Evening briefing Wednesday 24th September

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 Evening Breathing for Wednesday 24th September with me, James Kitchen. Vladimir Zelensky is urging world leaders to act against Russia now or suffer more aggression later.

0:44War has already reached too many people to pretend it has nothing to do with you. So whether you help peace or continue trading with Russia and helping Russia to fund this war, it depends on you. The Ukrainian leader told the UN General Assembly Putin will keep driving the war forward, wider and deeper into Europe. Mr. Zelensky also says he had a good meeting with Donald Trump in New York yesterday. The US president appeared to shift his stance on the conflict, suggesting Kiev can win back all the territory taken by Russia. The Times' diplomatic editor Roger Boyce says Mr. Trump's comments should be taken with a pinch of salt, but adds there may be other factors working in Kiev's favour.

1:26One kind of optimistic theory is that some kind of pincer movement is evolving. That's to say, European sanctions now increasingly backed by Trump because they help American business together with Zelensky's successes in hitting the oil reserves and oil refineries of Russia. And the two of these things working together actually may change the situation. One person's been killed after four people were shot at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement Center in Texas. The victims were reportedly being led into a building in Dallas to be processed and deported when the shooting started. The attacker, described as a potential sniper, is also dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

2:14The Texas Senator Ted Cruz made this plea. To every politician who is using rhetoric, demonizing ICE and demonizing CBP, stop. To every politician demanding that ICE agents be doxed and calling for people to go after their families, stop. A family of three have become the first asylum seekers to arrive in the UK as part of the government's one-in-one-out deal with France. It's as four migrants who arrived in Britain on a small boat have been sent back to France over the past week. A home office spokesperson says it sends a clear message to people smuggling gangs that illegal crossings are not tolerated.

2:53And Andy Burnham has suggested that Sir Keir Starmer has no plan to turn the country around in what's being seen as the potential launch of a leadership bid. In an interview with the new statesman, the Greater Manchester Mayor claimed the party was being run in a very factional and quite divisive way. Mr Burnham also said Labour should adopt a policy of rolling back the 1980s by bringing housing, energy and water companies back into public control. The Times' policy editor Oliver Wright says the mayor is pitching himself as a more honest politician. He, like most politicians, wants to be seen as authentic.

3:26He wants to be seen as someone who is not, as he would say, in hock to the London elite, that he's someone who understands what people in the country are thinking, particularly and crucially in the North and the Northwest. And he's very much using that platform as mayor of Greater Manchester to pitch himself as someone who would be a different kind of politician, perhaps a more honest politician, a politician more in tune with what people need and what they want. And remember, you can follow The Times News Briefing on Spotify and you can listen live to Times Radio Online. This episode of The Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwC.

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