Evening Briefing Monday 21st 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. Hello, this is your Times Radio Evening Briefing for Monday the 21st of September with me, James Kitchen. The UK's air traffic control chief is facing fresh demands to resign after a second major failure in less than two weeks.

0:46Flights from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Northern England and Bristol have been cancelled and delayed by a connectivity issue that's now been resolved. Ryanair's repeating calls for Nats boss Martin Rolfe to step down or be fired. The UK managing director of Wizz Air, Yvonne Moynihan, told Times Radio we're facing a national crisis. One incident is unfortunate, but multiple incidents in quick succession point to a much deeper problem. And that problem requires urgent scrutiny. I mean, I think it's fair to say at this stage, after four consecutive failures now, that we have a national crisis when it comes to UK airspace.

1:24And passengers will be asking a simple question. If everyone is on heightened alert, then how come we've had another outage? It's being reported Donald Trump has pressured Vladimir Zelensky to halt Ukraine strikes on Russian oil refineries. The senior Ukrainian official told the Financial Times the U.S. president fears the attacks are driving up prices and exacerbating global shortages. The two leaders are preparing to meet at the U.N. General Assembly in New York this week. Meanwhile, several major U.S. news outlets say they won't cover Donald Trump's events today as his row with the media escalates.

2:01CNN, MS Now and Politico are suing his administration after being banned from the White House. The president has accused them of reporting fake news. Niles Stanich is a columnist for The Hill. This is a president who loves television and of course was a television reality TV star before entering politics. And the coverage is like oxygen to him. He lives for the coverage even though he inevitably stirs enormous amounts of controversy with it. So even that coverage being depleted significantly is likely to incur even greater displeasure on his part. The German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has vowed to stay in office after admitting disastrous state election results saw the far right make significant gains.

2:49Exit Bolt suggests his Christian Democratic Union Party won 5 % of the vote in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, with the AfD taking 37%. Heavy losses are predicted in Berlin too. Mark Leonard is the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. Speaking to Times Radio, he said the AFD is benefiting from protest votes. It is a bit like the sort of Brexit effect in the UK, where a lot of people took part in the referendum in 2016 who don't normally vote in general elections. And they have managed to appeal to people who felt very fed up and disillusioned with mainstream politics who think that it's all an establishment stitch-up and they're sort of coming out to give the political class a collective bloody nose.

3:39A second village in England is considering holding a symbolic independence referendum over plans to host asylum seekers at a nearby military base. Barnum in Suffolk is looking to follow the Oxfordshire village of Piddington and over Home Office plans to house migrants in and MOD Bista led to 90 % of locals opting to secede from the UK. Remember, you can follow the Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify and you can listen live to Times Radio Online.

4:10This episode of the 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. PwC turns innovation into implementation so you can accelerate from experiment to scale. Discover more at pwc.co.uk. Who says Halloween only lasts one day? With Wayfair, one night of Halloween becomes a whole season at home.

4:58From larger-than-life yard decor and moody lighting to festive accents for every room in the house, Wayfair has what you need to make Halloween feel like magic all in one place. Because the best Halloween memories aren't made in just one night. They're made all season long. Shop Halloween decor now at Wayfair.com. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home