Afternoon.

It’s Wednesday 9th September: Britain’s air-traffic-control boss has some explaining to do, the government wants to stop children sending nude images from their phones, and oil has hit $100 a barrel again.

Kettle on.

📅 On this day: In 1911, Britain's first scheduled airmail service began, carrying post by plane between Hendon and Windsor. Slightly better day for British aviation than today.

Flights are moving again after yesterday’s huge air-traffic-control failure, but the disruption isn’t over. More than 1,000 flights were cancelled after a technical problem at NATS, the company that manages most of Britain’s air traffic control. Hundreds of thousands of passengers were affected, and airports including Heathrow and Gatwick are warning of further disruption today as airlines get planes and crews back where they’re supposed to be.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has summoned NATS chief Martin Rolfe to explain what went wrong. NATS has ruled out a cyberattack, but hasn't yet established the cause publicly. The awkward bit is that this isn't Britain's first recent air-traffic wobble. A system failure in 2023 caused widespread cancellations and cost airlines around £100m, while another technical problem disrupted flights last summer.

NATS says this failure appears to be different. Either way, Alexander wants assurances that the systems running British airspace are actually up to the job, which feels a reasonable thing to ask of air-traffic-control systems.

Israel has ordered the British consulate in East Jerusalem to close in retaliation for new UK sanctions targeting Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The consulate, which handles Britain's diplomatic relations with the Palestinians, has been told it must close within 30 days. British diplomats working in Ramallah and on a US-led Gaza coordination mission have also reportedly been given seven days to leave.

This follows yesterday's announcement that the UK will ban imports from Israeli settlements. The government is also planning sanctions against people and companies that help finance or build settlements. Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are considered illegal under international law, a position Israel disputes. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband says the measures target the settlements rather than Israel itself and are intended to protect the possibility of a future Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Israel's foreign minister Gideon Saar called the UK measures unacceptable interference and announced the retaliatory measures. So what started as a change in British trade policy has now become a fairly serious diplomatic row.

The government says it will legislate to stop under-18s taking, sending or viewing nude images on smartphones and tablets. Ministers originally gave tech companies three months to introduce the protections voluntarily. That deadline has now passed without an agreement, so the government says it will force companies such as Apple and Google to implement them by law.

The idea is to use technology built into devices to detect nudity and block the image before it can be viewed or shared. The government says this could make it harder for abusers to pressure children into sending sexual images and prevent children from accessing pornography.

There is an obvious question about adults. Their phones wouldn't simply start policing the camera roll: adults would be able to disable the protections after proving their age. The details now need to be turned into legislation, including exactly how the technology and age checks will work. That will be worth watching, because protecting children is the straightforward bit. Doing it without creating a rather enormous privacy headache is trickier.

UK food inflation could rise to 3.9% by Christmas and peak at 6.4% next July, according to a new forecast from the Food and Drink Federation, which represents food manufacturers. It blames higher energy and transport costs, the conflict involving Iran and extreme weather affecting crops in Britain and Europe.

One important caveat: this is an industry forecast, not an official prediction. But after food inflation fell to 1.3% in July, manufacturers are warning that some of the costs they've been absorbing could increasingly find their way onto supermarket shelves.

British supercar maker McLaren is planning a £450m investment in its technology centre in Woking, supporting around 1,000 new UK jobs. That figure includes indirect and agency workers, rather than 1,000 people going directly onto McLaren's payroll. Still, it's a welcome bit of news for Britain's car industry just days after Jaguar Land Rover announced plans to cut 4,000 jobs. McLaren currently employs about 2,500 people and makes all of its cars in the UK.

Researchers have found that people who regularly drink very hot drinks may have a higher risk of developing one particular type of oesophageal cancer. The Oxford-led study included nearly one million UK adults and found people who said they preferred drinks "very hot" had roughly three times the risk of oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma compared with people who preferred them warm.

Cancer Research UK says this particular cancer is relatively uncommon, with an average lifetime risk of around 1% in the UK. The study also found an association with temperature, not tea or coffee themselves, and couldn't measure the actual temperature of every drink. So tea remains on the menu. Just perhaps wait a few minutes until it’s not at a temperature normally associated with molten rock.

Brent crude, the main international benchmark for oil prices, climbed above $100 a barrel this morning for the first time since July. The rise follows another escalation in fighting involving the US and Iran, alongside Houthi attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure, which has increased fears about disruption to oil supplies.

More expensive crude can eventually mean higher petrol, transport and manufacturing costs, feeding into the price of other things too. Which isn't particularly helpful when, as mentioned several paragraphs north, food manufacturers are already worried about inflation.

Beavers could be returning to another corner of England, with conservationists investigating whether parts of Gloucestershire are suitable for a new population. Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust and Forestry England are surveying sites around the Severn Vale, with a release requiring government approval.

Beavers are what's known as "ecosystem engineers": by building dams, they create ponds and wetlands that provide habitats for other wildlife and hold more water in the landscape. That means they could also make some areas more resilient during droughts.

They're actually native to Britain, but were hunted to near-extinction here centuries ago. Beavers have already been living in an enclosure in the Forest of Dean since 2018, where surveys have recorded an increase in biodiversity. So Gloucestershire's latest piece of drought infrastructure may turn out to be a large rodent with excellent teeth.

Have a great day.

See you tomorrow.