Afternoon Briefing Thursday 19th June

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1:21Welcome to the Times Afternoon Briefing on Thursday the 19th of June. Israel's defence minister says Iran's supreme leader cannot continue to exist. Israel Katz made the comments following another wave of Iranian missiles, one of which hit a hospital in southern Israel. He says Ali Khamenei has made the destruction of Israel his mission and the IDF has been told he should absolutely not continue to exist. It's understood President Trump told senior aides late on Tuesday he was approving a plan to attack Iran. The Wall Street Journal says he's holding off, though, to see whether Tehran will give up its nuclear program.

1:58Stephen Erlinger, chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe for The New York Times, has told Times Radio there is resistance to U.S. action within the administration. There are lots of people, including his vice president, J.D. Vance, who say, why do we want to get involved in another Mideast war? Look what happened in Iraq. Look what a mess that turned out to be. Look at Afghanistan, which at least was more justifiable. Last thing we want to do is get into a war with a great big Middle Eastern country. Energy bill discounts of up to£150 will be extended to another 2.7 million households to help with fuel costs next winter.

2:37The extension to the warm home discount means every bill payer on means-tested benefits will qualify. Energy Minister Miata Fambula has told Times Radio how much it's going to cost. It is in the region of about£400 million, but that£400 million has been covered by savings that we found elsewhere in the energy system. So we've been working with Ofgem to, for example, find savings in the operational cost that energy suppliers use. The health spending watchdog is standing by an earlier decision to reject the use of two Alzheimer's drugs on the NHS. NICE says the benefits are too small to justify the cost.

3:13estimated at up to£1 billion a year. Shaheed Chowdhury is the medical director at the company producing one of the drugs, Lakanamab. He's told Times Radio there are various theories about what causes Alzheimer's. One of those theories is that there are sort of build-up of proteins in the brain. These are known as plaques, and Lakanamab is a medicine that's been shown to help the clearance of those plaques, which then eventually, from the clinical trials, what we were able to see in those patients who are in the early stages of their Alzheimer's disease that the progression to sort of the more moderate stages of disease was then longer.

3:51Lecturers say they're scared of being cancelled or even attacked for teaching controversial views. The Office for Students found one in five felt pressure from senior staff to not offend students. Gender, race and international affairs such as the Middle East conflict were the three main areas of contention. Arif Ahmed is from the Office for Students. The fundamental purpose of a university is nothing other than the pursuit of knowledge. And it's utterly essential to that purpose that you'd be completely free to discuss all kinds of ideas, including and perhaps especially when it comes to really important social, political, religious questions, ones that you might initially find offensive or that others might also find shocking and distressing.

4:30And you can follow The Times News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online.

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