Thousands of people are without power, railway cables and power lines are down, and so are a number of trees in the aftermath of Storm Dudley. Gusts of 101mph were recorded near Fort William in Scotland as the storm battered parts of the country from Wednesday. Heavy rain and strong winds swept over Scotland, northern England and Northern Ireland, cancelling train and ferry services. Many rail services will remain suspended in Scotland while safety checks are carried out. "We won't be able to restore services until we know routes are safe," says ScotRail.
The Scottish government is monitoring the impact the storm has had on travel, power and services as engineers in England work to restore power to people’s homes. At one point, Newcastle Upon Tyne-based electricity supplier Northern Powergrid revealed "around 14,000 customers have been affected so far". It has reconnected 10,000 people so far. For some people this situation is not new. A resident in Northumberland says he’s "so frustrated and so fed up with all of this" - he previously lost power for five days during Storm Arwen, then two days during Storm Malik. The aftermath of those storms is still being dealt with by the Forestry and Land Scotland, which is urging people to avoid woodland. The adverse conditions caused by Storm Dudley are likely mellow today, the Met Office says, but there’s another storm named Eunice is on its way. It's described as "quite a potent storm" and is set to hit the UK on Friday. Find out more about it here.

The US is continuing to question whether Russian troops are moving away from the border with Ukraine. President Joe Biden had previously said reports troops were withdrawing hadn’t been verified. Now a senior US official is going further, suggesting Russia’s claim about moving some of its 100,000 troops away is "false", and not only that, an additional 7,000 have arrived in recent days. Russia, which has repeatedly denied planning to invade Ukraine, says its soldiers will leave after military exercises have been completed. But Western officials say they have seen no evidence to support the claim.

No subject should be off limits, says Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi, but teaching must be impartial. He made the statement as new guidance is issued to remind teachers about conveying sensitive subjects in non-biased ways to schoolchildren in England. The guidance warns teachers against expressing their own views but aims to help them to teach topics such as history of the British Empire in a neutral way, without pushing one view over another. This is a very deliberate intervention by the government which sends a signal of greater scrutiny in future, our education editor Branwen Jeffreys says. Read more here.

"Yet another royal crisis" reports the Daily Mail after it emerged Prince Charles faces being quizzed by police in a cash-for-honours probe. This development follows Prince Andrew’s out-of-court settlement and leads the Daily Mirror to claim there’s a "reign storm", with the Queen facing "new anguish", the Daily Express says. "Thank God for the Queen" headlines the Sun, which like many of this morning’s papers carries a photograph of the monarch at her first face-to-face engagement since December. That picture appears in the Daily Telegraph but the paper leads on the Ukraine crisis. The Guardian meanwhile reports on the Covid vaccine programme being extended to five to 11-year-olds. Read the newspaper review in full here.

Swahili originated in east Africa, it takes around 40% of its vocabulary directly from Arabic and has 200 million speakers. It’s one of the world’s 10 most widely spoken languages and there’s a renewed push for it to become Africa’s lingua franca. So what’s driving the change? Find out here.
Now to a farm that’s been changing the lives of young people with autism. "Animals are much simpler to understand than humans," says one from the group who works at the beef farm in Oxfordshire. The workers say the farm’s saved them from a potential life of isolation and boredom. Watch to find out more.
And finally, did you see the video of the sloth that was saved after it decided to hang from live wires on an electricity pole? With fears it could be electrocuted, residents in a rural town in Colombia's Antioquia region scrambled together to rescue the mammal. Take a look.

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