this is bbc news broadcasting in the uk and around the globe. i m annita mcveigh. our top stories: protests continue outside downing street in london, ahead of a meeting between israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu and uk prime minister rishi sunak. the indian parliament disqualifies prominent opposition party leader rahul gandhi, after a court sentenced him to two years in prison over defamation. the bbc agrees to suspend a proposal to close the bbc singers choir, while it explores alternative funding models. china has said it has never asked any company to provide data or intelligence located in foreign countries. on thursday, tiktok s chief
or if he is not acquitted, he cannot contest elections and national elections due next year. china has responded to the controversy surrounding the video sharing app tiktok by saying it has never asked any company to provide data located in foreign countries and has no plans to do so. the foreign ministry spokesperson mao ning was answering questions about the testimony of tiktok s ceo shou zi chew in the us congress. tiktok is owned by the chinese company bytedance. mr chew faced a grilling by us lawmakers for five hours on thursday, where he defended the app against concerns it was a threat to us national security. i m joined now by james titcomb, who is the technology editor at the telegraph. thank you forjoining us. no doubt you watched that testimony with interest. how convincing do you
think the us congress felt he was? they clearly weren t convinced. it was a very ill tempered, very uncomfortable hearing for shou zi chew, the tiktok ceo. he was trying to make his point that tiktok is storing data in the us, that has a lot of us employees, that china has never asked for data and tiktok is saying it would never give china data, but members of congress were clearly not won over. they were asking lots of questions about how chinese engineers have access to tiktok user data, and both democrats and republicans unusually on the committee just did not seem won over. shou chew struggled, he didn t really manage to get his point across, he was interrupted a lot and often said he would have to get back to members of congress on questions, so i don t think it was a particularly successful hearing for him. :, : :, , :, particularly successful hearing for him. :, : :, , him. how clear is it to you exactly what the connection
interviews at the treasury, they got a lower proportion ofjob offers compared to younger workers. if we take a look at the numbers we can see 17% of over 50s who got interviews at the treasury were successful at getting job offers. that compares with 20% of people in their 30s and 22% for under 30s. we also asked to see the average age of people working at the treasury. taken as a whole we can see that in december of last year, the average age of people who worked at the treasury was 34 years old. that s well below the average age of workers across the uk, which was 42 according to the latest data we have. just under 10% of people who work at the treasury are over 50 years of age and again that s much lower than the wider workforce, where 32% of people are aged over 50. this data is particularly relevant right now. that s right. chancellorjeremy hunt has been
the indian opposition leader, rahul gandhi, has been disqualified from parliament following his conviction for defamation on thursday. mr gandhi who is a key congress party figure was given a two year prison sentence for remarks about the prime minister s surname in a campaign speech in 2019. mr gandhi was an mp in the southern state of kerala. he remains on bailfor 30 days and has said he will appeal the verdict. china has responded to the controversy surrounding the video sharing app, tiktok, by saying it has never asked any company to provide data located in foreign countries and has no plans to do so. the foreign ministry spokesperson mao ning was answering questions about the testimony of tiktok s ceo shou zi chew in the us congress. tiktok is owned by the chinese company bytedance. mr chew faced a grilling by us lawmakers for five hours on thursday, where he defended