Your morning briefing: What you should know for Monday, November 11

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Jason Collie11 November 2019

RAF helicopter called in to help with flood effort

A military helicopter has been working through the night to bolster defences in flood-hit South Yorkshire as the area braces itself for more rain.

The RAF Chinook began ferrying bags of aggregate on to flood banks in the Bentley area of Doncaster on Sunday evening - close to an area of housing which was inundated by floodwater on Friday.

The air drops in the Doncaster area came as the Met Office issued fresh weather warnings for heavy rain in South Yorkshire and as people who stayed in a flooded village cut off by river water were urged to leave by the council.

Forecasters have issued yellow weather warnings for heavy rain on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

Shamed Keith Vaz retires as MP

Labour's Keith Vaz has announced he is standing down after 32 years as an MP for Leicester East.

It comes after the Commons Standards Committee recommended he should be suspended for six months for causing significant damage to the reputation of the House for expressing a willingness to purchase cocaine for others during an encounter with male prostitutes.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn paid tribute to Mr Vaz saying he had helped pave away for more black, asian and minority ethnic people to become involved in politics.

Emergency declared over Australian wildfires

New South Wales has declared an emergency with worsening conditions feared as wildfires continue to wreak devastation in the Australian state.

Three people have died and more than 150 homes destroyed in what state emergency services minister David Elliott said could become Australia’s most dangerous bushfire.

The fires have razed more than 3,300 square miles since Friday.

Two cannabis medicines cleared for NHS use

Two cannabis-based medicines have been recommended for use on the NHS for the first time.

Epidyolex has been approved for two rare types of epilepsy while the spray Sativex has been recommended for muscle spasms in multiple sclerosis.

Charities have welcomed the move, but said thousands of other people who could benefit from cannabis-based medicines were left in limbo.

Far-right party makes big gains in Spain

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's Socialists have won Spain's national election but large gains by the far-right Vox party appear certain to widen the political deadlock.

The Socialists have won 120 seats but fallen far short of an absolute majority of 176 in what is the country’s fourth election in as many years.

The big political shift came as right-wing voters flocked to Vox, making it the third largest party in the Congress of Deputies.

1/3 of Brits believe we'll have to live in space: survey

More than a third of Britons believe humans will inevitably have to live in space due to the Earth becoming increasingly uninhabitable.

A survey for so-called space nation Asgardia found 37 per cent of people found it inevitable we would have to leave the planet to survive.

One-fifth of people feared an asteroid would hit the Earth and 42 per cent believed aliens had or would visit us.

On this day…

1778: British forces take St Lucia in the West Indies from the French.

1880: Australian outlaw Ned Kelly was hanged outside Melbourne Jail.

1887: Construction of the Manchester Ship Canal starts at Eastham.

1918: The Armistice was signed between the Allies and Germany in a railway carriage in the forest of Compiegne to end the First World War.

1920: King George V unveiled the Cenotaph in Whitehall.

1925: The BBC broadcast its first radio play, The White Chateau by Reginald Berkley.

1940: Willys-Overland launched the Jeep (so-called from the initials GP, for general purpose car).

1946: Stevenage was designated the first new town in Britain.

1952: The first video recorder was demonstrated in Beverly Hills, California, by inventors John Mullin and Wayne Johnson.

1965: Ian Smith's all-white Rhodesia government unilaterally declared independence from Britain (UDI).

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