Morning briefing Thursday 12th 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 Times Radio's morning briefing on Thursday the 12th of March. Oil ports in Iraq have halted all operations after explosions were reported on two foreign tankers within its territorial waters.

0:47One foreign crew member was killed in the alleged attack, which an Iraqi security source claimed was carried out by Iranian vessels. Iran is warning the price of oil will reach$200 a barrel and that no oil will pass through the Straits of Hormuz. That's despite an agreement by more than 30 member nations in the International Energy Agency to tap into an unprecedented amount of emergency reserves. Angela Knights was an economic secretary to the Treasury and is a former CEO of Energy UK. She says there is only so much the IEA and individual nations can do. The key to this is the fact that where 20 % of the world's supply comes from, which is through that one strait, is completely stopped.

1:32And when one thinks about it on a short, medium or long-term basis, the really critical thing that has to happen is to find ways to unblock the cork of the bottle, the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump says he's been briefed on possible Iranian sleeper cells in the United States and claimed they entered the country during the open border policies of President Biden. Speaking at an airbase in Maryland last night, Trump also addressed a leaked report by the FBI warning of the possibility of Iranian drone attacks in California. It's being investigated, but you have a lot of things happening. And all we can do is take them as they come.

2:14The war itself is being prosecuted as well as anybody has ever seen. And this is other countries telling me too. They said they've never seen anything like it. And they also agree with what I'm doing. They say it's an evil country. A former Labour Party strategist is warning the Prime Minister that there'll be no escape from the fallout of the release of a file relating to Lord Mandelson's appointment as Britain's ambassador to the United States. Mandelson was arrested last month on suspicion of leaking sensitive information to the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. The Labour peer denies any wrongdoing.

2:51The documents in the file show that Sir Keir Starmer was warned that Mandelson's relationship with Epstein posed a reputational risk. John McTernan was a political secretary to Sir Tony Blair. Speaking to Times Radio, he said the potential drip-drip effect of further documents could be damaging for the government. I think it's just really badly handled. If you're going to release the documents, release them all in one go. The stories will run, but the stories will all be running in one or two days after the release of the documents. The idea of drip feeding them out in this way, it just feels that this is being managed in the way that's most damaging for the government.

3:29And MPs will examine the fairness of student loans repayments in a new inquiry. The Treasury Committee is asking young people for their views on several issues, such as whether they would still take out loans today, as well as the impact on their finances. There's more on all of these stories throughout the day on Times Radio.

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