Morning briefing Wednesday 11th March

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. This is Times Radio's Morning Briefing on Wednesday the 11th of March. Iran has launched a new wave of strikes against Israeli and American targets in the Middle East overnight.

0:45Iranian state media said the attacks were the most intense and the heaviest since the start of the conflict. Earlier, the US claimed to have destroyed 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, and the White House said it will be President Trump who will decide when Iran has surrendered. David Hale, a former US special envoy for the Middle East, says it's time for Washington to move beyond such rhetoric. Iran's not going to go away. And the idea, you know, the rhetoric on the Trump side sometimes can get a little bit overheated. The idea that we can bring a country to a point of unconditional surrender is the kind of thing you do after you occupy a country.

1:24It's not what happens after this kind of campaign. And I think the sooner we move past that kind of rhetoric, the better. Some of the largest producers of oil in the Gulf region say they have only a few days before their storage tanks reach capacity, and they are forced to cut production more substantially. Rose Kalanich is the Middle East Programme Director for the Defence Priorities Think Tank. She says the mere threat of an attack in the Strait of Hormuz is enough for Iran to carry on disrupting what is a key oil shipping route. The threat to oil is from drones, it's from missiles, and it's from limpet mines that speedboats can attach to tankers in the strait.

2:01And all of that is just very difficult. They're essentially guerrilla tactics, right? They don't require a lot of resources to muster and to carry out. And it does appear that simply the threat of that is enough to get tankers to stop. The Home Secretary has approved a request by the Metropolitan Police to ban a pro-Iranian regime rally planned for this Sunday, as well as counter-protest marches. Shabana Mahmood says doing so is necessary to prevent serious public disorder. A detailed statement from the Met explaining their decision said the annual Al-Quds march raises unique risks and challenges.

2:37Course reforms, which would see jury trials limited to cases with a likely sentence of at least three years, have been supported in the Commons. The government had been braced for a rebellion, but many of those with concerns opted to abstain at the bill's second reading last night and MPs voted in favour with a majority of 101. Ten Labour MPs are known to have voted against the government but one who backed the bill is Pam Cox. Speaking to Times Radio, she said a range of measures is needed to combat the backlog of cases in the Crown Court system. An increase in sitting days, that's why we need to recruit magistrates, why we need to fast-track rape and sexual assault cases, which we'll do through the changes to the national listing system.

3:19that's why we need digitisation. I mean, the Justice Committee spent a year and a half on this and we need reform across the board. And wildlife will feature on the next series of Bank of England banknotes and the public will vote on which animals and birds will appear. It spells the end for the sometimes controversial choice of historical characters who've appeared on notes for more than 50 years. The bank says images of wildlife would be more difficult to counterfeit. There's more on these stories throughout the day on Times Radio.

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