Morning briefing Tuesday 1st 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. This is Times Radio's morning briefing on Tuesday 1st September. I'm Daryl Jackson. The government's to speed up the building of hundreds of extra prison places with£110 million of investment.

0:45The Justice Secretary, Alex Norris, will set out plans later as part of efforts to tackle overcrowding. Alongside the cash, which has been fast-tracked from existing budgets, the government is also converting unused spaces inside prisons into new cells. David Shipley, former prisoner and crime and justice writer, told Times Radio the government need to be bold and imaginative to solve the problem. What they should do is really get creative. You know, we could look at bringing back prison ships. They could be put in place quickly. They should rapidly expand the open prison estate, which doesn't require planning consent.

1:17And for big new prisons, the government should bring primary legislation before Parliament to bypass all the planning process to get them done. The Chancellor has told The Times that defence will be central to his spending plans. That's despite allegations of hypocrisy for delaying a commitment of extra billions he himself had earlier demanded while Secretary of State for Defence under Sakhir Starmer. In an interview with The Times, John Healy says he will set out a clear path at the Spring Review. Katie Ball's Washington editor for The Times and Sunday Times says the Chancellor insists he's 100 % committed to spending 3.5 % of GDP on defence by 2035.

1:58I think in this interview he is putting his reputation on the line because he is saying he is going to deliver those things in the Spending Review. and therefore if he now walks back from it, I think it will be a further problem. A teenage boy has been charged with the murder of a man in County Tyrone and is due in court later. The 16-year-old's also been charged with two counts of attempted murder following an incident in Dungannon on Saturday. A 61-year-old man was found dead next to his seriously injured daughter at a house in the town. She's now in a stable condition. The dead man's wife also sustained non-life-threatening injuries.

2:33A Las Vegas jury has found former gang leader Dwayne Keith Davis guilty of the murder of Tupac Shakur nearly 30 years after the famous rapper was gunned down. The verdict reads as follows. We, the jury in the above-entitled case, find the defendant Dwayne Keith Davis as follows. Count one, murder with use of a deadly weapon. Guilty of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon. Data this 31st date of August 2026. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is this your verdict as read? So say you won, so say you all. The jury took about three hours to reach a guilty verdict in a case that relied heavily on multiple confessions from Davis himself.

3:10The White House says the US Army Secretary is leaving his post, marking yet another top military figure to depart under Donald Trump's regime. Dan Driscoll has been in the job for 18 months and no reason has been given for his exit. He's reportedly endured a tense relationship with Defence Secretary Pete Hegzeth. And a report found the Cairngorms wildfire in the Scottish Highlands exposed a dangerous weakness in Scotland's wildfire response. Scottish land and estates found more than 3 ,300 hectares were burned in the wildfire. More than 40 businesses and organisations and£6.4 million of private sector equipment was involved in the response efforts, the organisations calling for an urgent shift from ad hoc assistance to a formal exercised wildfire capability system.

3:57And you can hear more on all of those stories throughout the day on Times Radio.

4:06This 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. Times Radio just gained a brand new perspective. We're now available to watch live on YouTube, direct from our new and improved studio.

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