EUROPE: The death toll from a winter freeze in Moscow reached 239 today as large parts of Europe were caught up in bitter conditions.
In Germany, temperatures plunged to minus 31 degrees overnight.
Shipping on the Baltic Sea was disrupted by ice building up along the coast and Hamburg's Elbe river port was rapidly freezing over.
Even normally sunny Spain and Portugal were bracing for the cold snap as heavy snowfall was recorded in the north of both countries.
Civil defence officials in Madrid issued weather warnings for 10 of the country's 17 regions amid forecasts of more heavy snowfalls.
It has been unseasonably cold for two weeks across western Russia. On the Kola peninsula, which straddles the Arctic Circle, temperatures reached minus 48 degrees last night.
Six people died in Moscow as the mercury there dropped to minus 36 - the capital's coldest this winter.
Twenty-five others were taken to hospital with hypothermia or frostbite.
Many victims of the cold are the homeless and drunks who fail to find shelter before falling asleep.
Health officials said they hoped conditions would "warm up" to minus 16 degrees tomorrow.
Elsewhere, the cold conditions have claimed hundreds of lives on the Indian sub-continent. The victims are mostly poor people unaccustomed to the weather and badly equipped to fight it.
Almost 400 people have died in Bangladesh and northern India over the last 10 days. Icy winds sweeping down from the Himalayas reportedly caused 260 deaths in Bangladesh, while 128 people have died in India's Uttar Pradesh state alone, officials said.
Most of the dead there were children and elderly villagers who lived in mud-and-straw huts and could not afford warm clothing. At least 200 children have been admitted to hospital because of the cold.
Temperatures were forecast to drop further from 3.4 degrees, and the death toll was expected to rise as state officials said their figures so far were only compiled from urban areas and did not cover rural districts.
"Nobody is looking at the villages where the cold is even more intense because of open fields," said Sukhram Pandey, a doctor in Lucknow. - (AP)