In Russia, thousands of snow-clearing machines have been working to dig the Russian capital Moscow out of a record-breaking fall of 63 cms, nearly 25 inches. After a weekend of heavy snow showers, the regional weather centre announced that the previous record of 62cms set in 1966 has been broken. Snow ploughs were due to make clean sweeps of the city yesterday. Rail services are said to have been unaffected by the weather. A Moscow railway spokesman said that 4,471 kilometres of track had been cleared of snow on Sunday. In all, about 15,000 snow-clearing machines were deployed in the city of about 10.5 million people backed by 8,500 dump trucks and about 5,500 street-sweeping personnel.