Evening 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 evening briefing for Wednesday the 9th of September. The Metropolitan Police is launching an investigation into donations made to Reform UK.

0:46Allegations were made last week that the party breached rules around political donations using foreign funding. Two of Nigel Farage's closest allies, James Orr and Dan Dukes, were suspended from the party after allegations were broadcast last Friday on Channel 4. Olly Cole is a newsroom reporter at The Times. There was already an inquiry looking at certain parts of the donations and funding of Reform UK after referral from the Electoral Commission a little while ago. So the Met Special Investigations team is now going to consider this latest revelation as part of that ongoing investigation. Reform say they will comply fully with the investigation and won't comment during it.

1:33Downing Street says it has full confidence in Martin Rolfe, the boss of Britain's main air traffic control provider. More than 330 ,000 passengers have been affected by a technical fault today and yesterday. The managing director of Whiz Air, Yvonne Monaghan, says airlines are losing confidence. I'm very surprised at that and it would seem like an easy pass for him after a number of own goals. Three separate incidents over three summers, particularly in August, September time, which is a very busy period for airlines. So, you know, the question is not whether failures can happen. The question is whether enough has been done since the previous incidents to prevent another nationwide disruption.

2:15The Transport Secretaries called for an independent review into air traffic control issues. Heidi Alexanders told MPs she does not believe the issues yesterday were unavoidable. A top safety researcher at Anthropic has warned that AI is advancing so quickly he believes there's a greater than 10 % chance it could kill all humans within the next decade. Even Hubinger wrote that the risk from the models which currently exist was low, but he was worried the technology might develop and improve itself soon to the point where it posed an existential risk to humanity. It comes after the Financial Times reported Anthropic withheld its latest model from the UK's AI Safety Institute before release.

2:53Former Doctor Who actor Noel Clarke has been charged with a series of sexual offences against five women in connection with alleged offending that took place between 2007 and 2016. The 50-year-old has been charged with two counts of sexual assault, three counts of voyeurism and one count of exposure. Clark is set to appear in court on the 21st of October. And an anti-immigration protest in Portsmouth was cancelled after it mistook the Pakistan under-19 cricket team at a hotel for asylum seekers. After a large anti-immigration protest took place on Sunday, the presence of the bus and a group of young Asian men was circulated online, which brought a group of about 40 to 50 protesters back to the streets near a Marriott hotel on Tuesday evening.

3:33Leader of the Reform UK group on Hampshire County Council, George Madgwick, wrote on Facebook that the crowd of between 40 to 50 departed within minutes after he had confirmed the group's identity with one of the coaching staff. You can hear more of these stories throughout the evening on Times Radio.

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