Morning briefing Tuesday 28th July

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0:35This is the Times morning briefing for Tuesday 28th July. French officials say wildfires near Bordeaux have not gained any ground in the last 24 hours, despite what they call numerous flare-ups. The situation is highly unpredictable and higher temperatures and strong winds are forecast as part of another heatwave. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated in France and Spain. Melissa Bell, senior international correspondent for CNN, is in Bordeaux. After five nights of the fire acting erratically, being pushed by these winds one way and another and taking on ever new ground, consuming ever new ground, they finally found that last night it had fairly well stayed inside its boundaries, not advanced too much more, but that it was still not in control.

1:24Writing exclusively in The Times, the new Prime Minister has unveiled proposals for a shift away from the traditional curriculum by prioritising vocational education as the first choice for many children beginning their GCSEs. Ollie Wright is policy editor for The Times and has more details. They would be badged as GCSEs and then badged as T-levels. But I think it's the fact that schools are going to be judged on how well they provide technical education, that money is going to go into technical education. that suggests that some money could be taken away from academic subjects. So it's really the government sending a very clear signal to the education sector of a change in direction.

2:02Andy Burnham has told Volodymyr Zelensky that he's behind Ukraine 100%. The Ukrainian president was visiting a naval base in Portsmouth where Ukrainian military personnel had been training. Lee Turner is a former British ambassador to Ukraine and says the meeting was a success. He seems to have built a good connection with Zelensky. He had some good announcements to make. This stuff about the stone cloak electronic jamming system, that was a piece of good news. This is a kind of drone protection electronics package that the UK has developed in which we are allowing the Ukrainians to build under licence.

2:42Buckingham Palace has confirmed that the King's most senior aide will retire next year. Sir Clive Alderton has spent nearly 20 years in the role. The palace says the King and Queen were deeply grateful to Clive for his tireless support and wise counsel over the years. Grant Harrold is a former butler for King Charles and host of the new show Royals Uncensored. He says it's a crucial role. He keeps everything running. There's many different departments in the royal household and his job is to bring all of those departments together, make sure they work together. He's a liaison between them and the King and obviously the Queen.

3:15He does indeed deal with government ministers, people from the government, obviously on behalf of the king, as we saw recently. Again, when the king met the outgoing and incoming prime ministers, that was Clive that was there to meet them. And there's more on those stories throughout the day on Times Radio.

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