Air France-KLM said on Monday that bad weather in December that led to the closure of airports across Europe cost the company an estimated 70 million euros ($90 million), the Franco-Dutch airline said in a statement.

"The passenger and cargo activities were each affected by the periods of heavy snowfall in December in both Europe and the United States," the airline said.

Rescuers were on Monday searching for at least one person missing after an Iran Air passenger jet crashed in bad weather in northwestern Iran killing 77 people and injuring 26, state media said.

"Unfortunately, 77 of our citizens were killed, 26 were injured who have been hospitalized and one person is reported to be missing," Iran's state television said Monday, citing a report from a police information centre.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday that Christian minorities in the Middle East are victims of "religious cleansing," following deadly attacks on churches in the region.

"We cannot accept and thereby facilitate what looks more and more like a particularly wicked program of cleansing in the Middle East, religious cleansing," he said in an annual New Year's address to religious leaders.

Britain has raised its terrorist threat level specific to major transport hubs, including airports and London railway terminals, from substantial to severe, a report said Friday.

There was no suggestion of any intelligence of an imminent attack and security officials are stressing the change is precautionary, said the BBC.

A suicide bomber killed 17 people and wounded another 21 in assassinating a police commander at a public bath in a southern Afghan town on the border with Pakistan, the local government said.

"A suicide bomber blew up explosives strapped to his chest at a public bath in Spin Boldak," border police official General Abdul Razaq told Agence France Presse.

Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan's most politically important province Punjab, was assassinated by one of his bodyguards in Islamabad on Tuesday, apparently for opposing blasphemy laws.

Taseer was one of the most moderate political voices in the main ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP), which this week slumped into a major political crisis when its junior coalition partner walked out of the federal government.

French police are investigating threats made against Coptic churches in France in the wake of a deadly attack on one in Egypt, a security source said Monday.

The Paris anti-terrorism squad launched a probe on terrorism-related charges after a church leader filed a complaint, the source said.

Military flights rushed Monday to restock the Australian city of Brisbane before it is cut off by floodwaters that have turned a huge swath of the Outback into a lake, while police confirmed two more deaths in the crisis.

The death toll from some of Australia's worst flooding in a decade is three since Saturday, though police in Queensland state say several other people have drowned in separate incidents involving swollen rivers and water accidents since tropical deluges began in late November. In total, 10 people have died, police said Monday.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez dared the United States to expel his ambassador or cut off diplomatic ties in retaliation for his rejection of Washington's choice for ambassador to Caracas.

Tensions have been growing over Chavez's refusal to accept American diplomat Larry Palmer and also over U.S. criticisms of a legislative offensive by the president's congressional allies. Lawmakers have granted Chavez expanded powers to enact laws by decree for the next year and a half, a change that opponents condemn as antidemocratic.

Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Wednesday warned "unprecedented" flooding would worsen after entire towns were cut off and soldiers airlifted hundreds of people from northeastern towns.

Drenching rains unleashed by a tropical cyclone have left vast tracts of the state of Queensland under water, with 1,000 evacuations and 38 regions declared natural disaster areas.