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Heavy rain and flood warnings predicted for England and Wales
England and Wales are set to be lashed by persistent heavy rain, with three days of warnings issued by the Met Office. Scores of flood warnings and alerts are already in place for large parts of the country, with more downpours on the way this week.
Yellow weather warnings are already in place for North West England and parts of Wales and Scotland until 8pm on Monday. And now further warning covering South West England and southern Wales has been announced, from 9pm today through to 5pm tomorrow.
The Environmental Agency also still has 28 flood warnings and 96 alerts for much of the UK, with groundwater flooding expected in areas soaked by recent wet weather. The saturated ground means that even areas that avoided the worst of yesterday’s deluge could be at risk of flooding.
The Met Office has warned of disruption in affected areas, including potential flooding of homes and businesses, transport delays nd possible power cuts. The heavy rain is already causing disruption to travel on roads across Greater Manchester with delays reported on the M60 and M61 motorways.
X-rays to check asylum seekers’ age ‘risk harm and are unreliable’
X-rays to check child asylum seekers’ age risk radiation harm and are unreliable, the government has been warned.
An expert committee commissioned by the Home Office concluded that no method proves a person’s exact age, and that tests proposed by ministers are only able to say if migrants’ claimed age is possible, “rather than be used to answer the specific question of whether they are under or over 18”.
In plans first proposed by Priti Patel last year and now backed by her successor Suella Braverman, the government said it would bring in biological tests for some migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats “to help better protect against adults being treated as children”.
The Home Office said that in more than half of disputed cases reviewed by social workers using existing assessments, asylum seekers claiming to be under 18 were found to be adults, and accused them of lying to benefit from enhanced support and protections.
Virgin Orbit investigating why first UK rocket launch failed
Virgin Orbit and the government are working together to investigate why the attempt to launch a rocket into orbit from
UK soil ended in failure.
After taking off from Cornwall, the Virgin Orbit plane flew to 35,000ft over the Atlantic Ocean where it jettisoned the rocket containing nine small satellites towards space. Organisers of the Start Me Up mission said an “anomaly” with the system meant the Launcher One rocket – which was carrying a number of satellites with a variety of civil and defence applications – failed to orbit.
However, the horizontal launch from Spaceport Cornwall is being hailed a success. Grant Shapps said the Government would work closely with Virgin Orbit to investigate the failure. In a statement to MPs, the business secretary, said: “Last night, Virgin Orbit attempted the first orbital launch from Spaceport Cornwall. Unfortunately, the launch was unsuccessful.” PA
Meteor spotted in night sky as residents ‘stunned’
A large meteor was seen streaking through the night sky over the UK on Monday. The Met Office confirmed that a meteor had been spotted after dozens of people took to social media to report what they had seen.
Photographs captured by automatic cameras as part of the UK Meteor Network showed an explosion of light cast across the sky at around 8.01pm. Reports came from around the country. One Twitter user said: “I’ve just seen a stunning meteor burning across the sky. It was so low down and clear and beautiful! Golden coloured.”
Another said they had seen the “most astonishing” meteor from Southampton, while another asked: “Did anyone else see a crazy meteor thing over Bath at about 8pm?”
Blood markers could help identify rare form of Alzheimer’s
A new breakthrough could help medical professionals spot a rare, inherited form of Alzheimer’s disease ten years before symptoms appear in sufferers. Scientists attribute this
potentially groundbreaking claim to the discovery of blood markers in people who are in the very early stages of the neurodegenerative disease.
The tell-tale sign is a protein called GFAP that can appear in the blood samples of such people, say researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The scientists said their findings, published in the journal Brain, could lead to earlier detection of the disease and help slow it down with drugs.
Charlotte Johansson, a doctoral student at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society at the Karolinska Institutet, who is the first author of the study, said: “Our results suggest that GFAP, a presumed biomarker for activated immune cells in the brain, reflects changes in the brain due to Alzheimer’s disease that occur before the accumulation of tau protein and measurable neuronal damage.”
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