Evening briefing Tuesday 23rd December

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 Tuesday 23rd December. I'm Daryl Jackson. The National Farmers Union says many of its members will sleep more easily this Christmas after a government U-turn on inheritance tax.

0:46The threshold for farms and businesses is increasing from£1 million to£2.5 million. It follows months of protests and tractors descending on Westminster. Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, has told Times Radio this is good news for more than just farmers. This has been a concerted effort from farmers right across the United Kingdom to get to this point. But it's all family business that benefits from this, not just farming. So hopefully it helps unlock the capacity for growth in our rural economies, in risk-taking within family businesses, entrepreneurialism, which we so desperately need to get going to really build the economy.

1:22Two Islamic State supporters have been found guilty of planning what police say could have been Britain's most deadly gun attack on Jewish targets in Manchester. Waleed Sadawi and Ammar Hussein tried to smuggle weapons into the UK, but their plot was exposed by an undercover operative. Russell Brand's been charged with two new sexual offences. Scotland Yard says a comedian is accused of one count of rape and one of sexual assault in relation to two further women. He'll appear in court in the new year. He's already denied five original charges and is scheduled to go on trial in June. Tens of thousands of pages of files about paedophile Jeffrey Epstein have been unsealed.

2:00The US Justice Department has also issued a statement saying they contain untrue and sensationalist claims about Donald Trump. The batch includes an email sent by someone signing off as A at Balmoral, asking Ghislaine Maxwell for new inappropriate friends. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Donald Trump have always denied wrongdoing. Jack Royston, Newsweek's chief royal correspondent, told Times Radio this could be difficult for the royal family. Obviously we don't have definitive, unambiguous confirmation that the A who signed off these emails was A for Andrew. It's very difficult to believe, though, reading through them, that they are not talking about him.

2:38You know, there's references to a valet passing away. He talks about Royal Summer Camp at Balmoral. Balmoral is not a generally public or open place. You can follow The Times News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online.

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