Fires, Drought And Smog Across Europe As Heatwave Continues

[hatrack]

PARIS (AFP) - "Large parts of Europe continued to swelter under a record-breaking heat wave that has already caused deadly forest fires, a crisis for farmers and dangerously high ozone levels.

In Portugal, nine people have been killed in the worst wave of forest fires in recent history. With 15 of the country's 18 regions affected, the government was preparing to annuonce a state of emergency to allow aid funds to be unblocked. Fires were also raging in parts of southern and central Spain, where temperatures of more than 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) were blamed for the deaths of at least seven people in recent days.

In France, the fires which killed five people last week have been extinguished, but attention was now focussed on the deteriorating plight of livestock and cereal farmers whose livelihood is threatened by the drought now officially declared across more than half the country.

EDIT

In France - but also in the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Serbia, Spain and other countries - farmers were predicting a drastic fall in cereal and milk yields. The price of chicken has gone up by more than 35 percent in Spain, as a result of the heat which has killed more than a million birds and led to dramatic weight loss in the rest, the French newspaper Liberation reported."

EDIT

AFP via Yahoo News