Evening briefing Tuesday 3rd March

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0:37This is the Times Radio evening briefing for Tuesday, the 3rd of March. Donald Trump has again criticised Sir Keir Starmer and the slow response to American requests to use the Diego Garcia Air Base. He's been telling reporters in the Oval Office he's not happy with the UK. That island that you read about, the lease, he made it for whatever reason, he made a lease of the island. Somebody came and took it away from him. And it's taken three, four days for us to work out where we can land there. It would have been much more convenient landing there as opposed to flying many extra hours. So we are very surprised.

1:11This is not Winston Churchill that we're dealing with. Earlier, the Prime Minister announced HMS Dragon, a warship, will be deployed to Cyprus. Sir Keir Starmer says helicopters with counter-drone capabilities will also be sent to protect British military personnel on the island from Iranian and Hezbollah strikes. Larissa Brown is the Times' defence editor. There are quite a lot of critics who are saying, why is the government waiting until now to announce this? They knew that there was a danger that the US were going to carry out strikes on Iran, and then they had this drone attack, the RAF Akritiri in Cyprus on Sunday, and this should have been decided earlier.

1:47The US military says it has carried out over 1 ,700 strikes on Iran in the last four days. A couple from East Sussex, held in a notorious Tehran prison, have described the sounds of jets and bombs shaking the building. Lindsay and Craig Foreman were sentenced to 10 years for espionage after arriving in the country on a motorcycling holiday. They told their son that one bomb punctured the windows and ceiling of Aveen Prison. In other news, in the spring statement, the Chancellor has insisted her government has strengthened the economy, despite the OBR downgrading growth forecasts for this year.

2:18The budget watchdog has also warned the country's tax burden is to reach a record post-war high, and that spending on welfare, including pensions, is to rise by a fifth before the end of this parliament. Rachel Reeves told the Commons she has the right economic plan for the country and has restored stability in an uncertain world. Stability is the single most important precondition for economic growth. That is why we have committed to a single major fiscal event a year, limiting major policy changes to the budget and giving businesses and households the certainty that they need. Today, the new forecasts from the Office of Budget Responsibility show that our plan is the right one.

3:01A judge says all trials of those charged with supporting Palestine action have been put on hold. Chief Magistrate Paul Goldsprink says cases will be reviewed again at the end of July. The government is challenging a high court ruling that banning the group under the Terrorism Act was unlawful. An inquest in Sheffield has heard that a grandmother who died four months after contracting rabies on holiday was only diagnosed after a psychiatrist was called in. Yvonne Ford was scratched by a stray dog in Morocco, but was referred to mental health services as doctors struggled to assess her deteriorating symptoms.

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