12/02/2014 BBC News at Ten

massive transport disruption. Crewe station is evacuated, motorways are

closed and rail services suspended. I saw the roof lifted up, and then

it kind of slid around the floor, and I didn't know what to do.

The great storm began in the south-west and Wales, causing more

damage. And with a month's rainfall expected by Friday, the floodwaters

are set to rise. We will be looking at what is causing this extreme and

prolonged wind and rain. Also tonight: You can't keep the

pound - the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems unite against an

independent Scotland. The face of Britain's first suicide

bomber - the man from Sussex who blew himself up in Syria.

And an undercover investigation into the booming trade in illegal ivory

in China. And in Sportsday on BBC News, the

weather played its part in the Premier League. Two matches were

off, giving Arsenal the chance to return to the top with a win over

Manchester United. Good evening. Now it's the turn of

the north-west of England to feel the full force of the storms

battering Britain. The Met Office has issued a red alert, meaning a

danger to life, as rain and hurricane force winds of over 100

hours per hour are lashing the north-west coast tonight. It is

playing havoc with transport links, with the M6 closed, Crewe station

evacuated, some rail lines suspended and thousands of passengers stuck on

trains. Winds of over 100 miles an hour began earlier today in the

south-west. You can see it here on satellite image, the weather system

working its way up through Wales and the West Midlands. 125,000 homes are

now without power, and a man has died in Wiltshire, electrocuted

while trying to move a tree brought down by power cables. Our first

report tonight comes from Judith Moritz, who is live for us in

Blackpool. How bad is it there? It is still extremely windy here. The

high winds were forecast to arrive along this stretch of coastline at

about two o'clock this afternoon, and right on cue, they arrived,

slamming into the seafront. They have been ripping through Blackpool

all afternoon. They are starting to drop slightly, but it is still very

difficult here. As you can see behind me, the seafront has now been

closed because parts of it are too dangerous for people to walk along.

But it has not just been in Blackpool. There has been

disruption, delay and dismayed across the whole of the north-west

of England. In Blackpool, they live for the

summer season. But today, the resort for the brunt of winter. Glamorous,

it wasn't. The promenade was battered and bruised by

extraordinary high with is. Firefighters have a working at full

stretch, trying to keep up with demand as emergency calls surged.

They opened an extra call centre to cope. Currently, chimney stacks and

roofs are being torn away from buildings. Firefighters are

generally assisting members of the public who are in need. Blackpool

had been forecast winds of up to 100 miles an hour, and the conditions

worsened steadily throughout the day. It is now just after 7:30pm,

and the wind is continuing to pick up speed, with debris now blowing

across the roads. Some emergency workers have told me they may still

have to close the whole of the Blackpool promenade. A short time

later, the road was closed and traffic diverted. Elsewhere, the

wind caused damage and disruption on the road is. Mercifully, the driver

of this car in South Manchester was not in the vehicle when it was

crushed. M62 motorway was closed to high sided vehicles, this lorry

getting into trouble on the trans-Pennine route. And there was

significant disruption on the railways, with cancellations on the

West Coast Main Line and Crewe station evacuated you to building

damage. As injures were taken to a nearby hotel. Going back to

Warrington. Not happy at the moment, got nowhere to stay. We have

the waiting for a train for a long time. We might get home around one

o'clock two o'clock. Tonight, residents at a block of flats in

Trafford were stranded after the building 's only staircase crashed.

There was an almighty crash. I went out to have a look, and my car was

parked underneath and it is now a writer. At Goodison Park, Everton's

mat against Crystal Palace was cancelled, as was the Manchester

City-Sunderland game, high winds disrupting the days of thousands of

people across north-west England. The south-west of England and Wales

took the brunt of the storms earlier today, with record winds. Almost a

month's rainfall is expect to fall by Friday. The assistant chief of

the defence staff said the UK is facing an almost unparalleled

natural crisis. Hywel Griffiths is in Criccieth in north Wales for us

tonight. What is the situation there? Finally, the wind speeds are

starting to drop, but this whole coastline has spent the whole day on

red alert. Just a few miles up the peninsula, wind speeds were recorded

of 108 mph. Everyone I have spoken to today has said one thing over and

over - they have never seen conditions like this on Britain 's

shorelines. An offer of military assistance has been made to Wales.

While things are starting to come down, it may take until daylight to

really show the scale of the destruction caused.

What will nature throw at us next? As hurricane conditions reached West

Wales, they triggered sandstorms and carried heavy rain, leaving nowhere

to hide. I am over 60 years old and I have never seen anything like

this. It has been since Christmas. We have not had a break. Day after

day. Dozens of schools were forced to close their doors. Few wanted to

hang around to see what would happen. Horrendous, the worst

weather. It is really bad. The children were coming out crying

because the sound was hurting them. John Dunn decided to evacuate his

home. The caravans on the site he runs risk being blown away. It is a

nightmare. It feels like somebody is going to wake me up, but I know that

is not going to happen. The gales have now started hitting the

coastline. These winds are extraordinary out on the open sea.

But what is exceptional is that they are hitting inland. The result was

fallen trees and mangled power lines. Leaving nearly 100,000

properties across Wales, the south-west and the Midlands without

power. These exceptional conditions have swept around Britain's

coastline. At Lyme Regis, the waves grew with every hour. Over in

Ireland, Limerick boathouse, stripped of its roof. Once again,

emergency teams have been tested. This driver had to be rescued from

the River Wye. In Wiltshire, a man died after a tree brought down power

cables. Forecasters say the winds will subside overnight. At

Britain's wild winter just seems to rage on.

Well, as we have seen, the storm is bringing a deluge of rain with it.

Today, the prime minister repeated his pledge that no money will be

spared to help flooded communities get act on their feet. -- back on

their feet. He said ?5000 will be available for businesses and

homeowners to protect their properties in the future. There will

be a ?10 million fund for farmers, and businesses could qualify for a

100% rate relief for three months. Robert Hall has been assessing the

extent of the damage across southern England and how the armed forces and

emergency services are coming together to help.

Stormy skies and another city under threat. The peaceful waters of this

river have become a torrent, and historic Winchester is preparing to

defend itself. But extra sandbags and help from the Navy will not be

enough to protect nearby homes. River keeper Myles Gascoigne and his

neighbours have taken matters into their own hands. We can look after

ourselves. We have a fireman, a builder and a river keeper in the

street. We can deal with water and sand and stuff all the time anyway.

Even before this latest storm, the river is carrying 15 tonnes of water

every second. It travels through the centre of Winchester, and beneath

that, the ancient Watermill. As this channel gets blocked or

overwhelmed, the river will have nowhere to go. So the Environment

Agency is creating a flood north of the city, forcing you river onto

farmland with an artificial way. There is a lot of flood plain

available in the fields, so that will flood first. Our engineers are

monitoring this to make sure we will not increase flood risk upstream.

The prime minister, who chaired two meetings of the COBRA emergency

planning group today, dog parliament that he stood by his pledge that

money would be no object in the relief effort. But he warned that a

further 1000 homes were at risk. Away from Whitehall, the water was

creeping up ?10 million worth of barriers in Bewdley. The River

Severn in Worcestershire last picked at this level 14 years ago, and it

has not finished rising yet. Worcester's defences were breached.

More than 50 people had to be evacuated from this sheltered

housing complex. The Thames Valley remains a landscape of muddy water

and ruined homes. The army, emergency services and volunteers

have been working to reassure and respond to fresh calls for help. At

Gold command in third, rehearsals have proved their worth, but this

emergency is unprecedented and relentless. We are working long

hours and very hard, but considering what members of the public are going

through, it is the least we can be doing. Tonight, Wraysbury in the

Thames Valley saw reinforcements from London's Fire Brigade, the

legacy of another storm is travelling downstream. Long hour

swollen rivers, this miserable winter seems un-ended.

So what has been causing the exceptional and prolonged rain and

winds battering so much of UK? Our science editor explains.

Violent swirls of storms, pictured from space. Britain is in the top

right corner. You can sometimes make it out through the clouds. These

satellite images, gathered over the past fortnight, show a conveyor belt

of weather systems. So what is behind this barrage of bad weather?

Bizarrely, the story begins in Southeast Asia, with dark clouds

over Indonesia. Heavy rain and massive flooding were part of an

unusual weather pattern that sent ripples through the atmosphere

halfway round the world. The best explanation from the Met Office is

that there has been a kind of weather chain reaction. That heavy

rainfall in Indonesia disrupted the jet stream, which races over the

Pacific Ocean. In turn, this dent in the jet stream far in the north

diverted it over North America. This helped create the conditions for the

so-called polar vortex. That led to extreme cold, reducing extraordinary

scenes like these in many parts of the United States. It is thought

that what happened there had an influence ultimate Leonidas. That is

because the pattern of weather in America are affected the course of

the Atlantic jet stream. It has been flowing unusually rapidly and

driving storm after storm our way. The British don't control their own

weather. It is part of the whole global system. We sit at the end of

the Atlantic storm track. So we might be aware that these storms

tend to come from the West over the Atlantic, but they don't just start

there. The whole thing is part of this global system. So what about a

possible influence from us, from the greenhouse gases that belch out from

chimneys? Good man -- man-made climate change be making the weather

more violent? Researchers say there are some signs that global warming

may be involved. The waters of the Atlantic are warmer than they have

been for 60 years. That heats the air and let it hold more moisture.

And the number of intense Atlantic storms has been rising over the past

century. But working out a human influence is very difficult. Met

Office scientists cannot give a definitive and about climate change,

but what about the recent extremes? Is this what we are going to be

facing in the future? The indications are that our weather

will become more variable and volatile, and therefore, how we

adapt to that will be critical. The Met Office it self was blasted by

gales today. The question is whether global warming will make scenes like

this more likely, something scientists are desperate to answer.

You can get all the latest on the severe weather and the flooding on

the BBC website. There are of course updates on your BBC local radio and

TV stations. The BBC has learnt that the

Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats are to announce

tomorrow that an independent Scotland would not be allowed to use

the pound, whoever forms the next Government. The Scottish Government

has accused Westminster of bullying and intimidation. Our Political

Editor, Nick Robinson broke the story and is here. This is a very

serious salvo by the three Westminster parties, uniting against

an independent Scotland. It is not often that you get George Osborne,

Ed Balls, Danny Alexander for the Lib Dems, all saying the same thing

on the same day, and reaching agreement. They really want to end

the doubt in Scottish voters' minds. Whoever wins the next Westminster

election, whatever happens, whoever is in the Treasury, the outcome will

be the same. In other words, all the parties say they would not agree to

share the pound, to share control of the vital decisions that underline

the pound. It will come on the day that the Treasury will produce a

review, written by civil servants and not politicians, that says if

you do want to share currency, like the arguments over the euro, you

have to agree to underwrite each other's banks and budgets, share

decisions in effect on tax, spend and borrowing, as well. What these

three men are doing tomorrow is to say they simply would not reach that

agreement. The SNP is saying this is classic bullying, classic threats,

you can't believe what they were saying now, and they will do

something different later. They argue that the rest of the UK would

have an interest in sharing the pound with Scotland because it would

put unnecessary costs on business to do anything else, and the Scots

might refuse to pay their share of the debt. But it is a big move and

it is controversial. Thank you. Lorna Gordon is in Edinburgh for us.

What are the currency options for an independent Scotland? The Scottish

Government set up a fiscal commission to look into possible

options should Scots vote for independence. They investigated four

potential scenarios. Scotland joining the euro, Scotland setting

up its own independent currency, looking to countries like Sweden and

Norway for samples of that, and the idea of an informal currency union,

like with informal states like Monaco and Lichtenstein who are tied

to the euro and the Swiss franc for examples of that scenario, and then

of course this formal currency union. Fiscal groups said Scotland

could choose any of these options and be a successful independent

country but the Scottish Government said it believes in a formal

currency union and is sticking to that line tonight. They say there is

no plan B. This is set to run and run. Thank you.

Interest rates are likely to stay at their record low level of half of

one percent for another year. That was the guidance from the Bank of

England Governor, Mark Carney, today. The bank has revised its

forecast, saying the economy will grow faster than its earlier

prediction. But Mr Carney warned that Britain's recovery was neither

balanced nor sustainable as yet. Our chief economics correspondent Hugh

Pym reports. They like low interest rates at this

Barnsley engineering business. The Bank of England unveiled its

guidance policy last summer in a bid to provide more certainty about

rates. So the company felt confident enough to invest in this new laser

cutting machinery. It arrived this week. What I would like to say to

the Bank of England is carry on doing what you are doing. Forward

guidance and people being clear and people understanding what they know

going forward is a great thing. It has helped us get where we are now.

But Mark Carney has had to adjust forward guidance because the economy

has not developed as he expected. Growth will be higher and inflation

lower than forecast. The line now is that when rates to rise, they will

not go up by much. Even in the medium-term, the level of interest

rates necessary to sustain low unemployment and price stability

will be materially lower than before the crisis. He suggested the first

increase might be in the spring of next year with rates of just 2% in

2017. This is certainly a change of tack by Mark Carney. Interest rates

had been focused on unemployment falling to a certain level but now

that the 7% figure has been breached, they will concentrate

instead on a range of economic variables. One former bank

policymaker thinks the change of direction, required because the bank

got it unemployment forecasts wrong, is not helpful to the wider economy.

The benefit of forward guidance is that it gives people more confidence

and certainty about what will happen in the future, but when the advice

that is provided by the Bank of England is then changed quite

significantly in the space of six months, that then adds to confusion

about what will really happen. The bank says it has moved on to a new

phase of forward guidance. The challenge now is to communicate

exactly what that means for businesses and households. Hugh Pym,

BBC News. The BBC has learned the identity of

the first British suicide bomber to blow himself up in Syria. He's been

named as Abdul Waheed Majid, a 41-year-old from Sussex. He's

believed to have carried out a suicide truck bombing in Aleppo last

Thursday. Anti-terrorism officers have spent the morning searching his

address in Crawley. Our security correspondent Frank Gardner reports.

Snapshots from Syria of the man police suspect of being the first

British suicide bomber in that country. He is Abdul Waheed Majid,

and today police raided his house in Sussex. All day, detectives from the

South East counterterrorism unit have been searching this home in

Crawley. Neighbours say he left for Syria months ago with an aid

convoy. His relatives are still hoping that the bomber was not him.

The family is actually quite shocked, devastated. We are quite

confused because we are getting all this news, unconfirmed news, from

different sources. All they are actually hoping and waiting that

somebody somewhere will confirm whether he is. But police suspect

that he was the man who drove this makeshift armoured dumper truck

packed with explosives into a prison wall in Aleppo. Jihadist groups said

the bomber was British and held it as a martyrdom operation. So why in

a conflict that has already killed over 100,000 people should last

week's suicide bombing in Syria worry the authorities back here? The

answer is that if the British jihadist carried it out, then it

risks setting a precedent for others to copy in this country. Especially

those returning home radicalised from the horrors of the battlefield.

We have seen on social media, these guys imbibe the full culture after a

while. They put up pictures of Bin Laden, they glorify attacks like

9/11. Unfortunately from our perspective at least, the longer

people spend in Syria, the more brutalised and radicalised they

become. In Crawley, the investigation is not over. Police

will undoubtedly want to question all of his associates, but they are

warning that without DNA proof they will never be able to confirm

publicly if he was indeed the bomber.

Two men have been found guilty of helping the multiple murderer Joanna

Dennehy. She has already admitted killing three men in Cambridgeshire

last March. The prosecution said Gary Stretch and Leslie Layton were

manipulated by Dennehy but revelled in bringing suffering and misery

upon their victims' our correspondent Ed Thomas, who's been

following the story, has sent this special report.

A female serial killer like no other. Joanna Dennehy wanted to kill

as many men as she could, painfully and violently. Today her accomplices

were found guilty at Cambridge Crown Court. This man, seven feet three

Gary Stretch, helped Joanna Dennehy. So, too, did petty criminal

Leslie Layton. For the first time, those who faced the killer can tell

their stories. What could you see her doing? Stabbing me repeatedly.

She was stabbing me in the chest. Speaking exclusively to BBC News,

John Rogers was stabbed 40 times by Joanna Dennehy as he walked his dog.

He only survived after days of emergency surgery. He said, look,

you are bleeding. I had better do some more. When it did finally stop,

I just thought, well, this is it. I am going to die. This police CCTV

was taken minutes after she attacked John Rogers. Joanna Dennehy was

calm, even joking. Listen to her answer when asked if she is

dependent on drugs. That hectic week began here in

Peterborough with three murders. The first to die was her boyfriend,

Lukasz Slaboszewski. Next was John Chapman, her housemate. The final

victim was Kevin Lee, her landlord and lover. All stabbed through the

heart. The bodies were taken here, dumped and forgotten. Murdered by

Joanna Dennehy. Someone they thought was a friend, someone they could

trust, and instead they were all killed for her own enjoyment. And

all this from a mother once responsible for two children. By the

time she killed, Joanna Dennehy was an alcoholic who had abandoned her

family. I hope that she never sees daylight again ever. This is her

sister, in her first TV interview. She said Joanna rebelled. The child

they once knew became someone they no longer recognised. There was a

girl that we loved who then turned into a monster. I don't think you

can actually describe it any other way. Can you understand at all why

she has done this? Know. And to be honest I don't think I would want to

understand how a human being is capable of doing so much damage. So

what motivated Joanna Dennehy? A psychopath with several personality

disorders. On the run from police, she came to this house. Inside was

Sean Keeble, one of the few to ask her why. She just felt happy that

she was a murderer, sort of thing. She told us she was wanting to write

a book about it, she was wanting to be a serial killer, someone

well-known. And maybe be famous. With it, no remorse or regret,

Joanna Dennehy will be sentenced next week.

We reported last night on the fight against ivory poachers in Kenya. The

trade in white gold is still big business, much of it fuelled by

demand from China. Some ivory sales are legal there but there's a huge

illegal trade too. Our Beijing Correspondent Damian Grammaticas has

been tracking down China's illegal ivory traders and seeing how they

operate. 5000 miles from Africa, China, with

its new drive to consume. A new taste for luxury. Ivory is sought

after here, sold openly and legally. The problem is, behind the legal

trade is an illegal one. Critics say this is what allows it to continue.

To show you, we need a hidden camera. Each piece must be sold with

a credit card-sized photo ID that proves the ivory is from Government

stockpiles, not smuggled. But look closely. The picture does not match

the carving. The ID is for a different boat. Nearby, we find more

IDs that don't match. But as soon as we ask about them, the seller shuts

up shop. China is now tackling the illegal trade. Ivory seized by

customs has been crushed in the run-up to the London conference,

smugglers arrested. But still, Chinese buyers want ivory. Some

believe it brings good luck. Others see it as a safe investment, sure to

appreciate as elephants get rarer. 30,000 are being poached in Africa

each year. To avoid the crackdown, ivory traders are turning to the

internet. Online sales are illegal, but they are not hard to find. We

made contact with a dealer and set up our cameras. He produced a carved

tusk, illegal African ivory, asking price ?7,000. Other dealers have

been put in jail, he said, and it's getting harder to smuggle tusks.

That means the price of ivory is going up. TRANSLATION: There are

lots of ivory collectors, but there is less and less ivory available

now, so the price is shooting up every day. And while the buying goes

on, so does the killing, demand for ivory here fuelling far-off

slaughter, pushing Africa's elephants towards extinction. Damian

Grammaticas, BBC News, Beijing. Before we go tonight, a reminder of

the chaos being caused by the winter storms. Winds of up to a hundred

miles an hour have been battering the West coast of Britain. Transport

links on road and rail have been cut causing chaos for passengers. And

heavy rain is causing more misery as flood waters are on the rise.

That's all from us. Over