Afternoon Briefing Tuesday 10th June

0:00Welcome to the Times Afternoon Briefing on Tuesday 10 June. The cabinet minister has refused to apologise for the government's decision to cut the winter fuel payments for pensioners. Chancellor Rachel Reeves performed a major U-turn yesterday and restored to the benefit to 9 million older people. But the Energy Secretary at Miliband has told Times Radio there's no need to say sorry. We're not going to apologise for the actions we took to stabilise the economy. That's what happened last year. The Chancellor came into office, saw a massive black hole in the nation's finances. She took a whole series of measures.

0:35What's happened since then is two things. One, we have stabilised the public finances. And secondly, we've listened to people. Now, we haven't changed the principle that the winter fuel allowance should be means tested, but we have listened to people on the threshold. The US military is temporarily deploying 700 Marines to Los Angeles as protests continue following a series of raids targeting immigrants who don't have a legal right to be in America. The Pentagon says they'll be protecting federal property until another 2 ,000 National Guards arrive in the city, taking the total to 4 ,000. Alex Michelson is the host of a politics TV show in California called The Issue Is.

1:15He's told Times Radio that irregular migration is widespread there. California has more illegal immigrants than any other state in the country. 2.4 million illegal immigrants in California at least. 17 % of the population are undocumented. And so that's a huge issue here. Eurostar is planning direct services to Germany and Switzerland. It wants to run trains between London, St Pancras and both Frankfurt and Geneva from the early 2030s. Ben Clatworthy, the Times' travel correspondent, explains why the destinations have been chosen. Both of them because they're financial hubs. Geneva is a very popular ski route for planes in the winter.

1:57It's the key gateway to many French ski resorts and also Swiss resorts. And Frankfurt is a very popular city break destination. Their market has always been locations where people do both business and leisure. Paris, Brussels more for business, but also Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Frederick Forsyth, who wrote The Day of the Jackal, has died at the age of 86. The former RAF pilot and journalist said he wrote the thriller in 35 days, writing 12 pages each day, but he'd been planning it for 12 years. Craig Cable wrote a biography of Forsyth and says his research was meticulous. He used to call me when I was in the MOD and ask questions such as, you know, how many British soldiers have died in Northern Ireland conflict?

2:43I think it's 28. Can you check for me? It ended up being 29. That was the, you know, the minutiae he went into. And you can follow The Times News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online.