Morning briefing Thursday 8th January

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 Morning Briefing for Thursday 8th January. protests have broken out in the US city of Minneapolis overnight after the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration and customs enforcement officer jacob fray the mayor of Minneapolis publicly disputed officials version of events after the homeland security department claimed the officer was reacting to an act of domestic terrorism footage however appears to show officers surrounding the victim's car and opening fire at close range amy frederickson is a Republican strategist and former majority leader of the Minnesota Senate who lives in Minneapolis, she's calling for calm.

1:14ICE coming in and working haphazardly with locals is not good. There's a kind of a push to get immigration under control. But then there's also, you know, rhetoric on the other side that these are Nazis and is ugly and unnecessary. And what you did is You've pitted two people, two Americans, against each other, and one is dead now. The UK will scale up its action against Russia's so-called Shadow Fleet, having helped the United States seize an oil tanker suspected of being used to evade sanctions. The marinara was captured by US forces in the North Atlantic en route to Russia in an operation involving the Royal Navy and UK spy planes.

1:56The Defence Secretary John Healy told MPs the marinara had transported more than 7 million barrels of sanctioned Iranian oil over the past four years, the proceeds of which had funded terrorism and global instability. General Jack Keane is a former vice chief of staff of the US Army. Speaking to Times Radio, he highlighted the difficulties in monitoring shadow maritime activity. When it comes to tankers, they re-flagged them continuously. They turn off their transponders so people don't know where they're located. And the president, with the focus on Venezuela, it opened up a whole thing in terms of examination of Iran's complicity here, Russia's complicity, etc., dealing with trying to get around the sanctions.

2:40Downing Street says the Prime Minister has set out his position on Greenland during a phone call with President Trump. The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says Washington diplomats will meet with their counterparts from Denmark next week to discuss the future of the semi-autonomous and mineral-rich Danish region. Speaking to Times Radio, the Danish MEB Henrik Dahl said a significant development could be imminent. I think Denmark and Greenland will receive at some point in the future an offer they can't refuse. If the offer is for Greenland to be independent with a huge bonus and perhaps financial assistance from the United States, It's actually up to the population of Greenland because according to the Home Rule Act, if they want to leave the constitutional arrangement they are in, they can do so.

3:29And GCSE students in England will be able to see their exam results on their phones for the first time in August. An app trialled in Greater Manchester and the West Midlands last summer will also enable students to store a digital record of their results for when they apply for jobs or further education. You can follow the Times News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online.

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