Instagram will begin notifying parents if their teenagers repeatedly search for suicide or self-harm related content, marking the first time owner Meta has proactively flagged search behaviour rather than simply blocking it.

From next week, parents and teenagers enrolled in Instagram’s “Teen Accounts” supervision programme in the UK, US, Australia and Canada will receive alerts if a young user searches for harmful terms within a short period of time. The feature will be rolled out globally at a later stage.

Previously, Instagram restricted access to certain harmful material and redirected users to support resources. The new measure goes further by directly alerting parents via email, text message, WhatsApp or within the Instagram app itself, depending on available contact details.

Meta said the alerts are designed to flag sudden changes in search patterns that may indicate distress. Notifications will be accompanied by guidance and expert-backed resources to help parents navigate what are likely to be sensitive conversations.

The move has been met with sharp criticism from the Molly Rose Foundation, established by the family of Molly Russell, who died in 2017 aged 14 after viewing self-harm and suicide content online.

Chief executive Andy Burrows described the announcement as “fraught with risk”, warning that “forced disclosures could do more harm than good”.

“Every parent would want to know if their child is struggling,” Burrows said, “but these flimsy notifications will leave parents panicked and ill-prepared to have the sensitive and difficult conversations that will follow.”

He added that the onus should be on preventing harmful content from appearing in the first place, rather than shifting responsibility onto families after the fact.

The foundation previously published research claiming Instagram was still actively recommending content related to depression, suicide and self-harm to vulnerable young people. Meta rejected those findings, saying they misrepresented its safety efforts.

Ged Flynn, chief executive of Papyrus Prevention of Young Suicide, welcomed the attempt to increase transparency but argued that it did not address deeper systemic issues.

“Parents contact us every day to say how worried they are about their children online,” he said. “They don’t want to be warned after their children search for harmful content, they don’t want it to be spoon-fed to them by unthinking algorithms.”

‘Erring on the side of caution’

Meta said the system is designed to “err on the side of caution” and acknowledged that parents may occasionally receive alerts even when there is no serious cause for concern.

The company said the feature builds on broader Teen Account protections, which include automatically limiting exposure to sensitive material, restricting who can contact teens, and blocking certain harmful searches outright.

Two in-app screenshots released by Meta show alerts titled “Alert about your teen’s safety” followed by a screen offering advice on “How you can support your teen”.

Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, said the impact of the new feature would depend heavily on the quality of guidance provided alongside the alert.

“You can’t drop a notification on a parent and leave them on their own,” he said. “What matters is the immediate support and context that follows.”

Meta also confirmed that it plans to introduce similar parental alerts in the coming months if teenagers discuss self-harm or suicide with Instagram’s AI chatbot. The company said young people are increasingly turning to AI tools for advice and emotional support.

The expansion comes amid heightened scrutiny of social media companies’ impact on children’s mental health.

Australia recently passed legislation banning social media access for under-16s, while policymakers in Spain, France and the UK are considering similar measures. In the US, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri have faced legal challenges and congressional hearings over allegations the company’s platforms were designed to attract and retain younger users.

For now, Instagram’s new alert system represents a shift in Meta’s child-safety strategy — moving from passive content restriction to active parental notification. Whether that approach proves protective or problematic will likely depend on how families, regulators and mental health experts respond in the months ahead.

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The Trump administration isn’t letting a Supreme Court setback derail its tariff strategy. The nation’s top trade official says the White House won’t wait on Congress to restore the program.

In a 6-3 ruling last week, the high court struck down President Donald Trump’s global tariff authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Democrats lauded the Supreme Court’s ruling as a victory, arguing tariffs raise prices for everyday Americans.

But U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said while he’s “disappointed,” it’s not the end of tariffs, adding that he doesn’t plan on waiting for Congress to reestablish the program. He noted that while some members of Congress have offered to work with the White House, the administration has other strategies.

“I have had individual members of Congress come to me and express interest in that, and I’m happy to continue having those conversations,” Greer said on the “Fox News Rundown” podcast.

“But I’m not [going to] wait for that to reestablish the president’s tariff program,” he added.

US TRADE REPRESENTATIVE GREER SAYS TARIFFS WILL GO UP TO 15% OR HIGHER FOR SOME COUNTRIES

Greer said the Trump administration is “very confident” that the program could be back up within months. He confirmed they are pivoting to existing authorities, like Section 301 and Section 232, to launch investigations targeting unfair trade practices and national security threats.

“We are very confident that within the next few months we can reestablish through these investigations, tariffs to deal with the challenges that have been identified by the president,” Greer told FOX News Audio White House correspondent Jared Halpern.

HOCHUL DEMANDS $13.5B REFUND FOR NEW YORKERS AFTER SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN TRUMP TARIFFS

During Tuesday’s State of the Union address, Trump criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling, calling it “very unfortunate” and saying the program brought in revenue for the country.

Greer confirmed that no foreign countries have called the United States to renege on trade deals yet, only asking for clarity.

SELF-DEFENSE COMPANY FINDS MAJOR BENEFITS AFTER MOVING MANUFACTURING FROM OVERSEAS TO US

“It’s not really in the interest of these countries to renege on the deal because then their auto tariffs go up, all these other things. So, I’d say they’ve been very constructive conversations,” Greer said.

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Tariffs have become a signature aspect of the second Trump administration. In 2025, the president declared the country’s trade deficit a “national emergency,” arguing the IEEPA gave him broad tariff authority.

In response to the Supreme Court ruling, the president wrote on Truth Social that he would raise a global tariff rate to 15%.

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Monte Blackburn launches consultation on its Colne plans

The Issa brothers’ property arm and Marks and Spencer have unveiled plans for a new Food Hall in Colne.

The 2,300 square metre store, with 1,672 square metres of trading space would be built adjacent to the EG on the Move services at the end of the M65 in the town.

The Issa brothers’ property firm Monte Blackburn Ltd on Wednesday opened a public consultation seeking views from local people and businesses on its plans to jointly submit a new full planning application for the development with M&S.

The planning application to Pendle Council will come forward in the coming months following the results of the online consultation and distribution of leaflets to nearby properties.

The proposal is in addition to Monte Blackburn and M&S’s stalled scheme for a £10.1million food hall on Frontier Park.

This development which was granted planning permission by Hyndburn Council in April is currently awaiting a High Court hearing following a second legal challenge from supermarket Tesco supported by Blackburn with Darwen Council.

The challenge to the Frontier Park food hall comes against the background of M&S’s decision to close its existing 1980s all-purpose store in Blackburn town centre’s King William Street when its lease expires in September 2027.

The proposed new Colne store would have 170 car parking spaces, be landscaped and integrated into the existing access road that presently serves the roadside services and create up to 70 new jobs.

The M65 site currently has planning approval for a small warehouse development, but Monte Blackburn and M&S will jointly submit a new full application for the food hall scheme, which if approved, will allow the site to be fully developed out.

If planning permission is granted construction could start in late 2026 with opening anticipated in Autumn 2027.

M&S is proposing the Colne store ‘to deliver more products to its local customers’.

The consultation document says the car park will include EV charging points, accessible bays and secure cycle parking.

The development will feature modern architecture, high-quality landscaping and sustainable features including energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, solar PV panels, and biodiversity enhancements

The location offers convenient access off Whitewalls Drive.

The consultation says: “Marks and Spencer is proud to support British farming through long-standing relationships with over 9,500 Select Farm partners across the UK.

“We work with suppliers based in Lancashire such as Bright Blue Foods in Shadsworth and Winterbotham Darby in Clitheroe.

“The food hall will further strength these relationships and contribute to Lancashire’s economic resilience.”

To find all the planning applications, traffic diversions, road layout changes, alcohol licence applications and more in your community, visit the Public Notices Portal.

Indian IT stocks have had a bruising run since late January, with selling pressure spreading from largecaps to midcaps as investors reassessed what generative AI could do to the outsourcing model that powered the sector for three decades. The Nifty IT index has fallen about 21% in February, putting it on track for its worst monthly performance in over two decades, as worries grew that automation could shrink billable work, shorten project cycles and put pricing under pressure.

The sell-off has been violent in terms of wealth erosion. Nifty IT’s market cap erosion in February was over Rs 6 lakh crore. Investor anxiety stemmed after a new tool from Anthropic forced everyone to rethink how quickly automation could move from back-office tasks into revenue-heavy IT services workstreams.

In the current correction, companies seen as tied to legacy, people-heavy application maintenance and traditional managed services have been derated the hardest, while select smaller names have held up or rallied on the expectation that AI spending will first drive demand for infrastructure, integration solution providers.

Based on the past one-month performance, 25 stocks in the broader IT and tech services universe delivered positive returns even as many frontline names corrected sharply. The gains were led by Blue Cloud Softech Solutions, up 33%, Kellton Tech Solutions, up 32%, Datamatics Global Services, up 28%, and Ramco Systems, up 26%.

Other notable gainers included Innovana Thinklabs, which rose 19%, Moschip Technologies, whose shares gained 19%, Ceinsys Tech, up 16% and Netweb Technologies India, which also booked 15% gains.

Analysts say investors should not treat IT as one pack. Vipul Bhowar, Senior Director and Head of Equities at Waterfield Advisors, frames the shift as the sector moving from digital transformation to compute and intelligence.
In his view, the market is rewarding firms that can combine high-performance hardware capability, including GPUs, with cloud and AI services, while commoditised application maintenance faces faster automation. He also points to a margin split, with high-end cloud consulting and AI orchestration delivering margins that can be 15-20% higher than standard services, and argues that compute capacity and GPU management are becoming competitive differentiators rather than just headcount scale.
That partly explains why a chunk of winners sit closer to the picks end of the AI cycle. Netweb, for instance, is commonly associated with high-performance computing systems and enterprise infrastructure builds, which tends to be an early-stage requirement when companies scale model training, inference and data workloads.

Hardware-facing and network-facing names also appear in the outperformer set. D-Link India sits in networking equipment, while Black Box is identified with enterprise network and digital infrastructure services. Dynacons Systems and Allied Digital are known for IT infrastructure, systems integration and managed services in a more infrastructure-led sense rather than pure application outsourcing.

These are the sorts of vendors that can benefit when enterprises refresh networks, endpoints, data centre capacity and hybrid cloud setups to support AI adoption.

A second cluster among gainers points to specialised engineering and silicon adjacency. Moschip, for example, is positioned around semiconductor and embedded systems work, a theme that often attracts incremental interest when the market narrative shifts toward accelerated computing and the hardware stack that enables AI.

Even when AI reduces the need for certain routine software work, it can raise demand for hardware-aligned engineering, device-side compute and embedded integration across industries.

A third set reflects enterprise software and workflow platforms that can sell automation as product rather than automation as effort reduction. Names such as Ramco Systems and Datamatics fall closer to enterprise applications, BPM and digital operations themes.

In an environment where clients want productivity gains, analysts say vendors that ship software platforms, automate processes, or run outcome-linked digital operations can be viewed as relatively better placed than firms billing primarily on time and material.

Analysts also flag that the slump in largecap IT has not been driven only by one headline. There are also fears of AI disruption have combined with broader concerns around demand, project timelines and pricing pressure across the traditional IT services model. Large Indian IT firms still derive a meaningful share of revenue from managed services and application work where productivity tools can compress billed effort.

Even if AI creates new projects, the near-term debate is whether revenue dollars will shift from labour hours to fixed-price, platform-led and IP-led constructs, which can take time to scale.

Nitant Darekar, Research Analyst at Bonanza, argues the sector is being repriced for that transition. He sees a bifurcation emerging, with firms exposed to GPU cloud infrastructure, data centre buildouts and AI implementation services looking better positioned than legacy, labour-intensive peers. He also points to the need for selectivity, since not every “AI-aligned” stock will have the order book strength and earnings visibility to justify a re-rating.

It should be noted that many of the stocks that rose are smaller, have thinner liquidity, and can move sharply on sentiment. A 20-33% move in a month can reflect genuine order flow, but it can also reflect positioning, low float dynamics and fast-moving narratives.

However, a meaningful share of the stocks that rose appear to be linked, directly or indirectly, to the enabling layer of AI adoption. That includes compute and infrastructure, networking, systems integration, specialised engineering, and workflow platforms that monetise automation rather than get disrupted by it.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times)

MPs have approved Doug Gurr as fit to become the next permanent chair of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), but warned ministers that additional safeguards are needed to protect the regulator’s independence and address potential conflicts of interest.

In a report published on Thursday following a pre-appointment hearing earlier this week, the House of Commons Business and Trade Committee said it was satisfied that Mr Gurr has “the professional competence and independence required” to take on the role as defined by the Government. However, the committee stressed that serious concerns remain about the context of his appointment and the broader direction of competition policy.

Mr Gurr, a former senior executive at Amazon, was questioned extensively by MPs about his ability to act independently, particularly given the circumstances surrounding the removal of the previous chair amid pressure to align the watchdog more closely with the Government’s pro-growth agenda. Committee members made clear that the CMA must not prioritise investment or consolidation over consumer welfare, warning that growth cannot come at the expense of competition.

MPs also expressed unease about potential conflicts of interest arising from Gurr’s long and senior career at Amazon, one of the world’s largest technology companies and a business that could fall within the CMA’s new digital market regime. The committee suggested ministers consider whether he should recuse himself from any future decision about designating Amazon with Strategic Market Status under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.

The hearing also became a wider examination of the CMA’s recent performance. MPs noted that staff numbers at the regulator have almost doubled over the past decade, yet competitive pressures in the UK economy have not improved. They criticised what they described as slow market investigations during the cost-of-living crisis and weak enforcement action in certain high-profile cases.

Concerns were also raised about the CMA’s handling of digital competition issues, including delays in seeking remedies from Google over its relationship with news publishers and the limited commitments secured from Google and Apple regarding their mobile ecosystems. The committee questioned whether the watchdog had been sufficiently assertive in deploying its new statutory powers.

Internal challenges within the CMA were also highlighted. A recent budgeting error forced a 10 per cent reduction in staff, and internal surveys suggest that only around a quarter of employees expect to remain at the organisation for the next three years. MPs indicated that rebuilding morale and confidence inside the regulator would be a significant task for the new chair.

Another issue scrutinised during the hearing was the time commitment attached to the role. The CMA chair is currently expected to dedicate two days a week to the position. The committee questioned whether that allocation is sufficient for a regulator operating at the centre of politically sensitive and economically significant decisions, particularly during periods of crisis or intense scrutiny.

While the committee ultimately endorsed Mr Gurr’s appointment, it warned that it is “not the hallmark of a robust recruitment process” to have secured only one appointable candidate for such a critical role.

Liam Byrne, the committee’s chair, said the CMA sits at the heart of whether markets work for consumers or against them. He said that although Mr Gurr is professionally competent to take on the job, ministers must take steps to maximise confidence in the appointment.

“Growth cannot mean greater concentration,” Byrne said. “Investment cannot come at the expense of consumer welfare. And operational independence must be protected in fact, not just in theory.”

The final decision now rests with the Business Secretary, but the committee’s report makes clear that Parliament will be watching closely to ensure that the CMA remains an independent and effective guardian of competition in the UK economy.

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