Each week we invite competing companies to give us their best deal for a specific holiday. Today: a one-week Easter break in the Algarve, based on a family of four travelling together in mid-April...

At Sound and Vision's annual invitation-only event at London's Abbey Road Studios, where Tom Jones and The Feeling will perform this year, guests bid in a silent auction for photographs of pop stars in aid of Cancer Research. Others can bid for VIP tickets and music memorabilia, including hand-written lyrics by Plan B, Paul Weller and the Happy Mondays, through the Sound and Vision eBay site.

London mayor Boris Johnson today backed a report calling for a brand new south-east England airport.

It's surely the stuff of dreams. The ultimate, fantastical, globe-spanning holiday, lasting 365 days and starting ... now. You put aside the mundane demands of the office, unburden yourself of family responsibility and sample the freshest experiences that the planet can throw you. Wherever you have been and whatever you have done, everything in this ultimate itinerary will be novel: taking advantage of new flights, you'll stay in brand-new hotels and sample brand-new holiday itineraries. Money is no object as you contemplate a year of living from a suitcase (incidentally, prices here are per person and, for packages, normally based on two sharing). Crucially your new 2011 desk diary is suddenly clear of previous engagements, and instead will read like this...

From Northern Ireland to the south-east of England, the United Kingdom has been in the grip of its second serious snowfall of the season, with all the disruption and disappointment that comes with it. But a touch of realism is also needed. There are times, in even the best-prepared and best-organised countries, when severe weather thwarts transport of all kinds. Britain has not been the only place to have shuddered to a halt in the face of sub-zero temperatures and early snow. It is not just British planes and trains that have been cancelled, not just British roads where snow has trapped drivers in their vehicles overnight.

Widespread travel chaos caused by some of the severest winter weather for a century left Christmas commuter plans in tatters and swathes of the country paralysed today.

Millions of Britons faced travel misery today with planes grounded, rail services cancelled and roads rendered impassable on what is traditionally the busiest weekend before Christmas.

December 2010 is "almost certain" to be the coldest since records began in 1910, according to the Met Office.

Florida for £599

Book a week in Orlando, Florida, with Virgin Holidays and save £100 per person. This deal includes return flights from Gatwick and seven nights' accommodation at the 3V Quality Inn International. Based on departures from 13 to 17 February 2011.

Go to virginholidays.co.uk