EUROPE: Firefighters are tackling blazes across Europe and Russia's Far East as a prolonged heatwave and some of the highest temperatures on record dry forests and grassland from the Adriatic to Siberia.
In Russia, emergency ministry officials said firefighters were trying to douse around 518 forest fires across the vast country.
In Portugal, firefighters finally put out a blaze which ravaged 4,000 hectares of pine forest north of the capital, Lisbon, after battling to control it since Saturday.
The German office for marine, shipping and hydrography said water temperatures in the North Sea were showing the longest and most intensive phase of warmth in 130 years.
In Russia, forest fires raged across nearly 200,000 hectares, mostly in the Far East, according to official figures.
"It is bad, it is very bad, but our people are out fighting the fires," said a government spokesman.
The fires disrupted transport in many areas. The airport of Anadyr, the Arctic hometown of new Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich, was closed as thick smoke from a forest fire blanketed runways.
Firefighters in Bosnia, unable to reach some fires in more mountainous areas, attempted to snuff out a blaze around the southeastern town of Trebinje, Bosnian radio reported.
Vineyards around the Balkan country's only coastal town of Neum were destroyed in a fire on Monday, while temperatures yesterday reached 39 degrees.
Italy, which has suffered power cuts due to demands on electricity supplies due to the heat, took the unusual action of opening up the gates of Alpine reservoirs to pump water into the arid Po river in the north.
Weather forecasters warned temperatures could climb further in the next few days and hit 40 degrees in Florence, Sardinia and in the southern toe of the peninsula. - (Reuters)