Europe struggles under record cold snap

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) -- Deaths and travel woes continue to mount in Europe after a week of snow and bitter cold.

In hard-hit Ukraine, officials say 135 people have died and about 2,000 have been hospitalized for frostbite or hypothermia.

The big freeze has trapped thousands in remote mountain villages in the Balkans and caused traffic chaos across the continent by blocking roads and shutting down airports.

Hundreds of villages are snowed-in in Bosnia, where authorities are using helicopters to evacuate the sick and deliver food.

In Serbia, emergency officials say 70,000 people have been cut off by heavy snow.

At least eight deaths are reported in Bulgaria, where rain has followed the snow, causing floods and a dam collapse.

Ten deaths have been linked to winter weather in Italy, where snow has blanketed Rome and piled up as deep as 10 feet in parts of the north.

But the snowy weather is also providing some new ways to have fun. In the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, residents staged a spontaneous "Olympics," skiing down main streets and leaping out of windows into snow banks.

And ice skaters in the Netherlands are hoping to stage an 11-city race along a 125-mile network of canals for the first time since 1997.