Morning briefing Wednesday 4th 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 Wednesday the 4th of March. Israel says it has carried out a broad wave of renewed airstrikes in Iran after military officials had earlier confirmed a series of attacks on the Iranian leadership compound.

0:50The IDF also issued an evacuation order for 16 villages in Lebanon overnight ahead of a proposed attack on targets connected to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah. President Trump will be examined later on whether he had the authorisation to launch the United States military action in Iran. A vote on the War Powers Act has been scheduled in the Senate for 4pm local time. The measures aimed at limiting Trump's ability to wage military operations, but given the number of unknowns surrounding the conflict, it will face an uphill battle. The Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has renewed his support for the operation in Iran and says the president is acting within his constitutional authority.

1:33The build-up of their missiles was so important and so serious that the president of the United States, this president, thought that it was a great enough threat that we needed to act. We had a narrow and unique opportunity, a window of opportunity to act. And if that window had passed, it would have been much more difficult for us to achieve the mission. The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency says almost 1 ,100 civilians have been reported killed in Iran since last Saturday. Of the 1 ,097 fatalities, 181 were children under the age of 10. Iranian officials say more than 160 people were killed when an airstrike hit a girls' school in the city of Minab.

2:17The United Nations High Commissioner for Human rights is demanding an investigation. Elliot Abrams is a former special representative to Iran under Donald Trump. That's not going to move one voter in the United States. A congressional investigation might. The question of how an accident like that could have happened should be investigated, you know, first of all, by the U.S. military. Holiday makers in Dubai will have to wait for repatriation flights while the backlog of tens of thousands of transit passengers is cleared. Officials in Whitehall are in regular contact with their counterparts in the UAE, but admitted they don't have advance notice of plans to scale up departures.

2:58The government will charter a repatriation flight from Oman's capital Muscat in the coming days, primarily for vulnerable people. The government has halted all study visas from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan, as well as work visas for Afghan citizens. The Home Secretary says migrants from these countries in particular are seeking to exploit the UK's generosity. And a study suggests 7 hours and 19 minutes is the optimal sleep time to avoid diabetes. Researchers from China examined data on more than 23 ,000 American adults, including their sleep patterns and their estimated glucose disposal rate, to examine insulin resistance.

3:38The study also found that catching up on sleep at the weekend may be detrimental to a person's health. There's more on all of these stories throughout the day on Times Radio.

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