Your morning briefing: What you should know for Monday, February 24

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Jason Collie24 February 2020

No respite for flood-hit communities and snow also forecast

Snow falls are expected to cause problems across Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England this morning while warnings for further flooding have been issued.

Even Scotland’s lower regions are expected to get a covering of snow on Monday as the new working week begins with more stormy weather.

Further south, a fresh severe flood warning, meaning an imminent danger to life, has been issued for the River Severn in Shrewsbury, with the Environment Agency warned of ongoing flooding dangers across England.

This morning there were 92 flood alerts and 182 flood warnings across England.

Tuesday and Wednesday are expected to be more settled, but colder, while a fresh deluge of rain is forecaset for Friday.

Four Brits rescued from quarantined ship have coronavirus

Confirmation of the cases brings the total number of people to be diagnosed with the Covid-19 strain in the UK to 13.

The four, who are the first diagnoses in people brought back to the UK on repatriation flights, caught the virus on the Diamond Princess cruise ship while it was stationed off the coast of Japan for more than two weeks, England’s chief medical officer said.

Meanwhile, the death toll in China passed 2,500 earlier today, with the country’s authorities also reporting 77,345 people had tested positive.

Assange extradition hearing to start

Julian Assange will today formally begin his fight against being extradited to the US, where he faces accusations he helped leak hundreds of thousands of classified documents.

The 48-year-old Wikileaks founder is wanted in America on 18 charges over the publication of US cables a decade ago and if found guilty could face a 175-year prison sentence.

The Australian is accused of working with former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to leak classified documents.

Labour leadership voting begins

Labour members will begin voting for Jeremy Corbyn’s successor from today.

Ballots begin opening on Monday amid a largely cordial campaign between Sir Keir Starmer, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy, with all three saying yesterday they would offer the losing leadership candidates jobs in their shadow cabinet.

Members and party supporters who have signed up for a fee will begin receiving their ballots on Monday, with batches being sent out by email and post throughout the week.

The winner should be declared on April 4.

Tributes to Flack dominate Love Island final

The last episode of the winter series of the ITV2 dating show was dedicated to the programme’s former host just over a week after was found dead.

Finley Tapp and Paige Turley have crowned the winners of the first ever witner series of the show, each taking home £25,000.

On this day…

1582: Pope Gregory XIII announced the new Gregorian calendar, replacing the Julian calendar. It was not adopted by Britain until 1752, when a "loss" of 11

days had to be made up.

1848: France became a republic for the second time, following the abdication of King Louis Philippe.

1887: The first two cities to be linked by telephone were Paris and Brussels.

1920: American-born Nancy Astor became the first woman to speak in the House of Commons following her election as an MP two months earlier.

1923: The Flying Scotsman locomotive began hauling scheduled services between London and Scotland.

1932: Malcolm Campbell in Bluebird beat his own land speed record at Daytona Beach by reaching 253.96 mph.

1938: A nylon toothbrush, the first commercial nylon product, went on sale in New Jersey.

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