Evening Briefing Wednesday 12th 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 Radio Evening Briefing for Wednesday the 12th of August with me, James Kitchen. More than 1 ,000 wildfires have been recorded in England and Wales so far this year, the same as the total for the whole of 2025.

0:47It comes as the Prime Minister is not ruling out banning disposable barbecues as he chairs an emergency cobra meeting on the extreme hot weather. Most of England and all of Wales are in drought, while temperatures could hit 38 degrees tomorrow. Farmer Stephen Briggs is head of technical development at the Royal Agricultural Society. Speaking to Times Radio, he said his sector needs to adapt to an emerging pattern. Certainly over in the eastern counties where I farm, yields have been negatively impacted, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent down on what we might expect. That'll probably feed through to food price inflationary pressures.

1:24More immediately, livestock all over the country are suffering with a lack of grass growth, the lack of forage, and over the next 48 hours, the need for shade and shelter. The serial sex attacker has been told he'll never leave prison for murdering two women and raping a third in London last year. 40-year-old Simon Levy is a registered sex offender and was being monitored by police at the time of the attacks. One of the victims, Cheryl Wilkinson's sister, says she hopes he rocks behind bars. The crime commentator Danny Shaw told Times Radio the judge found there were no mitigating factors in Levy's sentencing.

2:03He has a language development disorder and sight loss. He was blinded in Wai 'anae in prison in 2024, but he said that would have little, if any, impact on the sentence. So extremely serious cases this, and no surprise really that he's been ordered to spend the rest of his life in prison. Meanwhile, the victim's commissioner has warned extra pressure caused by the government's early release scheme could see what she called the serious failings in the Levy case repeated. Elsewhere, the operator of the national grids cancelled its call to the industry to generate more power during tonight's solar eclipse.

2:43It had described the move as a precautionary measure to give Britain a safety cushion between demand and supply. The moon will obscure more than 90 % of the sun over UK skies. Mike Maynell is an astronomer at the Greenwich Royal Observatory. I think it's a reminder that we all share the same small planet, we all share the same sky. It's something that we can all share together and for a moment perhaps forget some of the problems that we have on Earth, realise that there's bigger events up there that don't care about us too much. And just the sheer grandeur of it all, that movement of the sun and the moon and everything else, is something I think we all like to experience time and again.

3:21Cambridge University says it will investigate Jason Arde's appointment by its education faculty in 2022. The academic resigned from his post last week following accusations of plagiarism and questions surrounding his background and qualifications. The university's vice-chancellor, Professor Deborah Prentice, has called the case an aberration. Dame Jilly Cooper's daughter is discussing the fictional world of Russia at this year's The Times and the Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival. Emily Tarrant will be joined on stage by Bridget Jones author Helen Fielding as well as stars of the screen adaptation of Rivals.

3:59The October Festival will also feature authors, screenwriters and actors including Robert Harris, Russell T. Davis and Celia Imry. Remember you can follow The Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify and you can listen live to Times Radio Online.

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