Bitterly cold weather sweeping across Europe claimed more victims Sunday, brought widespread disruption to transport services, and left thousands without power with warnings that low temperatures would continue into next week.

Greece on Sunday insisted on extending critical talks on a debt rescue into Monday, as the government's coalition backers denounced pressure from public creditors to pass harsher austerity measures.

President Barack Obama said Sunday that he deserved to be re-elected because the US economy is adding jobs and recovering, in stark contrast to the bleak monthly unemployment hikes he inherited in 2009.

The U.S. labor market teed off the new year with a nice surprise as the country's unemployment rate dropped to a near three-year low of 8.3 percent in January, but experts believe that the jobs growth was insufficient to cure the lingeringly sick labor market in the short run.

The outlook of the U.S. economic recovery remained uncertain, as the recovery was confronted with a set of domestic and external headwinds, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Thursday.

Over 80 people have died from hypothermia and frostbite in Poland and Ukraine, as a cold snap affected a large part of Europe, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said on Thursday.

The U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted on Tuesday that the federal government would run a budget deficit of around 1.1 trillion U.S. dollars in the 2012 fiscal year.

The Washington-based World Bank Group cautioned Tuesday that global food prices were high and volatile, and that the world needed to remain vigilant to the trend.

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said Monday that EU leaders at the summit called for clinching a deal between Greece and its lenders on cutting its debt by the end of the week.

The ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) gained a majority of the votes in the country’s Senate elections, receiving up to 77.81 percent, according to preliminary results provided by the National Election Committee (NEC) of Cambodia on Jan. 29.

Defiant Occupy D.C. protesters on Monday vowed to continue with their encampment in the U.S. capital as the deadline for decampment passed. The U.S. National Park Service last week ordered protesters at two encampment sites -- McPherson Square or Freedom Plaza -- to remove their sleeping bags, pillows and other gear by Monday noon, or they might be arrested.

A total of 25 European Union (EU) member states would join and sign a new fiscal treaty designed to enshrine tighter deficit and debt discipline, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said here late on Monday.