Daily briefing Saturday 11th July

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 daily briefing on Saturday 11th July. A 26-year-old man who was arrested in connection with the death of the former MP Anne Whiddicombe at her home on Dartmoor has been released from custody.

0:47The man was detained in nearby Newton Abbott, but police said he's no longer part of the investigation. The Assistant Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall Police, Matt Longman, said the investigation was moving at a significant pace and he repeated an appeal to anyone who may have information. Will Humphreys is The Times' South West correspondent. Police will be following every line of inquiry they have. They are asking everyone in the local area to check their CCTV cameras, their ring doorbell, dashcam footage, anything that may appear suspicious during Thursday and Friday. so they will be moving on whatever evidence they have and following that as far as it goes.

1:29Tributes to Anne Whittacombe continue to be paid from across the political spectrum. Harvey Proctor was a Conservative MP who suffered a gross miscarriage of justice when he was falsely accused of sexual abuse and murder during the completely discredited claims of a VIP paedophile ring in Westminster. Writing in the Times, he said Whittacombe stood up for him when many who knew him failed to do so, and that she was one of the last politicians who believed that principle mattered more than popularity. She knew the difference between allegations and truth, and she went on the airways and in the papers to support me.

2:12So that was a personal testament that makes me impacted heavily these last few days. Andy Burnham could mark the opening weeks of his premiership by cutting taxes for low earners as part of his pledge to help with the cost of living. The Times has learned that any cuts would be modest, although Burnham has also said he wants to reduce energy bills and bus fares. Burnham and his senior allies believe one of Sir Keir Starmer's biggest mistakes on taking office two years ago was to strip pensioners of winter fuel payments and to increase taxes. Emergency services in the Spanish region of Andalusia are working to contain pockets of fire after the country's largest wildfire in more than two decades.

2:57Hundreds of firefighters have been deployed in Almería, where 12 people are known to have died. Four Britons are believed to be among them. Alessio Guilanda is a local reporter in Almería. Their bodies were recovered from a car that had a right-hand drive, whereas the rest are also believed to be foreign nationals except for one that has been confirmed as a Spaniard. Postmortem has shed no light on the identities of the victims and 23 people remain unaccounted for. And Meta has withdrawn a new AI feature from Instagram after a backlash over privacy concerns. The tool enabled the generation of fake images using content from public accounts with users opted in by default.

3:41Meta says the technology missed the mark. There's more on these stories throughout the day on Times Radio.

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