Morning briefing on Friday 31st 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 your Times Morning Briefing on Friday 31st October. Buckingham Palace has announced the disgraced former Duke of York will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

0:46He has also been served with a formal notice to surrender the lease of Royal Lodge. The King's decision comes after weeks of fresh revelations over Andrew's relationship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. He continues to deny any wrongdoing. Royal journalist Kinsey Schofield says this move will be worrying Andrew. He's seen the royal family take more of a step to distance themselves from him over the last few weeks and he might not feel like he has the king's protection behind him. The decision is supported by the government and wider royal family including Prince William. Former Times radio commentator and historian Nick Serple says the future for Andrew looks bleak.

1:26I wouldn't have thought that many people want to be in contact with him or certainly publicly in contact with him. I mean, his only source of income, actually, is his Royal Navy pension, and which the last figure I saw for that was around£20 ,000 a year. I wonder whether he might end up leaving the UK altogether. I sort of feel that he is quite an arrogant individual, and I think whatever happens to him, he will still feel that it was unjust. Rachel Reeves has been cleared over her failure to obtain the relevant licence to rent out her South London home. Emails published yesterday show her estate agents had agreed to make the application, something Sakir Starmer says he wishes he'd seen from the outset.

2:09But the Prime Minister's independent standards advisor says she hadn't acted in bad faith when initially claiming she was unaware of the requirement. Sir Alistair Graham, former chair of the Committee for Standards in Public Life, defended the Chancellor. This is an exceptional situation that she was moving into 11 Downing Street and it was very well advised in advance of course that she was likely to be Chancellor of the Exchequer of Labour when the general election. So yes it is a very big transition for people because suddenly they don't have a minute in their life of saying too much about their domestic issues.

2:52Communities in the Caribbean have begun counting the cost of one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record. Jamaica's Prime Minister says Melissa's brought total destruction with officials expecting the number of deaths to rise above the eight confirmed so far. Daniel Longhurst from the World Food Programme is helping deploy aid. There are areas like Clarendon, St Elizabeth, Manchester who have been completely devastated by flooding, storm surges. There's downed power cables, downed trees. The United Nations Security Council has condemned an assault by paramilitary forces in Sudan's north Darfur.

3:31Survivors claim that people were killed in their beds as the rebel group, the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, stormed hospitals and homes. Thousands have fled on foot through the desert, some walking for days without food or water. Martha Amar Akaya Pobi, a senior UN official in Africa, says no one's safe. The situation is simply horrifying. The human cost is profound. The risk of mass atrocities, ethnically targeted violence and further violations of international humanitarian law, including sexual violence, remains alarmingly high across the country and particularly in El Fasher. The charity is warning NHS Corridor Care is forcing the elderly to watch others die around them as they wait on urgent treatment.

4:20In Age UK's report, one patient likens the situation to a war film with queues of stretchers and people suffering. Health Minister Karen Smith confirmed£450 million towards tackling the issue in England. Don't forget you can set the Times News Briefing as your news service on Alexa. That's your Times Morning Briefing on Friday the 31st of October.

5:19This 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. Discover more at pwc.co.uk. Here's a tip for you. There's a podcast out there with fans waiting to be your next customer.

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