etc., torture, and then extrajudicial killing of civilians.

1:23So if you speak to Ukrainian service members going through this and the Ukrainian society, if we give up this territory, we are effectively allowing the Russians to come in. and that's going to be my wife, my daughters, my grandmother, my mother who are going to be abused and potentially killed and then other men taken out in the woods and shot. The saying always is that if the Russian army withdraws, the war ends. If the Ukrainian army withdraws, there's no more Ukraine. The Sunday Times has revealed the head of security at Britain's most notorious prison had secret dealings with organized criminals.

1:54Bobby Cunningham was Deputy Governor at HMP Wandsworth when he met an alleged cocaine trafficker at his home. The prison is one of the oldest and most overcrowded jails in Britain. Its governor quit last year following the escape of Daniel Khalif, who was later convicted of spying for Iran. Gabriel Pogrand is the Sunday Times' Whitehall editor. Back in 2022, Cunningham had his garden done up by a company which was run by organised crime. One of its directors, Ben Sullivan, has recently in fact been convicted of conspiracy to supply cocaine and was found to be a member of an organised crime group.

2:31His business associate, who I can't name for legal reasons, is currently under police investigation, also in connection with very serious drug offences. Labour is accusing Nigel Farage of supporting the controversial influencer Andrew Tate in a new attack advert. The campaign claims the reformer UK leader's pledge to scrap online safety rules leaves boys vulnerable to misogynistic radicalisation. It's seeking to exploit comments made by Mr Farage in a podcast last year where he praised Tate for defending male culture. Search teams looking for a 12-year-old boy have found a body in a river in North Yorkshire.

3:07Police say it was recovered from the River Swell in Richmond last night. It follows reports a child had gone missing into the water several hours before. The body is yet to be identified, but the death is not being treated as suspicious. And horse racing is taking the unprecedented step of going on strike next month in protest at the proposed betting tax increase. Four meets in September, including at Kempton and Lingfield Park, are to be scrapped. The first voluntary blackout in the sport's modern history is expected to cost the industry£700 ,000. The British Horse Racing Authority is campaigning against the Treasury's plans to raise the 15 % tax paid by bookmakers on profits to 21%.

3:49And remember, you can follow The Times News Briefing on Spotify and you can listen live to Times Radio Online.

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