Evening Briefing Friday 12th 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. Hello, this is your Times Radio Evening Breathing for Friday the 12th of June with me, Jim's Kitchen. Washington has urged Sakhir Starmer to boost Britain's military strength with urgency, scale and determination.

0:46The U.S. intervention comes after the Defense Secretary and Armed Forces Minister dramatically resigned yesterday, accusing the Prime Minister of putting the nation's security at risk. Sakhir Starmer says he's made hard-edged decisions to increase defense spending, insisting it will be his number one priority. The Times' defense editor Larissa Brown says the PM will face a tough time at next month's NATO summit. Starmer is going to have to go to the leaders' summit. Donald Trump will be there too. And Donald Trump will be looking at all the member states and whether they've hit their capability targets, whether they've outlined a path to reaching 3.5 % of defence spending by 2035.

1:28And at the moment, Starmer's going to be going to that and having nothing to show. The final text of a lasting peace deal between Iran and the US has been reached. That's according to Pakistan's Prime Minister. Shabazz Sharif says Islamabad is working closely with both sides to finalise the next steps. The US President Donald Trump earlier criticised what he called inaccurate reports about the terms of the deal. 72 people have been arrested for supporting the prescribed group Palestine Action at a demonstration in south-east London. Four people were being sentenced at Woolwich Crown Court for a raid on an Israel-based defence firm's factory near Bristol.

2:08The activists caused an estimated£1 million in damage after destroying computers and drones. The Prime Minister has led tributes to the British artist David Hockney, who's died at the age of 88. In a statement, Sakhir Starmer said his vivid and instantly recognisable work influenced generations of artists. The Yorkshire-born painter is considered to be one of the most celebrated artists of the past century, having driven the pop art movement of the 1960s. His painting, Portrait of an Artist, broke records when it sold at auction for£70 million in 2018. Speaking to Times Radio, Hockney's biographer Christopher Simon Sykes called his friend a brilliant draftsman.

2:47I watched him many times in Yorkshire, just sitting at his easel painting trees, say trees. I remember he loved the trees when they were just starting in bloom. He used to say they looked like huge pieces of broccoli. And it was really a lesson to watch him. Elon Musk has become the world's first ever trillionaire after his SpaceX company made the biggest stock market debut in history, Speaking as markets in New York open, Mr. Musk says when he started the business, he didn't think it would succeed. If people had told me this was going to happen, I was like, man, you must be smoking some really good crack.

3:35Because I think this company is going to fail. Remember, you can follow the Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify and you can listen live to Times Radio Online.

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