UK weather: Rare red warning in place for third day in a row as Storm Babet continues to batter the UK
Storm Babet is set to continue battering the UK with torrential downpours on Saturday – with another red “danger to life” warning in place for parts of eastern Scotland.
England, Wales and Northern Ireland have had warnings in place since Babet first hit on Wednesday, but eastern Scotland has suffered the worst of the storm which has left three people dead.
The council in Angus, where two of the victims died, said it was in uncharted territory dealing with “extreme and really challenging conditions” on Friday – with people rescued from 60 homes in and around Brechin.
Read more: Full list of warnings – follow live storm updates
The village of Edzell was completely cut off with no emergency access except via helicopter, the council said.
A rare red weather warning is in place for parts of eastern Scotland for a third day on Saturday, with the country’s First Minister Humza Yousaf to warn: “We have not seen the last of this.”
An amber warning for rain, meaning “extensive flooding to homes and businesses is possible”, is in place for parts of northeast Scotland covering Aberdeen and Cromarty.
Meanwhile, there is a yellow weather warning for wind, meaning there is a small chance of fast-flowing or deep floodwater, in place in the northeast of England.
Across England, there were over 365 flood warnings and 248 alerts on Saturday morning, while 55,000 people were left without power on Friday as a result of the storm.
Around 45,000 of those were reconnected to the grid as of the evening, the Energy Networks Association said.
The warnings in place for Saturday
A woman is helped to safety in Brechin, Scotland
The Met Office said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the highest rainfall total on Friday was 84mm in Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
Met forecaster Jonathan Vautrey said: “The focus of the rainfall from Saturday shifts back northwards over towards eastern and northern Scotland.
“Some parts of those areas have seen about a month and a half’s worth of rain already, but there’s another band that’s forecast to track its way northwards over the course of the night and push its way towards relatively similar areas.
“So there are further red and amber rain warnings in force for Saturday, with the potential to push those areas close towards two months of rain in the span of three days.”
Mr Vautrey said a yellow wind warning across eastern Scotland and north-east England could bring “gales in excess of 60 to 70 miles per hour”, but added: “That is going to work its way off (the coast) throughout Saturday, so from a wind aspect there will be some improvement.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
River turns into raging torrent as Storm Babet hits.
Babet leaves three people dead
A man in his 60s died after getting caught in fast-flowing flood water in the town of Cleobury Mortimer in Shropshire on Friday.
Police Scotland previously said a falling tree hit a van near Forfar in Angus on Thursday evening, killing the 56-year-old driver.
A 57-year-old woman also died on Thursday after being swept into a river in Angus.
Meanwhile, a major search was under way following reports of a man trapped in a vehicle in floodwater in Aberdeenshire.
Police Scotland said the alarm was raised at 3am on Friday near the village of Marykirk.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Residents in tears as severe floods hit Brechin
It comes as the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) warned a second major river could breach in the country on Saturday.
Aberdeenshire Council has said the latest SEPA modelling indicates a considerable risk of flooding on the River Don at Inverurie, Kemnay and Kintore between 10am and 2pm.
Hundreds of homes in Scotland have already been flooded after the River South Esk breached its banks.
A man uses his homemade boat to rescue elderly residents from their home in the village of Debenham, Suffolk
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Plane skids off runway at Leeds Bradford Airport
Rural communities cut off
Leeds Bradford Airport has said it is planning to reopen at 10am today. The airport closed on Friday after high winds forced a passenger plane to skid off a runway.
Flooding caused 70-minute delays on the A1 near Grantham on Friday, National Highways said, while further south, Suffolk declared a major incident as Storm Babet caused “major flooding” across the county.
The rural village of Debenham was cut off by flooding, residents said, while tractors were being used to rescue people caught in the flood water.
A man walks through sea foam in Seaburn, Sunderland, as Storm Babet batters the country
Waves crash on coastline in Scarborough during Storm Babet
Around 50 people were sheltering in the local leisure centre there and sleeping on crash mats, staff said.
Elsewhere fire services in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire shared pictures on X of vehicles semi-submerged in water after drivers were rescued.
Clive Stanbrook, area manager at Derbyshire Fire & Rescue Service, told BBC Breakfast on Saturday more than 100 people had been rescued on Friday, including 20 people from a care home in Duffield.
The “unprecedented” weather event has already forced some residents in eastern Scotland to evacuate their homes, cut off rural communities, and caused roads and bridges to collapse.
The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.
The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”
Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.
“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.
Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.
However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.
Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”
He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.
“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”
Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.
As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.
Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”
Sir Keir Starmer picks up paper from the UK-US trade deal after Donald Trump dropped it at the G7 summit. Pic: Reuters
The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.
Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.
Read more:
G7 summit ‘all about the Donald’ – analysis
Scrambled G7 agenda as leaders race to de-escalate Israel-Iran conflict
In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.
Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.
Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
Read more on grooming gangs:
What we do and don’t know from the data
A timeline of the scandal
Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike