A brief period of snow may bring icy conditions and some disruption to travel.

The Met Office has issued another new weather warning for snow and ice affecting parts of Northern Ireland this weekend.

The weather forecaster issued the yellow warning on Saturday morning, February 14, and advised that “a brief period of snow may bring icy conditions and some disruption to travel”.

It has been issued for four counties with the warning in place from 5pm until 10pm on Saturday, February 14. The warning is in place for counties Derry, Fermanagh and Tyrone.

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A Met Office spokesperson added: “Rain spreading from the west is expected to turn to snow for a time Saturday evening across the west of Northern Ireland. Whilst accumulations at low levels are likely to be limited, 2-4 cm of snow could fall above 200 m, affecting the Glenshane Pass for a time. At low levels some brief icy patches are possible.

“Snow will turn back to rain at all levels later Saturday evening before clearing eastwards by the end of the day, with a rapid thaw of any lying snow.”

What should I expect?

• Some roads and railways likely to be affected with longer journey times by road, bus and train services
• Perhaps some icy patches on some untreated roads, pavements and cycle paths

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York residents have been warned to stay safe today and into tomorrow as high river levels mean that some areas of the city centre are at risk of becoming flooded.

The Environment Agency (EA) has issued the warning for riverside properties on the River Ouse from Lendal Bridge to Millennium Bridge following days of heavy rainfall.

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At the Viking Recorder measuring station at 10.45am on Saturday (February 14), the River Ouse was 3.23 metres and said to be steady, despite sitting above the normal range of 1.9 metres.

The highest recorded level here was 5.40 metres in November 2000.

A second amber flood alert has also been issued for riverside footpaths and low-lying land in York and to the south as far as Naburn Lock, including Kings Staith, Queens Staith, and South Esplanade.

“Flooding is possible today, Saturday 14th February 2026 and tomorrow, Sunday 15th February 2026. We are closely monitoring the situation, closing floodgates and operating the Foss Barrier. Take care and avoid walking, cycling or driving through flood water,” said a spokesperson for the Environment Agency.

King’s Staith on Saturday morning (Image: Alice Kavanagh)

Whilst river levels have been fluctuating between steady and falling, there is also a Met Office warning for snow and ice for most of North Yorkshire has been extended to 10am tomorrow (February 15) with snowfall currently expected from 4am to 9am.

This warning is not in place over York itself, however surrounding towns such as Tadcaster, Malton, and Pocklington are included within the yellow weather warning.

For advice on what to do if you find yourself caught in a flood, visit the Environment Agency website or contact Floodline via telephone: 0345 988 1188 or via text on 0345 602 6340

Both their previous matches got away from the British rink after the interval, but they maintained their momentum here.

Points were traded in the sixth and seventh ends before Morrison – growing in stature by the minute – delivered another two to move her side four clear going into the penultimate end.

Canada looked devoid of ideas. Homan, for whom Olympic gold has proved elusive throughout a stellar career, was floundering. One in the ninth left them needing a miracle but GB were not of a mind to let this one go.

The women will look to continue their unlikely revival on Sunday against another fancied rink, Sweden (13:05 GMT).

They have six more round-robin matches to play, with a total of five or six wins potentially enough to clinch a semi-final place.

And GB’s men are next on the ice, playing their fourth match of nine against Czech Republic at 13:05 GMT on Saturday.

Rosenior spoke with a fondness this week when asked about his ties to the club, where his late grandmother, Cath, was a season ticket-holder. Rosenior had sat her down in a Harvester restaurant to tell her he was first signing for Hull, and she is buried not far from the club’s training ground.

Matt Weston has won gold in the men’s singles skeleton competition, Team GB’s first medal at the Winter Olympics in Italy.

The 28-year-old, a world and European champion, had been the favourite for gold after leading at the halfway stage of the event on Thursday, with track records in the first two heats.

On Friday, the British athlete posted another track record on his third run – recording a 0.39-second advantage at the top of the leaderboard.

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A near faultless run in his final heat at the Milano Cortina Games saw him increase his margin of victory to 0.88 seconds, bringing the gold home with a fourth track record.

Germany’s Axel Jungk took his second successive Olympic ⁠silver, ​while Jungk’s compatriot and ⁠defending champion Christopher ⁠Grotheer picked up ​the bronze.

Marcus Wyatt, Team GB’s other medal hopeful, finished ninth on Friday.

In March 2025, Weston took his second world champion crown and last month he clinched his third successive overall World Cup title.

His Olympic win marks the first-ever gold in the men’s skeleton for Team GB.

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Weston made his debut in skeleton in 2019, previously competing in taekwondo and securing several European and international honours.

He continued in that discipline until the age of 17, when he retired due to injury.

Speaking after his skeleton win, Weston said: “[It means] everything. It means a hell of a lot to me personally. I have worked so hard for this.

“Everyone back at home, my fiancee, my family, my friends, everyone that has sacrificed for me to be here. I have missed funerals, birthdays, everything for this moment and it feels amazing.”

Sir Keir Starmer celebrated the victory, with the prime minister saying in a post on X: “History-making. Congratulations Matt Weston!”

Team GB had won a medal in the skeleton at each of the Games since 2002 until 2018.

Lizzy Yarnold secured two golds, at Sochi in 2014 and PyeongChang in 2018, while Dom Parsons was Britain’s first male skeleton medallist since 1948 in South Korea, winning bronze in the men’s event, and Amy Williams won gold in 2010 in Vancouver.

Weston is the first individual male British competitor to win gold at a Winter Olympics since figure skater Robin Cousins in 1980.

His victory comes after Ukrainian competitor Vladyslav Heraskevych was disqualified 30 minutes before the start of the session on Thursday because he defied calls to not wear his “helmet of remembrance” depicting athletes killed since Russia’s invasion.

Sir Keir’s speech at the major security gathering followed an address by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who hit out at the mistakes of Western nations over the past 40 years, but sought to reconcile ties between the US and Europe after recent turmoil in the transatlantic relationship.

Sweden’s Oskar Eriksson and Canada’s Marc Kennedy exchange tense words after the Swedes accused the Canadian’s of double-tapping their stones during their men’s curling match at the 2026 Winter Olympics.

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A protester outside the High Court, central London, where Dame Victoria Sharp, Mr Justice Swift and Mrs Justice Steyn have ruled in favour of Palestine Action’s co-founder Huda Ammori’s challenge over the ban of the organisation as a terror group (Jonathan Brady/PA)

PA Wire

Walid Saadaoui, 38, was jailed for life this week for the plot that unravelled when he was arrested in Last Drop Hotel car park in Bromley Cross with a car full of guns in May 2024.

Officers have now released footage of their interview with Saadaoui when he was told that one of his apparent co-conspirators had been working undercover to stop him.

The undercover operative was known only as “Farouk” during the ensuing trial last year, but Saadaoui had known him as “Abu Bilel”.

In the interview footage, Saadaoui is dressed all in grey in a police interview room an appears to react impassively when he is told the truth about the undercover operative.

He tells the officers: “Like I said to you before, whether has undercover of not, I was not expecting any guns to come over.

“I was not involved in any planning of harming people like I said before, what I said to you is true.”

During last year’s trial at Preston Crown Court the undercover operative spent days in the witness box laying bare the extent of Saadaoui’s plot.

Having met on Queens Park after communicating online, Saadaoui and “Farouk” secured a safehouse on Stratford Avenue, off Chorley Old Road.

(Left to right) Walid Saadaoui, Amar Hussein and Bilel Saadaoui (Image: GMP)

Saadaoui had hoped to store the guns there before launching a murderous attack on the Jewish community of North Manchester.

But he did not know that “Farouk” or “Abu Bilel” as he knew him had arranged to make sure the AK-47s and handguns he received at the Last Drop car park had been deactivated.

“Farouk” had also been monitoring Saadaoui, of Crankwood Road, Abram and his co-conspirator Amar Hussein, 52 of no fixed abode, throughout their plot.

Thanks in a large part to evidence from “Farouk”, Saadaoui was convicted of preparing acts of terrorism and this week jailed for life with a minimum term of 37 years.

Hussein was convicted of the same offence and jailed for life with a minimum term of 26 years.

Saadaoui’s 37-year-old brother Bilel Saadaoui, of Fairclough Street, Hindley was convicted of failing to disclose information about and act of terrorism and jailed for six years.

Closing the case, His Honour Mr Justice Mark Wall thanked all the counsel and police officers for their work on the case.

He thanked “Farouk” who’s identity can never be known but who Mr Justice Wall said “saved many lives by putting his own on the line”.

YOU really can’t go wrong with a curry. Warming, filling and tasty, they’re the perfect meal for this time of year.

But you don’t have to spend all your money on a takeaway to have a delicious curry at home – just ask Dan Toombs, AKA the Curry Guy.

Toombs, 60, is obsessed with bringing curries to the masses, and is releasing his 11th cookbook, The Curry Guy Slow Cooker.

After moving from California in 1993, Toombs fell in love with the British curry scene, later begging his way into restaurants to learn the secrets of the perfect dish. Now based near York, Toombs knows a thing or two about taking your curry to the next level…

Nail the base

Photo of butter chicken from Curry Guy Slow Cooker by Dan Toombs

The main thing Toombs learned from his time in curry house kitchens? It’s all about the base.

“There’s a base sauce” for pretty much every curry that’s made, he says. “It’s quite a bland sauce, similar to chicken stock or vegetable stock.

“When it’s not seasoned, you have this bland stock that you add to almost every curry, and the magic happens when it hits the pan, because you have different spices to make the different curries.”

So if you get this base sauce down – and it’s “quite simple to make”, according to Toombs – you’re golden. “It’s the secret behind how to make real curry house-style foods. It’s not something they do very much in India, it’s really a British thing.”

This base sauce is basically “an onion stock – a lot of places will put other vegetables in it, like cabbage and green pepper, but nothing that has bite to it”, and from there you can create pretty much any curry you like.

Go off-piste

Lamb Nihari from Curry Guy Slow Cooker

While recipes are a useful guide, Toombs warns against getting too hung up on them.

“A lot of people concentrate too much on the recipe rather than what they personally enjoy,” he explains. So if you like quite a saucy curry, add more stock when you’re cooking, or if you enjoy spice, then pump up the chillies.

He recommends “trying things as you go, especially if you’re trying to teach yourself how to cook” so you can “begin to know what the different spices taste like” and will know how to adjust your dish accordingly.

It’s all about trial and error: “You’ll get the idea behind it, and you can make up your own recipes once you know how to use that base sauce.”

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Dig out your slow cooker

If you have a slow cooker, it could be the secret to more flavourful curries with a whole lot less effort.

“What you do get from a slow cooker is a more intense flavour, because you’re not trying to rush things,” Toombs says. “You’re letting all those ingredients melt together.”

Plus, it’s a lot easier than slaving over a hot stove. “The thing I like about slow cookers is you really can set them and forget them, so you can go to work and know there’s not going to be any kind of issues. You’re not going to burn anything to the bottom of the pan or anything like that.”

Toombs recommends trying his recipe for lamb nihari in the slow cooker. “It’s a northern Indian/Pakistani dish which is traditionally cooked over a low heat and simmered for about three or four hours, so it’s perfect for a slow cooker,” he explains.

Dan Toombs, aka Curry Guy

“You can put it in a slow cooker on high for about four hours, or if you go to work and put the meat in there – which is normally lamb shanks – just let it become really tender for eight hours [on the low setting].”

There’s another benefit to trying your next curry in the slow cooker, with Toombs saying it transforms some of the cheaper cuts of meats into the best dishes, saving you a bit of money along the way.

“A lot of times the cheap cuts have the most flavour – the reason why they’re cheap is because they take so long to cook. But if you’re putting it in the slow cooker, it doesn’t make any difference. You let it sit there and simmer until it’s cooked through and really tender, and you get a better flavoured meat and it’s a lot less expensive.”

Prep your own spice blends and pastes

Toombs’ top tip is to make your own spice blends and pastes at home. While it might require a bit of labour to start with, once you’ve got them sorted you’ll be able to make the most delicious curries – saving you time and money.

Curry Guy Slow Cooker by Dan Toombs (Quadrille) PA Photo.

Toombs suggests that ground spices that have been sitting on the supermarket shelf for a while might not be “their best”. So if you buy fresh, whole spices, “You can toast them, you can make them taste better than just adding them in their ground form… It’s something you can just throw into a curry and you know it’s going to taste good.”

The same goes for spice pastes – and Toombs has recipes for Rogan Josh and tikka masala pastes and more in his new book. Once you’ve whipped them up, he recommends storing them in a preserve jar with an airtight lid, topping them up with oil so the flavour stays fresh.

“Spices, once they’re ground, start to lose their flavour. But by making these pastes and covering them with oil, you’re giving them a longer life,” he says. “I use them all the time.”

Try something new

From a jalfrezi to a Madras, there are the classic curries we all know and love. But if you really want to take things up a notch, Toombs recommends trying something new – like his recipe for a Sri Lankan black chicken curry.

“Unlike in India, where they don’t really use curry powders that much – they’ll use different spices, like garam masala. But in Sri Lanka, they use curry powders quite a lot,” he says.

“Curry powder is a lot of warming spices that can also have chillies in it… And the black chicken curry is one I learned when I was over in Sri Lanka, it’s one of my favourites. You roast the curry powder until it’s almost black – it’s like chocolatey brown, and that gives it a really intense flavour. I haven’t seen it in any other curries from other parts of the world, it’s something very Sri Lankan, and if you’re looking for something unique, that’s what you have to try.”

Curry Guy Slow Cooker by Dan Toombs is published by Quadrille, priced £16.99. Photography by Kris Kirkham. Available now.