EUROPE: The Heat's On

Mad dogs and Englishmen were not the only ones going out in the midday sun last week. All over Western Europe, it seemed, there was no escape from the record-breaking heat. In Paris, thermometers pushed 100° for the first time in almost 30 years. In the French countryside, the sun boiled away village duckponds and scorched crops in one of the worst droughts of the century.

Across the Rhine in Germany, farmers were slaughtering prized cattle for lack of fodder; in the Hesse area alone, drought damage was estimated at more than $400 million. West German Autobahnen buckled in the...

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