Evening briefing Friday 24th October

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 the Times evening briefing on Friday the 24th of October. A police manhunt is underway in Essex after the asylum seeker whose arrest sparked protests at a hotel in Epping was freed by mistake.

0:47Haddish Kabatu was meant to be transferred to an immigration detention centre, but was released from jail instead. The Times' crime editor Ben Ellery says he appears to have been spotted today. We have found a video of Kabartu wearing a prison-issued grey tracksuit, standing in Chelmsford High Street with a bag of belongings, apparently from prison. I'm struggling to think of a more politically sensitive inmate that this could have happened to at the moment. Nigel Farage says it's a sign that Britain is broken. The Liberal Democrat MP for Chelmsford, Marie Goldman, told Times Radio something has gone terribly wrong.

1:27Oh my God, you couldn't make it up, could you? You absolutely couldn't make it up. I mean, how on earth has this happened? It's ridiculous, it's disgraceful. There are so many words that you can use for this, but the most important thing right now, the most important thing is that he's found, and it is really important that Essex Police are given all of the resources, and by that I mean national resources as well. The Deputy Prime Minister and the Justice Secretary David Lammy says he is appalled. An early version of a crucial witness statement from the government in the collapsed China spying case referred to Beijing as an enemy before that word was changed.

2:02The Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Collins says he removed the reference in 2023 because it did not reflect the view of the then-conservative government. Zakir Starmer hosted a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing in London this afternoon. Financial support for Ukraine was discussed along with additional military aid. The Prime Minister made clear the delaying tactics of the Russian president were a major obstacle to achieving peace. You have said for months that you're ready for a ceasefire and you're ready to meet Putin. Yet he continues to stall and play for time. Putin is the only person who does not want to stop this war.

2:42His strikes on civilians this week made that crystal clear once again. An asylum seeker has been found guilty of murdering an employee at a hotel in which he was housed in the West Midlands last October. Deng Chol Majek, who's from Sudan, stabbed Rhiannon White 23 times with a screwdriver at a railway station in Walsall. A man's been jailed for 42 years for a double murder in which he tried to dispose of the bodies in suitcases at Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. 35-year-old Jostin Mosquera murdered 62-year-old Albert Alfonso and his partner, 71-year-old Paul Longworth, at their flat in West London.

3:19He was also earlier given another jail term for possessing indecent images of children. And in football, Sheffield Wednesday's controversial owner is nearing the end of his time in charge of the club after putting it into administration. Under Thai businessman Dejvon Shansiri, the club has repeatedly failed to play players and staff and it still owes HMRC about a million pounds. A 12-point deduction means Sheffield Wednesday are now bottom of the championship table on minus six. Don't forget you can subscribe to The Times News Briefing on Spotify or listen live to Times Radio online.

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