Afternoon briefing Wednesday 9th September

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 the Times Radio afternoon briefing for Wednesday the 9th of September. The COO of Ryanair has told Times Radio the air traffic control organisation Nats has failed to invest in its system while rewarding shareholders, causing thousands of delayed flights and costing them millions of pounds.

0:52Neil McMahan was asked if he thought Nats CEO Martin Rolfe could stay in post. Absolutely not. We had the same flight planning processing issue in 2023. Martin Rolfe promised that it could never happen again he went on the transport committee he promised the CAA all the recommendations were allegedly done and yet here we are less than three years later with another flight planning processing problem and as a result thousands of flights get cancelled Mr Rolfe says he's taken full responsibility and that a very thorough investigation will go on into the technical failure at least 250 flights have been cancelled this morning after more than a thousand yesterday today.

1:32Times Radio's Callum MacDonald was caught up in the disruption at Heathrow earlier this morning. If I look at the screens behind me, there are loads of cancellations of flights already this morning. Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, later in the day, Athens, Ibiza, Warsaw. There are heaps of cancellations on British Airways already confirmed on these boards. And at the moment, the last sort of disruption I can see on that board is the flight that's scheduled to go to Glasgow at nine. And it's already saying it's delayed till after 3pm. The Deputy Conservative Leader Alex Burkhart has said the government's sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank are going to make life for people in Britain more difficult in coming years.

2:09Over the course of the past few years, MI5, working with the Israelis, have managed to prevent a number of terrorist attacks on our streets. And that is the support that Israel gives this country. Whilst I understand, as I say, there are settlements that have gone up that should not have gone up, bringing in sanctions that doesn't change that, but does start to change the relationship we have between our country and Israel, is not good for this country. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband says it's ripe for Britain to call out injustice and that most British people would support the sanctions. One of the world's leading AI companies did not submit its latest model to be tested by the UK government's Security Institute before its release.

2:55Anthropic only made its Claude Mythos 5.1 model available to US vetting organisations. That's the first time it had bypassed the UK's AI Security Institute. It was designed specifically for cyber security and life sciences. New powers to tackle young people wearing balaclavas to intimidate members of the public in Nottingham City Centre are set to come into force next week. The powers will include£70 on-the-spot fines, confiscation and referral to an immediate justice programme requiring community work. And England men's head coach Steve Borthwick is expected to sign a new deal until 2028. It's to avoid uncertainty ahead of next year's Rugby World Cup.

3:33Meanwhile, his players will take the field with a back-of-shirt sponsor for the first time this autumn. Lloyds Bank are paying the RFU£5 million a year to have their logo above the players' names. You can hear more of these stories throughout the afternoon on Times Radio.

3:54The Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwC. AI is everywhere. In the news, in our hands, but return on investment, not so much. So how do you get beyond the hype and deliver AI that powers reinvention and growth across your business? Strong foundations unlock AI's potential. That's why PwC takes you further with tech, strengthening the data quality, processes and workflows that shape how well AI performs.

4:34Hi, I'm Katie Prescott from the Times Tech Podcast. AI is already changing business and medicine, but could it also change the way we look after our own health? In a special episode in Paid Partnership with Vitality, we look at how AI, wearables and everyday health data could help shift healthcare. from treating illness to preventing it. Listen to the Times Tech podcast wherever you get your podcasts.