Greece ‘at war with fire’ amid chaotic evacuation of tourists from Rhodes
The Guardian
The battle to contain wildfires across Greece continued for a seventh straight day as firefighters struggled to extinguish flames amid scenes of pandemonium prompted by the nation’s biggest ever evacuation of tourists on inferno-stricken Rhodes.
With the aid of water-dropping planes, authorities worked around the clock to tame numerous fires. While the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said it was clear the country was “at war with fire”, efforts were being concentrated on dousing blazes raging on the islands of Evia and Corfu, in addition to Rhodes.
“This battle is uneven, and it will keep being like that for as long as the conditions remain hard,” the centre-right leader told the Greek parliament.
Warning that “three difficult days” lay ahead with the prediction that temperatures would rise, he added: “We find ourselves at war with fire.”
Heatwave in US Southwest region to expand east Published
BBC
A heatwave baking the US Southwest for weeks is set to expand into central and eastern regions.
Beginning in the Midwest, the hot weather will extend east as far as the southern tip of Florida by Wednesday, say meteorologists.
Temperature records were surpassed in several major cities over the weekend, and some 59 million Americans began Monday under extreme heat advisories.
July is now expected to be the Earth's hottest month since records began.
On Sunday, the city of Phoenix, Arizona, extended its streak of temperatures above 43C (110F) into a 24th day, well past the previous record of 18 days set in 1974.
It is on course to be the first major US city to average over 100F (38C) for an entire month, according to NOAA statistics and a Washington Post analysis.