It’s a shift driven by Instagram, yes, but also by a broader rethinking of luxury. Food has become fashion-adjacent: we’re buying provenance, craft and storytelling, wrapped up in packaging that feels collectable. These are products designed to be seen, not shoved into a cupboard. Think the sort of tins you stack artfully next to your Le Creuset, jars you casually leave by the hob, bottles that earn a permanent spot on the countertop.

Enjoy today’s sunshine while it lasts

Greater Manchester is basking in glorious, long-awaited sunshine on a chilly Valentine’s Day. Clear sunny skies have dominated so far today (February 14), on what one Met Office forecaster described as ‘the best day we’ve seen for some time’.

But clouds are expected to gather as the afternoon goes on, before wintry conditions return later tonight. A yellow weather warning for snow and ice comes into force at 9pm tonight and runs until 10am on Sunday morning.

Click here to prioritise Manchester news in Google from the MEN

The Met Office says ‘snow, heavy at times, may cause some disruption to travel, especially over high ground during Saturday night and Sunday morning’. The warning covers north and east Manchester, plus Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, and parts of Salford and Wigan boroughs.

Met Office maps show a band of rain, sleet and snow moving eastwards later tonight, first hitting Greater Manchester from around 10pm and covering the region within an hour. Maps from the Met Office suggest this will first land as rain and sleet, turning to snow by 11pm.

Thicker snow is expected in the early hours of the morning. At 1am, thicker snow is forecast around Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale and Tameside, while sleet and rain hits Wigan.

Wetter weather could hit Manchester, Salford, Trafford and Wigan from around 2.30am, with snow lingering on areas of higher ground after 3am. Rain should begin to clear at around the same time, before wintry conditions shift from the region by 5am.

Advertisement

A mostly dry morning is forecast in Greater Manchester on Sunday, but a band of heavy rain is expected to hit the region from 11.30am, moving eastwards until it clears the area by 1.30pm. Further spells of light rain and showers are forecast as the afternoon and evening goes on.

Standard Sport understands Tudor will be a candidate for the full-time role if he does well between now and the end of the season, but it appears likelier that they will look elsewhere for the permanent appointment in the summer – with ex-Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino tipped by some for a romantic return to the club.

The tool was launched a decade ago to help taxpayers calculate how much they would receive when they reach state pension age.

However, an investigation by The Telegraph revealed that the tool may have given up to 800,000 users forecasts that were too high.

This was due to an error that remained unfixed for nine years.

What is the State Pension?

The State Pension is a government-provided payment in the UK that is typically paid every four weeks to people who have reached the State Pension age, which is currently 66.

As the Gov.uk website explains, you can claim the new State Pension when you reach State Pension age if you’re

• a man born on or after April 6, 1951
• a woman born on or after April 6, 1953

The payment is not automatic and instead relies on having at least 10 qualifying years of National Insurance (NI) contributions.

To receive the full new state pension of £230.25 a week, you will need 35 full years of qualifying National Insurance contributions.

HMRC state pension tool error finally fixed

The Telegraph investigation revealed that the tool’s misinformation risked people retiring on lower state pensions than expected.

It also deprived users of the opportunity to increase their weekly payments to tackle the shortfall.

Ministers were reportedly first made aware of the error in the tool in 2017, but it took four years before any fixes were implemented.

There were already some 360,000 incorrect estimates dished out by 2019.

An error was corrected for people reaching state pension age before April 2029.

However, HMRC said that some people due to reach state pension age after that date were still incorrectly being told they would receive the full amount and did not need to make extra payments.

The tool also did not reflect that when someone retires, a deduction is made from their final state pension for any periods when they were contracted out.

Due to this error, up to 800,000 people could have been told incorrectly that they did not need to make any more National Insurance contributions to reach the qualifying number of years.

The Government told The Telegraph it did not know how many people were affected.

HMRC published a message on Monday aimed at users checking their state pension forecast via their Government Gateway account.

It said that a planned system update on February 13 would “improve the accuracy of forecasts” and advised anyone who will reach state pension age after April 2029 to wait until Feb 14 to use the tool.

HMRC apologises as it fixes state pension tool error

A HMRC spokesperson said: “We have made a planned update to our online Check your State Pension tool to ensure customers who reach state pension age after April 2029 will receive a forecast which takes into account the years they were contracted out.

“We’re sorry for the problems that some people have experienced with the tool in the past, but are pleased to confirm this update will ensure customers who reach state pension age after April 2029 will now receive a forecast which takes into account the years they were contracted out.”

HMRC said previously that it would allow those affected by the error to top up their National Insurance contributions by making lump sum payments of up to £907 per missing year.

As hundreds of federal and local agents scoured the Arizona desert and chased down potential leads in the nearly two weeks since Nancy Guthrie disappeared from her affluent neighborhood, families of other missing people are reminded how elusive answers can be.

On the one hand, families who spoke to The Associated Press share in the deep pain that Nancy Guthrie’s children, including the well-known “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, have expressed publicly.

On the other, people like Tonya Miller — whose own mother disappeared under suspicious circumstances in Missouri in 2019 — say they feel frustrated as they watch seemingly endless resources flood into the search for Guthrie.

“Families like ours that have just your normal missing people, they have to fight to get any help,” Miller, 44, said.

Miller’s mother, Betty Miller, is one of the thousands of people who are listed as abducted each year, according to federal statistics. In most cases, families like Tonya Miller’s say it’s a full-time job advocating for a fair and thorough investigation.

Guthrie investigation flooded with resources

The country has been engrossed by the apparent kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, after authorities said they believe she was taken against her will. People in her neighborhood have tied yellow ribbons to tree to express their support.

Multiple news outlets have reported receiving ransom notes, and the Guthrie family has expressed a willingness to pay — although it’s not known whether ransom notes demanding money with deadlines that have already passed were authentic.

In the meantime, several hundred detectives and agents are now assigned to Nancy Guthrie’s investigation, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said.

FBI spokesperson Connor Hagan declined to say how many of those agents were federal law enforcement, and how many were already assigned in Arizona. He also didn’t clarify how the federal agency prioritizes different missing persons cases.

However, he said agents from the Critical Incident Response Group, technical experts and intelligence analysts are working to bring Guthrie home. There is also a 24-hour command post where dozens of agents parse through the 13,000 tips that have flooded in from the public, among other responsibilities, according to a post the agency made.

Abductions are rare

The vast majority of people who are reported missing are believed to be runaways — not kidnapped or abducted.

Throughout all of 2024, the latest year that National Crime Information Center published the data, over 530,000 missing person records were entered. By the end of the year, just over 90,000 cases remained unresolved on that list — some going back decades.

Roughly 95% of the hundreds of thousands of cases filed in 2024 were believed to be runaways and only 1% were listed as abducted.

Often, the abductor is a parent who doesn’t have legal guardianship over a child, the report said. It’s even more rare for someone to be abducted by a stranger.

Disproportionately Black and Indigenous people

The FBI names five kidnapped or missing people, including Nancy Guthrie, from Arizona on its online database of 125 missing or kidnapped people. All five from Arizona are listed as Native American or otherwise disappeared from tribal communities, except for Guthrie.

That racial trend holds true for the rest of the country, too.

A disproportionate number of Black and Indigenous people were among the abducted in 2024, according to the National Crime Information Center report. Roughly a third of the 533,936 missing people listed as abducted in 2024 were Black, even though the U.S. Census reports only 13% of the U.S. population as Black. Similarly, almost 3% of the missing people listed as abducted were Indigenous, compared to the 1.4% of people who are Indigenous in the U.S. writ large.

“Every person deserves to be safe, and when someone is missing, there should be an immediate, coordinated, and effective response,” Lucy Simpson, the chief executive officer for the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center said. “For many Native women, longstanding gaps in resources, coordination, and systemic support for Tribal Nations have made prevention and response more difficult.”

No answers for families

Experts have said that sometimes the attention on high-profile cases can be a major obstacle to law enforcement operations. But Savannah Guthrie’s celebrity status has also garnered extensive resources from the federal and local government — including a $100,000 FBI reward for accurate information about her whereabouts or that could lead to an arrest and conviction of whoever took her.

That’s in stark contrast, Miller said, to the dearth of help she’s received in Sullivan, Missouri, where she’s had to use her own time and money to search for her mom, who was last seen in her apartment in the roughly 7,000 person town. A box of Betty Miller’s prescribed fentanyl patches were missing from the apartment and her prescription eye glasses were left on an armchair, Tonya Miller said. There was a massive scratch on her mom’s front door that wasn’t there before.

The Sullivan Police Department didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment Friday.

Despite those suspicious circumstances, local police didn’t treat her mother’s apartment like a crime scene, Tonya Miller said. She had to beg them to take fingerprints and often had to prod them to follow up on tips filed by the public. In the weeks that followed, Tonya Miller organized search parties, printed out fliers and held fundraisers to scrape together a $20,000 reward for her mother.

Tonya Miller said it has become harder as the years go by to know how to help find her mom. She’s written letters to elected officials at all levels of government, including President Donald Trump.

“I feel so helpless,” Miller said, “because you just don’t know what to do anymore.”

___

Riddle is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

A 33-year-old man was taken to hospital by the ambulance service where he later died.

Advertisement

A man has appeared in court charged with the murder of a man in Belfast earlier this week.

Isaac Koko, 32, with an address at Cromwell Road in the south of the city, appeared before Belfast Magistrates’ Court on Saturday charged with the murder.

Police said officers attended the scene of the incident in the Cromwell Road area on Wednesday, February 11 following the report of a “concern for safety”.

A 33-year-old man was taken to hospital by the ambulance service where he later died.

The defendant was remanded in custody ahead of the next court appearance.

The case is next due to be mentioned on Tuesday, March 10.

To ensure you don’t miss out on all the latest from Belfast Live, be sure to make us your preferred source on Google.

After days and weeks of gloomy skies and relentless rain for some, there has finally been a change to our weather in the United Kingdom.

Arctic air across the UK means the weekend starts cold and frosty with some snow and ice, especially in northern parts.

But, there will be lots of sunshine for most throughout Saturday.

However, it will be temporary as rain with more snow and ice spreads overnight into Sunday.

Further Met Office yellow warnings for ice and snow have been issued across Scotland and northern England from 21:00 GMT to 10:00 on Sunday.

Rain will turn to snow temporarily to low levels to give a few centimetres before being more confined to higher gound where up to 15cm is possible.

Some ice is also possible so there could be some travel disruption on Sunday morning.

In response to the forecast Arctic blast, the UK’s Health Security Agency has also issued yellow health alerts, external for the colder weather across northern England and the Midlands, which remain in effect until 08:00 Monday.

They warn that the weather is likely to have “minor impacts on health and social care services, including increased use of healthcare services and a greater risk to life of vulnerable people”.

Our BBC Weather Watchers have captured the weather across the UK.

Each stone has a sensor on it to ensure players release their grip on the handle before the thick green line that runs across the ice, known as the hog line.

If they do, the sensor flashes green. If not, a red light shows.

Kennedy’s stone showed green, but Eriksson and his Swedish team-mates thought they saw the Canadian give the stone an extra push with his finger after letting the handle go. The video evidence appears to back that up.

But, as BBC Sport curling commentator Steve Cram asked former world champion Jackie Lockhart, is it actually cheating and does it make a difference?

“You should not be touching the stone after you’ve released it,” Lockhart said. “If you touch it with a broom, it’s burned and removed.

“He’s released that stone, then poked it with his finger – I’m not sure why. Is it to push it a little bit harder because he felt he didn’t give it enough?”

But will anything come of it?

When the teams came off the ice, they would have signed a declaration saying they are happy with the result. So, unless a protest was submitted at that stage – and as far as we know there wasn’t – the result will stand.

But what will this mean for the Canadians – who are considered medal contenders and have won their first three matches – in the rest of the Games?

“The question we should be asking is if Oskar is challenging him, has he [Kennedy] done it before?” Lockhart added.

“Have they been doing it at other Championships and now they’re being called out on it?

“I’m a bit disappointed with the Canadians if that’s what they’re doing. We’ll all be looking now.”

The textured rug has a neutral colourway and is available in five sizes with prices starting from £45

Adding a rug to a room can add a new lease of life. It can add colour, a new point of interest and liven up a room that might feel bland or lacklustre.

Dunelm has plenty of options, including washable rugs that are particularly handy for homes with young children or pets. One customer favourite is the Elessia Traditional Patterned Washable Rug.

Priced between £45 and £285, the Elessia Traditional Patterned Washable Rug is available in five sizes, ranging from 78cm x 150cm to 233cm x 340cm. It has a neutral palette and has a textured design similar to a Persian-style rug.

It is made from a fully machine-washable pile, with the product spec saying it can be washed on a gentle cycle at 30°C. Rugs measuring up to 120 x 170 will fit most washing machines between 8 and 10kg, the retailer promises.

To dry it, the Elessia Traditional Patterned Washable Rug should be air-dried flat. Dunelm states: “Due to the nature of cotton, expect a small amount of shrinkage after washing.”

Dunelm washable rug

From £45

Dunelm

Buy Now on Dunelm

The Elessia Traditional Patterned Washable Rug comes in five sizes.

Advertisement

Shoppers who are not concerned about their rug being washable have a wider range of options to choose from. For example, this Wayfair grey Abstract Area Rug is available in nine sizes, with both rectangular and round options.

For high-pile varieties, Debenhams has a string of options, including this Checkered Willa Area Rug. It is priced from £74.99, down from £99.99, and is available in three sizes. The rug is also available in different colours at varying price points; for example, the brown hue starts at £61.99.

Returning to Dunelm’s Elessia Traditional Patterned Washable Rug, it has an overall customer rating of 4.7, based on more than 40 reviews. One consumer said: “A good quality rug which I’m delighted with. The colours are gorgeous.”

Advertisement

Another shopper added: “Great value rug. Very pleased with the colours and looks so good in my sitting room. I’ve also bought another rug for my everyday room. Value can’t be beaten.”

Not all reviews are positive, with one person saying: “Rugs are satisfactory but ‘fluff’ a lot and do not lie totally flat. Hope that this resolves itself over time.”

Another customer was more pleased, writing: “Love the colour and texture of this rug and especially that it is washable. Dunelm has the best choice of rugs on its website, and they are very competitively priced.”

A fifth reviewer described it as a ‘beautiful rug’, adding: “I was looking for a rug that had a pattern without being too visually overstimulating. The delicate, earthy colours and geometric print add interest but remain restful. Also great that it’s washable as I am a pet owner.”

An additional shopper said: “The quality of the rug is excellent, the mild colours lifted my room. Very, very happy.” A final person commented: “Love this rug, we have two. Really bright and fresh looking.”

Snow and sleet has fallen across the region over the last couple of days after an Arctic Maritime air mass brought colder conditions.

Areas including Consett and Barnard Castle woke to snow on Friday, while the A66 was shut for several hours between Bowes and Brough sparking lengthy traffic delays. It has since reopened.

Today (Saturday, February 14), areas of Weardale have woken to snow-covered moors and crisp conditions. 

While there is not currently a weather warning in place, the Met Office has issued a yellow warning for snow and ice from 9pm this evening (February 14).

Vehicles travel along clear roads surrounded by snow covered moors and blue skies in Weardale, County Durham (Image: North News & Pictures Ltd)

Outbreaks of rain heading east are expected to fall as snow initially, with 3cm to 7cm possible above 150m and 1cm to 3cm of snow possible at lower levels. 

It is expected that the snow, which could be heavy at times, may cause some disruption to travel especially over high ground this evening and into the morning. 

Vehicles travel along clear roads surrounded by snow covered moors and blue skies in Weardale, County Durham (Image: North News & Pictures Ltd)

The warning remains in place until 10am on Sunday. 

The forecaster said: “Outbreaks of rain spreading eastwards on Saturday night will fall as snow initially, even to low levels for a time, before becoming confined to higher ground as milder air arrives from the west. 

Vehicles travel along clear roads surrounded by snow covered moors and blue skies in Weardale, County Durham (Image: North News & Pictures Ltd)

“Temporary snow accumulations of 1cm to 3 cm will be possible at low levels, with 3cm to 7 cm possible above about 150m elevation, and perhaps 10cm to 15cm above 400m. 

“Areas sheltered to the north of high ground may see very little snow. Ice will be an additional hazard, particularly across the North East and parts of Scotland where precipitation has the potential to fall on frozen ground leading to very slippery conditions.

“Snow will turn increasingly to rain into Sunday morning, perhaps as a short spell of freezing rain in places, before eventually clearing to the east with a steady thaw of lying snow then setting in.”