Evening briefing Thursday 21st 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. This is the Times evening briefing on Thursday the 21st of August. The Conservatives have accused the government of losing control of Britain's borders.

0:43Figures show 32 ,000 asylum seekers are being housed in hotels while their claims are being processed. That's around 2 ,500 more than when Labour came to power, but the number's still below the peak of 56 ,000 in September 2023. Home office data also shows there were a record 111 ,000 new asylum claims in the year to June. Former Labour Home Secretary Jack Straws admitted the numbers are huge and need to come down. And come down quickly. They are coming down. If you look in today's asylum statistics, huge increase in the number of people just stuck in the system. And one of the things that Yvette Cooper is doing successfully is getting that numbers down by attempting to clear the backlog.

1:26And that appears to be working. The Home Secretary also says she's increased the number of failed asylum seekers being returned. A woman who admitted stirring up racial hatred online in the wake of the Southport stabbings has been released from prison. Lucy Conley has served 40 % of the 31-month sentence she was handed in January. A teenager who planned to carry out a terror attack at a mosque in Greenock has been sentenced to 10 years in custody. The then 16-year-old was arrested in January after police caught him outside the Inverclyde Muslim Centre with aerosol cans. The Ukrainian man has been arrested in connection with explosions that damaged pipelines under the Baltic Sea, taking Russian gas to Germany.

2:06German prosecutors say he was detained near the Italian city of Rimini earlier this week, nearly three years after the attack. The Times' Oliver Moody is in Berlin. It is probably one of the largest acts of wartime sabotage in Europe for decades. The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were a symbol of Europe's dependence on Russian hydrocarbons and it was also the largest methane leak that scientists have ever recorded. So it was an incredibly spectacular piece of sabotage. GCSE results suggest the gender gap is closing, but the regional one isn't. Children in London and the South East are far more likely to pass their exams or get higher grades than anywhere else in the country.

2:51Teachers in the North East say pupils there are trailing behind because of deep-rooted structural inequalities. The government has promised to focus on white children from poorer families going forward. Robert Halfon's a former Conservative Education Minister and used to chair the Education Committee. He's told Times Radio what the government should do to address the gap. Do what governments used to do in terms of investing in the cities and really focus on improving education in the towns. Focus on the family hubs. The government has said they're going to boost family hubs, which is a good thing.

3:23but focus them on the areas where there is poor education. And you can follow the Times News Briefing on Spotify and 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. PwC turns innovation into implementation so you can accelerate from experiment to scale.

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