Evening briefing on Thursday 26th March

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 Radio News Briefing on Thursday the 26th of March. The US President has denigrated the UK's aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales as toys.

0:47He was speaking at a White House Cabinet meeting and also lashed out at NATO for doing absolutely nothing to help the US in the Middle East conflict. Sir Keir Starmer, meanwhile, says the West is now facing a war on two fronts in the Middle East and Ukraine. The Prime Minister has announced he's given permission for British forces to board and detain Russian shadow fleet ships in UK waters. He took more than two months to approve the action, leaving UK troops to act merely in a support role to the French. Larissa Brown is defence editor at The Times and explains possible reasons for that as it raises certain questions.

1:20Where would they take these tankers and what would happen to the crew? There was a lot of debate a few weeks ago about an operation that the UK helped with with the Americans. and the potential for the crew to be either sent to America or face questioning in the UK. And so there's obviously a lot of legal questions around this, which is one of the reasons why it's taken so long for Keirsk-Lama to greenlight this operation. There's a warning the UK economy will take the biggest hit compared to any other country in the G20, following the fallout from the Iran war. An international economic group are forecasting a jump in the average rate of inflation this year, from 2.5 % to 4%.

2:00The Chancellor insists she has the right economic plan, but Conservative leader Kemi Bejanovic says the government isn't doing a good enough job to protect people here. Energy is growth. Without it, our country dies. We need to get Britain working again. Labour's approach is killing jobs. It's making people's bills go sky high. Manufacturing is disappearing from the country. Elsewhere, the Prime Minister said the UK needs to tackle addictive features on social media platforms after a US court found they contributed to a young woman's poor mental health. Meta and Google are appealing the ruling.

2:36Laurie Schott, whose daughter died in 2020, was protesting outside court in the United States. Our children deserve to take control of their own digital footprint, their own digital control. My daughter shouldn't have had content pushed at her that said she was ugly or her life had no future. Hertfordshire Constabulary have said they've reopened an investigation into sex abuse allegations made against influencer Andrew Tate. The decision comes a day after the Independent Office for Police Conduct said a former detective constable could face gross misconduct proceedings for alleged failures to properly investigate the case.

3:12Former Venezuela leader Nicolas Maduro and his wife Celia Flores have appeared in court in New York. They've been charged with narco-terrorism and weapons offences. Maduro's lawyers have argued his client has the right to use money from the Venezuelan government to pay for his defence after the US blocked him from accessing cash. And US TV host Savannah Guthrie says her family's in agony while the search for her mother continues only two months after she disappeared. 84-year-old Nancy was abducted from her home in Arizona on February 1st. Her relatives have made several public appeals for proof that she's alive.

3:47You can follow the Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online. That's your Times Radio News Briefing on Thursday the 26th of March.

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