Morning briefing Friday 18th 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 Times Radio's morning briefing on Friday the 18th of September. The Archbishop of Canterbury has withdrawn an award presented last week to a Pakistani Muslim cleric for promoting religious tolerance.

0:47Sarah Mullally had faced criticism from MPs and members of the Church of England's General Synod after Hafiz Ashrafi had previously praised Osama bin Lardom. Lambeth Palace confirmed the award had been reconsidered since the ceremony which was held last week on the 25th anniversary of 9-11. The Prime Minister says the UK must fully commit itself to achieving net zero by 2050, amid his warning that Britons could no longer believe they were not affected by climate change. Announcing funding worth almost£30 million for community-led renewable energy projects, Andy Burnham said he was determined to meet the deadline.

1:26His comments come ahead of a controversial decision on approving new drilling in the North Sea, as well as fears by campaigners that the messaging of net zero has become outdated. Doug Parr is a chief scientist for Greenpeace UK. Scientists were playing with the term in the 2000s. It's 20 years old. The issue with it is that it doesn't really tell anybody anything. It doesn't mean the term net zero is wrong. It just means that it doesn't work as a public communication tool. and if we want to move away from it for that reason, that's cool. But we do need to keep it as a way of framing what we're trying to achieve.

2:01Poland's Prime Minister is warning there is a real risk of Russian drones crashing on NATO territory. Donald Tusk says Moscow is planning to stage hybrid attacks disguised as accidental strikes to test the alliance's mutual defence pact. Oana Popescu-Zamfir is a senior research fellow for European Security at RUSI, the Royal United Services Institute. She says NATO is still reluctant to attribute such incidents to Russia. Politically, that entails the will to then take action. And Russia is essentially pushing forward in this grey space where it very much depends on political will, whether we choose to look reality in the face and name this as an aggression, or we try to de-escalate.

2:49And the musician who created some of the greatest riffs of the 1980s has sold virtually his entire guitar collection.

3:09The Smiths' lead guitarist and songwriter Johnny Marr said the auction at Christie's in London exceeded all his expectations as it fetched£3.6 million. More than 100 lots featured in the sale, which included buyers from 34 countries. Tim Allen, the presenter of the Cultural Crunch podcast, was there. He says Ma had a profound influence on many other musicians. Now Gallagher was starting off in a Manchester band a few years after the Smiths and Johnny very kindly sent down a load of his precious guitars to the early 80s jamming sessions and that Rickenbacker ends up on the cover of their first single, Supersonic.

3:47And there's more on these stories throughout the day on Times Radio.

4:13you.

4:20and 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. The Story Podcast brings you the best of the Times and the Sunday Times journalism with one story told in depth every day. I met a good contact of mine and I saw a document which indicated what was happening. Someone came up and pressed a note into my hand which I opened it and said, dear friend, please tell the truth about what you see here. Join me, Manveen Rana. And me, Luke Jones, on The Story. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.