Evening Briefing Monday 6th April

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 6th April with me, James Kitchen. Donald Trump has warned Iran is going to pay a big price for making him very upset, saying if he had his choice, he'd take the oil.

0:46It comes as Iranian state media reports Tehran's rejected a Pakistani-mediated proposal for a 40-day pause in fighting, adding it wants a permanent end to the war. The country has accused the US of destroying the path to diplomacy, warning any negotiations are incompatible with ultimatums and threats to commit war crimes. President Trump has threatened to strike Iranian critical infrastructure and blow up the whole country if the regime fails to open the Strait of Hormuz by tomorrow evening. At a White House Easter event, the U.S. president said his deadline is final. They've made a proposal and it's a significant proposal.

1:25It's a significant step. It's not good enough, but it's a very significant step. The former national security advisor of Pakistan, Mohd Youssef, insists progress is being made behind the scenes. Speaking to Times Radio, he laid out four proposals being discussed to stop the fighting. Number one, they have to agree on the ceasefire being formal. Number two, the US has to guarantee that Israel will abide by it. Number three, Iran has to guarantee that its non-state allied actors in the region will abide by it. And number four, essentially, is that the Strait of Hormuz, there has to be some agreement on how it is going to be managed in the short run before they can get to a long-term solution.

2:12The Times has revealed facial recognition software will be deployed on drones in the channel to help prosecute people smugglers organising migrant crossings. Border Force is trialling military-grade radar-enabled cameras that can identify individuals up to half a mile away. Almost 4 ,000 migrants have crossed so far this year, down 28 % compared with the same period last year. Times Radio's newsroom reporter is Olly Cole. They've been tested on people going into buildings, getting changed, getting shaved, changing their glasses, putting a hat on, coming back at it, and it picks it up that it's exactly the same person.

2:47And the reason they want to do that is basically a lot of people getting in these boats who are smuggling people across the channel are changing their appearance at the last minute if they see an English or French vessel coming near them. The Times understands ministers are reviewing Kanye West's permission to enter the UK. The government has been urged to ban the rapper from arriving in Britain to perform at Wireless Festival. He's been booked to headline all three nights in London's Finsbury Park in July, despite being condemned for anti-Semitism. The crew of Artemis II are just hours away from reaching depths of space and never before experienced by humans.

3:24The astronauts will be flying past the far side of the Moon at 11.45 tonight UK time, losing communication with Earth. David Whitehouse is the author of The Moon, a biography and former consultant to NASA. The most dangerous part of the mission now is the re-entry on Friday, because this is the second time this spacecraft has re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. The first time was uncrewed several years ago and they had problems with the heat shield. Now, the heat shield on Artemis II is identical to the one they had problems with, and the way they are coping with that is by altering the trajectory in which the crew come back towards Earth.

4:01Nobody who goes into space, and this crew particularly, goes into space without knowing the realities of the fact that it's dangerous. And remember, you can follow The Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify, and you can listen live to Times Radio Online.

4:19This 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. Do you keep hearing podcast ads, like this one for example, but always wonder how you actually get involved with them for your own brand or organization?

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