RUSSIA: Two people have died in Moscow and 14 are in hospital with exposure as the Russian capital shivers in a sudden winter freeze.
Temperatures plummeted from zero to minus 28 degrees in a single day, turning roads into ice rinks and leaving power officials threatening cuts.
Moscow police have been ordered to reverse their normal policy of turning homeless people out of doorways and public buildings because of the threat they will die of cold.
Since October, 105 homeless people have died of exposure, a familiar toll in a city inhabited by an increasingly large proportion of the nation's million-plus citizens who are without shelter.
Anatoly Chubais, chief executive of Russia's power company, Unified Energy Systems, has threatened to cut power to non-essential users including factories if the freeze carries on for three straight days. With weather experts predicting the chill will last until Sunday, Muscovites are bracing themselves for the worst.
Last May a blackout due to a malfunctioning sub station left millions without power, and there are fears the city's antiquated electricity system, already struggling to cope with a booming economy, might fail again.
The temperatures have been brought on a weather system from Siberia, where some towns are recording temperatures of minus 45 degrees. In eastern provinces schools have closed.
Moscow says it is considering a similar measure and has opened shelters for the elderly and homeless. Christian Orthodox monks at Valaamsky Monastery in northern Moscow have opened a soup kitchen.
The keepers at Moscow zoo have spread straw on ponds to give birds traction.
And neighbouring Georgia has been cut in two by unusually heavy snowfalls that have blocked the central highway at the Rikoti Pass linking eastern and western provinces.