14/02/2014 Newsround

the challenge. We are going to catch up with two Spanish superstars. See

ya. Playlist Morning. Leah here with

Friday morning's top stories. Coming up: JK finishes a script for a spin

off Harry Potter movie. And the robots built with

inspiration from termites! First up, most of us had a calmer

night but another band of stormy weather is already on its way, with

rain and high winds hitting the South West of England this morning.

17 severe flood warnings are in place across the UK and engineers

are still working to restore power to some of the thousands of homes

that were cut off on Wednesday. Let's go live to Ayshah who is in

Chertsey, Surrey. Thank you. Yes, this is near the

River Thames. I have just walked over the bridge and the River Thames

is gushing through. There is loads of water. Places that were flooded

are still flooded as the water is not going anywhere. I am by a flood

defence which was built yesterday by the Environment Agency. This is

Allison from that organisation. What is this here for? When we have

flooding to the extent we have now, we use a lot of temporary defences

which can be sandbags or barriers, or in this case a watered-down,

which we have laid along the road, because it needs a flat surface, to

provide temporary protection to the properties. The other side we are

also deploying sandbags and temporary defences and supporting

those people as well because we want to protect all the properties we

can. Whatever we put here will not make anything worse but we are

trying to do what we can for each property. Do you think the

Environment Agency has done enough to protect homes and businesses? I

have been working them for 15 years in flood management and my

colleagues are hugely experienced. We are doing everything we can and

drawing in help from the military to protect these properties. Thank you.

More rain is expected today and people will have a nervous wait.

Thanks, Aysha, The bad weather is affecting you guys all over the UK

and you've been getting in touch with your stories. Ellie, Jake,

Chloe and Max sent us this report. Hello, I am Chloe. I am Ali. I am

Max. This is our story of the floods. This is my usual route to

school. It no longer exists. We used to have this car park by my house.

We used to spend all of our free time in this park. Now there is no

chance of that any time soon. Many people had to be evacuated from

their homes due to the high volume of water caused by the flooding,

including us. Jack in Bath has contacted us

because his back garden is flooded. And Matthew in Rhyl got soaked and

his next door neighbour's ariel fell down! Thanks for the video report

guys and all your comments. If you've been affected by the floods,

we want to hear from you. Grab your mobile and if it's safe to do so,

send us a short clip or take some snaps of what's happening in your

area. You can also leave us your flood and bad weather stories over

on the Newsround website. And it's not just us that have been

struggling with severe weather. A giant snow storm has hit America's

north-east. More than 38 cms of snow has fallen in the Washington DC

area. Around 500,000 homes and businesses have had their power cut

and thousands of flights have been cancelled.

Exciting news for Harry Potter fans. JK Rowling says she's finished the

draft script for her spin off movie! The author revealed in a magazine

interview that she wrote Fantastic Beasts And Where to Find Them in

just 12 days. The story's based on the text book Harry Potter uses in

Hogwarts. There's no news yet on when the movie will start being

made. Over at Sochi and Lizzy Yarnold

could become Britian's first Gold medallist at the Winter Olympics

today. She only took up the sport in 2010 but dominated the first two

runs of the skeleton competition and leads at the half way point by

almost half a second. Her competition starts at 4pm. For that

Kristian Bromley and Dominic Parson start qualifying in the men's

skeleton. Before that the British women's curling team face Japan.

Scientists in America have taken inspiration from termites to build

robots. Take a look at this. These mini robots are building layers of

bricks by sensing the area around them and taking cues from each

other. They're working in a similar way to termites, which can create

impressive structures several metres high.

That's all from me. Newsround's back right here in about half an hour.