Evening briefing Thursday 26th 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 Good evening. Hillary Clinton has accused officials of a Trump cover-up as she testifies in a congressional investigation into paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

0:42The former Democratic Secretary of State agreed to testifying after resisting demands to appear. The Oversight Committee Chair James Comer had threatened criminal contempt of Congress charges against the Clintons. Richard Godstein is a former advisor to the Clinton campaign. This hearing today, tomorrow is not on the up and up. From day one, both Bill and Hillary Clinton have said, release the files. Incidentally, there's no precedent, zero, for a former president or former first lady to be subpoenaed and asked for testimony, which they submitted in writing earlier this year. But no, Comer, the chairman, wanted a spectacle.

1:22We'll see, frankly, whether the tape actually gets released because the Clinton said, let's make this public. Meanwhile, the EU Commission says it's investigating Peter Mandelson. The European Anti-Fraud Office has been asked to look into the time he spent as Trade Commissioner. The killer Ian Huntley is in serious condition in hospital following a prison assault this morning. He's serving a life sentence in HMP Franklin for killing 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002. Police say an inmate in his 40s has been identified as a suspect and remains in detention. Police and teachers are braced for school wars being whipped up on social media, including teenagers being encouraged to bring knives to class.

2:04Met police have begun an operation in response to social media posts, dividing schools into teams and urging them to be violent. Laura Trott is the Shadow Education Secretary. She told Times Radio the government needs to step up. They said they were going to do an urgent consultation on what they were going to do about social media. That was weeks ago. It still hasn't appeared. But we have a vote in a couple of weeks on the 9th of March, which is straight up and down, banning children from social media. Today's issues that we've heard about from schools with police and knives is just another example of why this is so necessary.

2:36Parents will soon be able to get alerts if their child repeatedly searches for harmful content on Instagram. The social media platform says from next week, anyone using supervision settings will be told if a teenager seeks out posts about suicide or self-harm. Spain will be able to veto the entry of British travellers to Gibraltar and refuse residency permits on security grounds under a post-Brexit treaty. The agreement, published earlier, ends almost a decade of limbo for the British Overseas Territory since the referendum result. And a bill to legalise a desisted dying in England and Wales is likely to fall in the House of Lords.

3:13The government's not expected to grant extra time for debate before the current session of Parliament ends. Dr Gordon MacDonald is the CEO of Care Not Killing. People can live for years. I mean, I got a letter the other day from somebody who's lived for 25 years, having been given a six-month prognosis. So I think that that shows why it's so complicated. And that's why the Lords has been, you know, taking their time, looking at this in detail, scrutinising it properly, and as they should do so. And you can follow the Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online. This episode of the Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwC.

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