THE glacial conditions that prevailed across much of the northern hemisphere, from Europe through North America to Asia, claimed further lives yesterday as the perishing cold proved too much even for penguins in Amsterdam zoo.
The appalling weather has so far been responsible for at least 300 deaths since Christmas Eve, but the toll rises almost hourly. Europe has been worst hit, with more than 220 deaths attributed to the cold. Poland alone reported 50 fatalities.
In Romania, the cold snap has killed at least 50 people in Bucharest. Homeless people, beggars and street children are a common sight in the Romanian capital, sleeping in sewers, parks, derelict buildings or underground stations.
In France, where the death toll rose overnight to 22, the mayor of a Paris suburb granted police the right to force the homeless into shelters to prevent further deaths. The decision was condemned by the Prime Minister, Mr Alain Juppe, who called for "persuasion" rather than "constraint".
President Chirac intervened in the dispute when he called on ministers to find a solution to the problem of homeless people who refuse shelter because their dogs cannot stay with them. He urged Emergency Action Minister, Mr Xavier Emmanuelli, "to find a way to resolve the problem of dogs which accompany a certain number of homeless people."
Ice and snow paralysed practically all transport in the south-east Rhone valley, where 10,000 people were stranded overnight.
Rail workers were struggling to re-establish services in the region, but thousands of passengers remained stuck yesterday after trains were immobilised by up to 10 centimetres of ice.
On roads in the area, conditions improved slightly after ice and snow cut the main A7 north-south motorway on Thursday, blocking up to 5,000 cars.
Elsewhere in Europe, a bus flipped over on a snow-covered Spanish road, killing four people and injuring 24 near the town of Soria 200 km north of Madrid. Many other northern and central Spanish regions have been blanketed with snow, and some 30 villages have been cut off.
A further four frozen bodies were found yesterday in Germany, taking the number of deaths to 39. At least 11 of them died in fires linked to problems with heating systems.
Six people died of hypothermia in Ukraine after drinking and going to sleep out of doors during extended New Year festivities.
On the other side of the Atlantic, flash floods and mudslides on the Pacific seaboard of the US killed at least 14 people and forced thousands to flee their homes, from central California to Washington state.
In Canada, avalanches prompted by the storms left mounds of snow as high as seven storey buildings on the Trans Canada Highway.
In South Korea, snow storms and road accidents caused by the icy conditions have left 40 dead and some 500 injured.
Meanwhile, the penguins of Amsterdam zoo have been suffering so much from the cold that the zookeepers were forced to move them to a (warmer) refrigerator.
And in England, the annual world poohsticks championships at Long Wittenham in south Oxfordshire have been postponed for the first time since 1963 because the Thames is frozen.
The popular children's game of dropping sticks over a bridge to see which emerges first on the other side was immortalised in A. A. Milne's stories of Winnie The Pooh and Christopher Robin.