Afternoon briefing Tuesday 3rd 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 the Times Radio afternoon briefing on Tuesday 3rd February. The Conservatives are accusing the government of covering up what Downing Street knew when about Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein.

0:44The police are now reviewing whether Lord Mandelson committed a criminal offence by leaking government emails to the paedophile when he was Gordon Brown's business secretary. Downing Street, meanwhile, is holding its own review. Shadow Cabinet Minister Alex Burkhardt says that raises questions about why Lord Mandelson was appointed ambassador to Washington. We need to see the documents that were presented to the Prime Minister, see the documents that were presented to his chief of staff, see the documents that the then Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who's now the Deputy Prime Minister, saw. Because at the moment, this terrible error of government, this terrible of judgment has taken place and no one is taking responsibility for it.

1:22Downing Street has insisted Lord Mandelson wasn't transparent with the Prime Minister about his links to Epstein. Sarah Ferguson's charity says it will close for the foreseeable future after she appeared repeatedly in the latest Epstein files. She appears to have taken her daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, to see Epstein five days after he was released from prison for child sex offences. The Times' royal editor Kate Mancy says the latest emails are damning. Again, at the centre of it, we've seen an email in which she writes to Epstein saying, I know you were only using me to get to Andrew.

1:54So while she had given an interview in March 2011 saying, I'm going to have nothing more to do with Jeffrey Epstein. After that, she was actually begging him to get back in touch with her. So the opposite was true, that he ended up cutting her off. Sarah's trust insists it's been talking for months about closing. Elon Musk's space company is buying his AI startup in the biggest merger in history. The Times' business editor Richard Fletcher says it's a gamble for the world's richest man. So he's merging his most successful hardware company, SpaceX, which everyone is very excited about with his most expensive software bet, XAI.

2:32So he's doubling down and he's basically risking all of the good news around SpaceX. The combined worth of SpaceX and XAI is estimated to be one and a quarter trillion dollars or 910 billion pounds. Mr. Musk says it'll aim to develop AI data centres in space. The price of oil has fallen after Iran and the US indicated they'll hold formal negotiations. The Iranian president has given the green light and Donald Trump says their officials are already talking. A 13-year-old boy has been arrested in Dorset in connection with an e-bike hit and run on a pregnant woman in Poole. The baby was born afterwards in hospital and remains in a serious condition.

3:11The makers of Iron Brew have bought two rivals in the soft drinks market in deals worth£50 million. Scottish company AG Bar has bought the juice maker Forbushers and Fentiman's, which is best known for its ginger beer. The Spanish government has announced plans to ban children under the age of 16 from social media, and NASA has delayed its latest mission to the Moon after stopping a rocket test because of a leak. March is now the earliest launch date for Artemis II to take four astronauts on an orbit of the Moon. Don't forget you can subscribe to the Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify or listen live to Times Radio online.

3:50This 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.