Morning briefing Wednesday 13 August

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 Update for Wednesday 13th August. Sergei Starmer will hold calls with European leaders and Donald Trump later, ahead of the US president's meeting with Vladimir Putin on Friday in Alaska over ending the war in Ukraine.

0:48The White House has played down the pair's talks as a listening exercise. Andrew Weiss is a former Russia expert at the White House and policymaker for the US's National Security Council. He's doubtful about us seeing a huge amount of progress on Friday. The Ukraine problem has been the main sticking point in US-Russia relations for more than 10 years now. So the idea that Donald Trump could swoop in to one meeting with less than a week's preparation and fix everything was never a realistic possibility. But I think what we've experienced in the president and the White House comments was that people are really worried about this.

1:25A Labour minister has admitted it's unacceptable that 50 ,000 migrants have crossed the channel since Sergey Stama took power 13 months ago. It's the fastest that milestone's been hit under any prime minister. But Education Minister Baroness Smith of Malvern suggested it wasn't Labour's fault and blamed criminal gangs. Baroness Claire Fox, the director of the Academy of Ideas think tank, says they're going to have to try some new tactics to tackle the issue. People have become very cynical about whether any of the people on the small boats deserve to be here. And you see the political consequences of that in relation to all of the fuss around the asylum hotels and so on.

2:02People have just had enough. A lot of the policies that the Labour Party are putting forward, the government, just feel as though they're throwing things at the issue without any real thought. There are concerns the UK's largest water company could be bought out by a Chinese investor. The government's preparing to take over Thames Water, tackle its debts and then find a buyer. And Chinese-owned CKI is thought to be a front-runner. Former Conservative Party leader Ian Duncan-Smith founded the Interparliamentary Alliance on China, which aims to tackle China's growing influence in the West. He told Times Radio it would be a major mistake to sell to them.

2:38The idea that we are progressively, bit by bit, handing over our natural infrastructure to a country that hits us all the time with cyber warfare, that has taken over Hong Kong and trashed the Chinese-British agreement on Hong Kong, is practising slave labour and genocide, known genocide, in Xinjiang and in Tibet. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. and what are we going to do? Keep rewarding them. Surrey Police has been criticised for sending officers undercover as joggers to catch catcallers. Female officers dressed in sportswear went running during rush hour to expose how often women are harassed while exercising in public.

3:17The trial led to 18 arrests for various offences such as harassment, sexual assaults and theft. The Free Speech Union has criticised the operation, calling it a bizarre social psychology experiment, calling on police to focus on enforcing the law. For more stories like these, listen to Times Radio throughout the day.

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