Afternoon briefing Monday 15th June

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. Welcome to the Times Radio afternoon briefing for Monday 15th June. Israel says it will continue to occupy parts of southern Lebanon.

0:43That's despite Pakistan saying a peace deal between the US and Iran includes an end to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. The memorandum of understanding is due to be signed in Switzerland on Friday. The Sunday Times' Mark Urban says there are a couple of clear downsides. What it won't do is deal with the underlying issue with nuclear weapons. And of course, it won't bring about regime change in Iran, which some people in Israel and the United States were very keen to trigger when they started this on the 28th of February. Sir Keir Starmer says children under 16 will be banned from social media platforms, including TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram.

1:26It follows a similar move by Australia in December. Features which allow kids to chat to strangers on gaming platforms will also be stopped. The US has criticised the ban, saying it could harm freedom of speech. But Starmer says that's not right. How many people in this room are prepared to defend adult strangers contacting children online? How many people are prepared to stand up and say, that's free speech and I wouldn't do anything about it? Any more than you'd say we wouldn't take measures to stop that happening in the offline world. I think it's extraordinary that somehow we've got ourselves to a position where, until now, we've shrugged our shoulders.

2:06Amy Ruffell from a group called Smartphone Free Childhood says it's progress but not perfect. I think it would be naive to say that this ban today is a silver bullet. I think it's the first step towards changing a social norm that we know as parents, and in fact young people and children are telling us themselves as well, that social media and the amount of time they spend on it is not serving them in a positive way. So this is a step towards changing the social norm where ever younger children are spending more and more and more hours online in unsafe for their age group areas. The son of Norway's Crown Princess, Meta Marit, has been found guilty of two counts of rape and sentenced to four years in prison.

2:4529-year-old Marius Borg Hojbi joined the royal family when his mother married Crown Prince Harkon in 2001. During a seven-week trial, a court heard about videos of sexual encounters. One alleged rape is said to have taken place in the basement of the Crown Prince's family home. A new attempt to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales has been launched. It ran out of time in the Lords earlier this year. Labour MP Lauren Edwards says she will reintroduce it to the Commons. She says it's still worth pursuing despite a possible change of Prime Minister in the coming months. It's certainly not a distraction for those people who are suffering at the moment and are fearful about what might happen to them because they don't have the choice to end their lives with dignity and they would benefit from this bill in the sense that they have a terminal illness.

3:33They're in a lot of pain with only six months to live. 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. AI is everywhere. In the news, in our hands, but return on investment, not so much. So how do you get beyond the hype and deliver AI that powers reinvention and growth across your business? Strong foundations unlock AI's potential. That's why PwC takes you further with tech, strengthening the data quality, processes and workflows that shape how well AI performs. PwC turns innovation into implementation so you can accelerate from experiment to scale.

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