Morning briefing Tuesday 17th February

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 Times Radio's morning briefing on Tuesday the 17th of February. I'm Daryl Jackson. Councils face a race against time to organise reinstated local elections after the government abandoned its attempt to delay ballots of 30 councils in England.

0:49The government says they'll now go ahead in May because of new legal advice. It's the government's 15th U-turn. The deputy chief executive of the professional body for election administrators says returning officers and other election staff have lost months of planning for the elections. Mark Buckley, former Labour advisor, told Times Radio it is not an ideal situation. It does seem that the government really should have thought this through more than it did before it pressed go on the postponement of these elections. I mean, I'm surprised, and I think most people are surprised, including Labour MPs and councillors I've spoken to today, that the government hadn't thought this through and made sure that it was legally watertight before pushing ahead with this idea.

1:31The Conservatives are calling for concrete action on defence after the Prime Minister said the UK must go faster on increasing defence spending. It's reported Sakir Starmer wants to hit 3 % of GDP spending on defence in this Parliament. He'd previously outlined that goal for the next Parliament. But Shadow Defence Secretary James Cartilage says until the Prime Minister publishes the long-overdue defence investment plan, talk of 3 % spending is just a pipe dream. Lord Hutton, Labour peer and former Defence Secretary told Times Radio there is a clear choice. The choice we face is, do we spend now in order to provide a credible deterrence to Putin?

2:08Or do we wait until Putin is in a position to launch some sort of offensive against NATO or our allies? And then we've got a hideous problem to deal with. It's better to stop a war than to have to fight a war. If we are going to have a credible deterrence, we are definitely going to need to spend a considerable amount more than we're currently doing. Six companies linked to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's ex-wife Sarah Ferguson are being wound down in the wake of the publication of the Epstein files. Sarah was the sole director of all six companies, none of which have much public profile. According to Companies House, an application to strike off each company was filed after new revelations about Sarah's contact with the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein came to light.

2:49US authorities say family members of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie have been cleared as possible suspects in her disappearance. The mother of US TV host Savannah Guthrie has been missing for over two weeks, believed to have been kidnapped from her home in Arizona. Police have received suspected ransom demands. Oscar-winning actor Robert Duval has died at the age of 95. He was best known for his roles in The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. His wife Luciana says he died on Sunday surrounded by love and comfort. Journalist and broadcaster Caroline Quinn told Times Radio he was an acclaimed actor. I mean who can forget him in Apocalypse Now talking about the smell of napalm in the morning or of course in The Godfather playing the mafia lawyer Tom Hagen.

3:39An amazing actor going back to the 60s. First main role was in To Kill a Mockingbird playing Boo Radley, really an acclaimed actor throughout his life. And there's more on these stories throughout the day on Times Radio.

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