The NS and ProRail assumed on Thursday of last week that there would be three to five centimetres of snow. When the forecast was increased on Friday morning to between 10 and 15 centimetres, it was too late to change the timetables automatically, Schultz van Haegen told parliament.

Drivers and conductors had to be told about the changes individually which cost time and delayed the availability of information to passengers, she said.

Once the new schedule was up and running, it did provide ‘a predictable and reliable service’ from Sunday onwards, the Volkskrant quotes the minister as saying.

Schultz van Haegen says she will be consulting ‘experts’ from countries with experience of extreme weather conditions to find solutions to the chaos on the railways whenever it snows.

But she also says the railways will remain ‘vulnerable’ because of the ‘intensive use of the trains and track’.

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Prime Minister Julia Gillard said eight military helicopters would help in search, evacuation and resupply missions in the eastern state, where days of heavy rainfall have prompted hundreds of evacuations and dozens of rescues.

“The helicopters will be available to assist in rescue operations as required until the immediate crisis has passed,” Gillard said in a statement.

In the inland Queensland town of Charleville authorities are on alert amid fears a temporary levee will collapse as the Warrego River continues to rise, flooding the whole town.

The weather bureau’s Paul Birch told the ABC the situation was “touch and go” as the water will be “rushing in quick over the levee”.

“If it does that you find it tends to erode out part of the levee fairly quickly. So then it will just open up the river into town — it’s quite catastrophic,” Birch said.

Mayor Mark O’Brien said hundreds of people had been evacuated from their homes but so far Charleville itself was “high and dry”.

“We’ve just got an enormous body of water going down the river, but if this thing passes quickly people can just go straight back to the way they were before,” he told the ABC.

In the town of Roma to the east, police were continuing their search for a woman missing since Friday after her vehicle was swept off the side of a road.

“A boy was rescued from the car and a woman got out of the vehicle but rescuers could not keep hold of her,” police said in a statement. “The woman was swept away in fast flowing flood waters.”

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, who just over a year ago was dealing with epic floods that swamped the state, sweeping away entire hamlets and flooding thousands of homes, has warned the community faced dangerous new territory.

In New South Wales, the State Emergency Service said 16,550 people were stranded with the worst affected areas around Moree in the state’s far north where floodwaters are expected to remain at their peak for one or two days.

“At this height the properties on the north side of the Mehi River in Moree will remain isolated with many properties surrounded by floodwater and some, possibly in excess of three hundred, inundated,” the service said.

SES assistant commissioner Andrew Edwards said while the rain was easing, the amount of flooding in the region and to the north meant that “we can expect these floods to be going on for months” in some pockets.

Australia suffered epic floods late 2010 and in the January 2011 which swamped a huge area of Queensland, inundating thousands of homes and businesses, sweeping away small villages and leaving more than 30 people dead.

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Experts said the incident, which follows smaller leaks last weekend, is not a big setback to getting the plant under control but the timing is awkward for the government as it strives to win public acceptance for the restart of reactors elsewhere to avoid a summer power crunch.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant, on the coast 240 km northeast of Tokyo, was wrecked by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, triggering reactor meltdowns and radiation leaks that caused mass evacuations and widespread contamination.

The leak discovered late on Tuesday was from a pipe at the plant’s No.4 reactor that may have burst after freezing due to cold weather, said a spokesman for the utility, known as Tepco. He said leaking water would go into a drain leading to a storage facility.

It contained only a tiny amount of radiation compared with the huge amount of water used to cool the reactors in the aftermath of the March disaster, much of which is still being treated at the plant to lower its radiation level, he said.

The No.4 reactor was shut for maintenance when the tsunami struck, and no fuel rods are inside thereactor vessel.

“I wouldn’t say this is a positive development. But it isn’t something that would further stoke safety concerns over other nuclear plants,” said Kenji Sumita, honorary professor at Osaka University.

“If it hadn’t been for the Fukushima disaster, an incident like this could have gone unreported.”

Shattered trust in the safety of nuclear energy has prevented the restart of reactors shut for routine maintenance, straining power supply and threatening blackouts. Only three of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors are now operating. Without approval for restarts, all of them could be shut by the end of April, boosting the use of fossil fuels and adding over $30 billion a year to the nation’s energy costs, a government estimate said.

U.N. nuclear experts gave their backing on Tuesday to stress tests aimed at showing Japan’s nuclear plants can withstand the sort of disasters that devastated Fukushima Daiichi.

The government announced on December 16 that reactors at the plant had reached a state of cold shutdown, a milestone in cleanup efforts and a pre-condition for allowing about 80,000 residents evacuated from a 20-km (12 miles) radius of the Daiichi plant to return home.

Resource-poor Japan had aimed to increase the share of nuclear power to more than half of its electricity supply by 2030 before the disaster, but now looks to reduce its reliance on nuclear power and raise the role renewable sources such as wind and solar power.

Tepco initially estimated the size of this week’s leak at six litres but later revised it to 8.5 cubic metres, and is looking into how it can prevent similar incidents.

It follows the discovery and plugging of smaller leaks at the same reactor last weekend.

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Emergency services in the Ukraine said most of the dead were homeless people who froze to death on the streets, four were found in their homes, and over 600 people sought medical help for frostbite and hypothermia.

Authorities opened 1,590 shelters to provide food and heat, and were planning to set up 150 more, as temperatures plunged to minus 28 degrees Celsius (-18 degrees Fahrenheit) in some regions.

Meanwhile, police in Poland reported five new deaths on Tuesday, bringing the overall toll for January to 27 as overnight temperatures dipped to minus 30 Celsius (-22 degrees Fahrenheit).

In Vilnius, the capital of neighbouring Lithuania, one homeless man was found dead Tuesday, bringing the death toll there to eight since Saturday.

In the Czech Republic, a woman was found frozen to death in a garden shed in the capital Prague, police said.

Meanwhile, two died in Romania, raising the death toll to eight since Thursday, the health ministry said.

Temperatures plunged to minus 27 degrees Celsius (-16 Fahrenheit) in central Romania Monday night.

Neighbouring Bulgaria reported record lows and the Danube started to freeze over, threatening shipping.

Eighteen towns, including the capital Sofia, recorded their coldest January 31 since records started 100 years ago with the mercury dropping as low as minus 29 degrees Celsius (-20.2 Fahrenheit) in Kneja, in the northeast, according to the national weather service.

In Switzerland, some 10 centimetres (3.9 inches) of snow fell Tuesday morning hampering flights, and the weather service predicted temperatures would drop to minus 15 Celsius (5 Fahrenheit) in the ski resorts of Saint-Moritz and Sils-Maria.

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Tore Larsen, who lives in a cottage on the shores of Møsvatn lake, decided to rethink his plans for the day after taking a look at his thermometer.

“Right now it’s -37 degrees here. I was actually supposed to travel to West Telemark today to install a satellite dish but I’ve put that off for now,” he said.

Meteorologists said the temperature was the lowest recorded in the country on Tuesday, as well as being the lowest in memory in the Telemark area. However, since it was recorded by an individual home owner it is not destined to enter the record books.

“We recorded -31.8 degrees at Møsstrond in Telemark in 1980. We haven’t had any colder measurements at our weather stations since then, so this is probably a new record cold level for Telemark,” Øyvind Johnsen from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute told national broadcaster NRK.

The cold snap stems from a high pressure belt over Finland and Russia, which may be set to bring even colder weather over the coming days.

“It’s likely that conditions will remain much the same overnight so it could get a bit colder. That’s also how it looks for the rest of the week,” said Johnsen.

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This part of Europe is not unused to cold, but the current freeze, which spread to most of the region last week, came after a period of relatively mild weather. Many were shocked when temperatures in some parts plunged Monday to minus 20 Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit).

“Just as we thought we could get away with a spring-like winter …” lamented Jelena Savic, 43, from the Serbian capital of Belgrade, her head wrapped in a shawl with only eyes uncovered. “I’m freezing. It’s hard to get used to it so suddenly.”

Officials have appealed to people to stay indoors and be careful. Police searched for the homeless to make sure they didn’t freeze to death. In some places, heaters will be set up at bus stations.

Still, 18 people, most of them homeless, died in Ukraine from hypothermia and nearly 500 people sought medical help for frostbite and hypothermia in just three days last week, theEmergency Situations Ministry said.

Temperatures in parts of Ukraine fell to minus 16 C (3 F) during the day and minus 23 C (minus 10 F) in the night. Authorities opened 1,500 shelters to provide food and heat and closed schools and nurseries. More than 17,000 people have sought help in such shelters in the past three days, authorities said.

In Poland, at least 10 people froze to death as the cold reached minus 26 C (minus 15 F) on Monday.

Malgorzata Wozniak, a spokeswoman for Poland’s Interior Ministry, told The Associated Press that elderly people and the homeless were among the dead. Police were checking unheated empty buildings for homeless people they could take to shelters.

Warsaw city authorities decided to place more than 40 heaters in the busiest city transport stops to help waiting passengers keep warm.

City authorities in the Czech capital of Prague set up tents for an estimated 3,000 homeless people. Freezing temperatures also damaged train tracks, slowing railway traffic.

In central Serbia, three people died and two more were missing, while 14 municipalities were operating under emergency decrees. Efforts to clear roads blocked by snow were hampered by strong winds and dozens of towns faced power outages.

Police said one woman froze to death in a snowstorm in a central Serbian village, while two elderly men were found dead, one in the snow outside his home. Further south, emergency crews are searching for two men in their 70s who are feared dead.

“We are getting some ‘real’ winter this week,” Croatian meteorologist Zoran Vakula said.

In Bulgaria, a 57-year-old man froze to death in a northwestern village and emergency decrees were declared in 25 of the country’s 28 districts. In the capital of Sofia, authorities handed out hot tea and placed homeless people in emergency shelters.

Strong winds also closed down Bulgaria’s main Black Sea port of Varna, while part of a major highway leading to Bulgaria and Greece from Turkey was closed after a heavy snowfall. Nearly 200 Turkish Airlines flights to and from Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport were canceled, and a city sports hall was turned to a temporary shelter for some 350 homeless people.

The temperature in Turkey’s province of Kars, which borders Armenia, dropped to minus 25 C on Sunday night.

The situation was similar in Romania, where reports said four people have died because of freezing weather. There, authorities sent prison inmates to shovel snow and unblock paths leading to a shelter with some 300 stray dogs and puppies.

Weather forecasts say the cold snap will continue through the week.

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“Faced with the lack of financial visibility for the coming months, the company has decided to cease its operations as a measure of caution and safety,” Spanair said in a statement on Friday evening.

Its last scheduled flight landed on Friday night, leaving rivals such as Iberia, Vueling and Easyjet to share out the passengers left stranded.

Spanish media said at least 22,000 passengers were affected over the weekend but Spanair spokespeople were not immediately available to confirm this to AFP.

A queue of 200 surprised passengers formed at Spanair counters at Barcelona airport on Friday evening shortly after the anouncement, an AFP journalist said.

Airports authority AENA said Saturday morning everything was normal at Madrid’s Barajas airport and Barcelona’s El Prat, where special lounges had been allocated for Spanair customers.

“Passengers are turning up at these zones and the other companies are putting them on flights,” an AENA spokeswoman told AFP.

She said 55 Spanair flights were scrapped at Madrid and 54 at Barcelona on Saturday alone, with a handful of flights cancelled at Palma de Mallorca and Gran Canaria.

The company said in its statement Friday: “The Spanair management regrets this and apologises to all those people who are affected by this situation.”

Spanair, founded in 1986, had tried to survive by a tie-up with Qatar Airways which fell through.

The Catalania regional authorities, which owns part of the company, said it was unable to increase its stake due to crisis budget cuts and EU limits.

In 2008 one of Spanair’s jets crashed on take-off at Madrid airport with the deaths of 154 people.

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The resorts of Lech, Zuers and Stuben in the westernmost province of Vorarlberg, and the popular ski destination of Ischgl in Tirol, were inaccessible after roads were blocked.

Experts also spoke of a “critical” avalanche situation and advised skiers to avoid going off-piste. In Vorarlberg, the avalanche risk was raised to level four — the second highest.

Overnight, over 7,000 households in Tirol were also without power.

More than half a metre (one and a half feet) of snow had been dumped on western Austria since Friday, experts said, with further snowfall and strong winds expected for the weekend.

The men’s World Cup downhill race in Kitzbuehel had to be altered as a result on Saturday, while freestyle skiing at the Winter Youth Olympics in Innsbruck was postponed.

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The Costa Concordia, carrying 4,200 passengers, capsized after hitting rocks off the coast of Isola del Giglio last Friday night. Eleven bodies have been recovered, and a search for 24 missing people is underway.

Marco Monda said he was spending a honeymoon with his young wife and they were invited to dinner at the best restaurant on the ship. Schettino, he said, appeared at the same restaurant some 15 minutes later after they sat at their table at 9:00 p.m.

“The captain made his way between tables embracing two women – a blonde and a brunette. He was showing them beautiful view that opened from the restaurant,” Monda said adding that Shettino was still there and not on the captain’s bridge, when the ship crashed into rocks at approximately 9:45 p.m.

“The captain was among us at the moment of the impact and I am ready to write it down in black on the white, as because of this damn captain I saw the face of the death,” the Italian passenger said.

He also said that the captain was first to flee the vessel like a regular passenger leaving other people behind.

“He left elderly and handicapped to the mercy of fate. Crew members were helping us, but there were no officers among them,” Monda added.

Captain Schettino, 52, who is currently under a house arrest, claimed that the ship hit a rock formation that had not appeared on nautical charts and had not been picked up by the ship’s navigation systems.

According to prosecutors, Schettino was to blame for the crash and also fled the vessel when passengers were still stranded – a version apparently backed by a recorded conversation between Schettino and a port official. But the captain has flatly rejected the accusations.

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The head of the Italian coastguard, Marco Brusco, said there was “a glimmer of hope” for finding more survivors since the giant half-submerged vessel had not yet been fully inspected, but rescuers said the chances were now slim.

Brusco said four crew members and 25 tourists including six Italians remained unaccounted for. A German official said at least 10 German nationals were still missing and two US nationals were also yet to be found.

Six bodies have so far been found in the wreck of the Costa Concordia, which occurred off the coast of the picturesque island of Giglio late on Friday the 13th.

Three of the victims — two French passengers and one Peruvian crew member — drowned after jumping into the chilly Mediterranean waters to escape.

Rodolfo Raiteri, head of the coastguard’s diving team, told AFP on the shore: “The conditions inside are disastrous. It’s very difficult. The corridors are cluttered and it’s hard for the divers to swim through.”

Choppy seas forced rescuers to temporally evacuate the 17-deck Costa Concordia for several hours on Monday after the ship slipped on a rocky shelf under the sea, sparking fears that the hulk could sink entirely.

Giglio mayor Sergio Ortelli warned that the stricken vessel, which hit submerged rocks and keeled over off the island holiday spot, was an “ecological timebomb” in the pristine waters of a marine nature reserve.

The head of the company that owns the vessel said it had hit a rock as a result of an “inexplicable” error by the captain, Francesco Schettino, who was arrested on Saturday along with first officer Ciro Ambrosio.

“He carried out a manoeuvre which had not been approved by us and we disassociate ourselves from such behaviour,” said Pier Luigi Foschi, the boss of Costa Crociere, Europe’s largest cruise operator.

Italian prosecutors accuse Schettino and Ambrosio of abandoning ship before all the passengers were rescued.

A transcript of a conversation between Schettino and a port official was released Monday showing that the captain refused to return to the ship.

“You must tell us how many people, children, women and passengers are there and the exact number of each category,” the official tells Schettino, according to the transcript of the conversation on one of the ship’s “black boxes”.

“What are you doing? Are you abandoning the rescue?” the official says.

The Costa Concordia was carrying more than 4,200 people when it ran aground shortly after starting a seven-day Mediterranean cruise on its way to Marseille in France and Barcelona in Spain, just as many passengers were having dinner.

Carnival Corp, the parent company of Costa Crociere, put the initial cost of the disaster at $85-95 million (67-75 million euros).

Island residents have already said the ship was sailing far too close to Giglio and had hit a reef known as the School Rocks, well known to inhabitants.

The Corriere della Sera reported Monday that the captain had passed close to the island’s rocky shores to please the head waiter who comes from Giglio.

It also quoted witnesses as claiming the waiter had warned Schettino just before the accident happened: “Careful, we are extremely close to the shore.”

Crews on Monday put down anti-spill booms as fears of a leak of the ship’s 2,380 tons of fuel rose and local officials called for strict curbs in the future on shipping routes in an area of outstanding natural beauty.

A Dutch company specialising in salvage operations, Smit, was to begin pumping out the fuel this week. Officials said the ship itself could then be taken off Giglio in an unprecedented operation using massive floating devices.

Passengers meanwhile described confusion on board as the lights went out and how they were at first told it was just an electrical fault — before the ship lurched sharply on to its side and panic set in.

Rose Metcalf, a 23-year-old crew member, wiped away tears as she told how she wrote a note to her mother in case she did not survive.

“There was absolute panic. It was just terrifying, I was just trying to keep people calm. People were white, people were crying, screaming,” she told BBC television on her return to England.

Ennio Aquilino, a fire brigade chief who was one of the first on the scene and still bore the scars from a fall during the rescue operation as he saved a French woman, said it had been “an apocalyptic scene.”

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