Evening briefing Tuesday 17th June

0:00Hi, I'm Danny Fortson from the Times Tech Podcast, which is currently sponsored by ServiceNow. ServiceNow describes itself as an AI control tower for business reinvention, connecting systems, data, and AI so workflows more smoothly across organizations. The platform integrates with different clouds, models, and data sources, bringing them together in one place. To learn more about how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.

0:33This is your Times Evening Briefing on Tuesday 17th June. MPs are debating an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that would decriminalise abortion. If passed, women who terminate their pregnancies after the current 24-week time limit would no longer go through a criminal investigation. There are two amendments on the cards from Labour MPs Tonya Antoniazzi and Stella Creasy. As Creasy told Times Radio, this is a crucial time. We need to remember this moment because both the concern about investigation and prosecution into people involved in abortion will remain. After all, if we don't pass new clause 20, then there is no law removing those laws that have been used to target and prosecute women and medics.

1:15But also the increasing attacks on access to abortion will continue and abortion will become a very politicised issue in this country. The US has reportedly sent extra planes to the UK and Europe as Israel and Iran continue to exchange fire. Earlier, President Trump said he was after something better than a ceasefire. Former British ambassador to Iran Nick Hopton says he's not sure the collapse of the Iranian regime would lead to a more Western-leaning nation. Because the likelihood is that actually you would have a doubling down of the military element within the regime and maybe a more hardline approach in the short term.

1:51But this conflict has a long way to run and one can only hope that there will be a move towards de-escalation and negotiation. Israel says it had no choice but to launch strikes on Iran, claiming it was proceeding dramatically towards a nuclear weapon. Tehran says its infrastructure is legitimate. The author of Review in Two Grooming Gangs has urged people to keep calm about drawing conclusions from data on the ethnicity of suspects and defenders. Baroness Casey has been speaking to MPs this morning about the disproportionality of Asian men in the data collected by some police forces in England.

2:25Conservative leader Kemi Badenok also held a press conference on the issue. Local inquiries and investigations launched by the Home Office, independent reports, independent inquiries, a gang's task force as recently as 2023 finding about 807 perpetrators and 4 ,000 victims just last year. This is what made me decide that a national inquiry was critical, that no one has joined the dots, that the scale of this is much bigger than any of us envisaged, even as we were looking at this. Senior military officers, including the future head of the Armed Forces Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, are reportedly being gagged by number 10 under rules issued across government.

3:07Sources close to the Land Warfare Conference at the Royal United Services Institute this week have called it unprecedented interference from Downing Street. Number 10 is understood to have issued guidance preventing military personnel and officials from speaking at events where there's a minister present. Since John Healy will be speaking at RUCI, none of the British military personnel can speak on the record. And health alerts have been issued as forecasters predict a heatwave is on the way. Temperatures in some parts could be in the high 20s and low 30s between now and Sunday. And you can follow The Times News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online.

3:43That's your Times evening briefing on Tuesday, the 17th of June.

3:59Hi, I'm Danny Fortson from the Times Tech podcast, which is currently sponsored by ServiceNow. ServiceNow describes itself as an AI control tower for business reinvention, connecting systems, data, and AI so workflows more smoothly across organizations. The platform integrates with different clouds, models, and data sources, bringing them together in one place. To learn more about how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. The youth mental health crisis is growing, and social media is a major driver. Kids are spending up to 9 hours a day on screens, often unsupervised, and studies show a direct link to anxiety, depression, and even suicidal thoughts.

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