Winter

The city of Harbin in China’s frigid northeast is hosting one of the world’s largest festivals featuring ice sculptures of animals, cartoon characters and famous landmarks. The festival, which officially opened last Thursday and last year drew more than a million visitors, showcases the region’s tradition of snow and ice carvings as well as ice swimming in the Songhua River.

Ten people have become victim to the cold weather in Poland over the last two days when temperatures fell to -20. Over the weekend, low temperatures will remain.

Photographer Alex Ugalnikov dares to come out during frozen early winter mornings to capture the beauty of the winter in his native Belarus.

He took brilliant photos of fields and rivers covered in ice and snow which look like paintings.

The eastern United States emerged wearily from a massive blizzard that dumped huge amounts of snow and killed at least 25 people, but Washington was still reeling, with government offices and schools to remain closed Jan. 25.

Turkey's crop producers are happy with the snowfall across the country as long-anticipated precipitation arrived early January, the Turkish Union of Agricultural Chambers (TZOB) president has said.

According to ?emsi Bayraktar, the snow and rain throughout the country is expected to have a good impact on the winter drought, which was feared to damage newly-planted crops.

A new wave of bad weather is expected to hit Europe with very low temperatures, heavy snowfall and strong winds.

Greece has already experienced the extreme weather phenomena from Saturday night with heavy rainfalls and strong winds causing damages to roads and areas, while the main bridge on Pinios River at Kalabaka, central Greece, ruptured.

Zagori is a frozen area in the heart of Epirus, known for its 47 traditional villages. Subzero temperatures have brought the thermometer diving to 7 degrees centigrade in the early hours of Tuesday. There was no snow, but the winter froze. Here’s what residents woke up to…

The Voidomatis river, famous for its arched bridge froze over.

The Turkish team succeeded in finishing number two and three, but missed the number one spot; alas, not from the top but the bottom. The title of the news could be, "Turkish team loses on the piste, but wins on the table." In both the giant slalom and cross country ski races, the Turkish competitors graciously held the bottom places.

"Cold weather over, but there may still be some snow"

BELGRADE -- The winter and spells of "significantly cold weather" are behinds us, but some snowfall can still be expected, a meteorologist has said.

The management of Pirin National Park prohibited the flights of all aircraft for the duration of the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup, which will be held in the Bulgarian ski resort Bansko.