Two quakes struck about 65 miles north east (shown top right) of the Italian capital - and just four miles from the town of Amatrice, which was flattened by a powerful tremor last August. Schools, buildings and the Metro subway have been evacuated in Rome (main and top left) while eyewitnesses reported apartment blocks swaying. Aftershocks continue to rock the area while residents of the city of Aquila, which has been badly hit in previous earthquakes, rushed into the streets in scenes of panic. Areas devastated by the August quakes have been covered by a metre of snow in recent days with locals describing conditions as 'apocalyptic'.

Brits who headed to Spain this week in search of some winter sun were in for a nasty surprise when the country had its heaviest snowfall in 35 years. Beaches at numerous coastal resorts have been wiped out by freak snow storms and roads cut off as unusual driving conditions caused chaos. Schools on the Costa Blanca were closed this morning because of the heavy snow overnight and even those on the island of Mallorca woke up to a blanket of snow. Spain's Met Office has issued an alert for adverse weather conditions, especially for the southeast peninsular and areas near Castilla-La Mancha and Aragon. Temperatures have dropped across the mainland, with frost and minus ten degrees in the mountain areas, and areas of southern Valencia and northern Alicante have seen up to 25cm of snow in 24 hours.

Sometimes the old ones are the best ones, and this Irish son certainly thought so when he decided to fool his mum with one of the oldest tricks in the book. Professional dad joker John Coen went round to his mum's house, where he decided to prank her with the age-old leek joke. As the pair were in the kitchen he put a big leek in the sink with his mother's washing up. After informing her that she had a 'leak' in her sink, she went to work to find the source, as he filmed her on her hands and knees with her head under the basin, looking for the source of the problem.