Heat kills as many as terrorist rockets. (Well, that COULD have been the headline)

From the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5203812.stm
Heatwave toll rises across France

People are being urged to stay in the shade and drink plenty of water

At least 20 deaths in France this week are probably linked to a heatwave gripping much of Europe, officials say.

Among the victims were a 15-month-old baby and 10 elderly people, the French Health Ministry said in a statement.

In the Netherlands, two people died of heatstroke earlier this week. Germany and Spain have each reported two deaths blamed on the punishing heat.

Temperatures of well above 30C (86F) have been registered across Europe, prompting a series of health warnings.

Several of the French victims collapsed at their workplace and two died while playing sport, the ministry's statement said.

'Orange alert'

French meteorologists have placed some regions of the country on the second-highest warning level - orange alert - saying that temperatures there could reach 38C (100.4F) in the coming days.

The hot spell has raised concerns that there could be a repeat of a heatwave in the summer of 2003, when some 15,000 people died in France as a result of heatstroke and dehydration.

In other developments across Europe:

• Italy's central regions of Liguria and parts of Umbria have been placed on the highest level of alert, with temperatures expected to reach 40C (104F) over the weekend

• In Britain, forecasters have predicted another heatwave next week, although the mercury is down to 32C (89.6F) on Friday from 36.5C (97.7F) registered two days ago

• In Croatia, the hot weather has been blamed for a series of fires that have destroyed hundreds of hectares of forest and woodland

People are being urged to stay in the shade and drink plenty of water.

Pete's Points:
I sometimes find it difficult to read the headlines in the press without having a moment of irritation about the different ways in which death and destruction seem to be handled.

If we had a terrorist or insurgent bombing of a supermarket or a crowded mosque or a terrorist rocket landing on the heads of a group of people going about their daily business and killing 20 people some of whom are children or babes in arms, we would have headlines that were front page news and would be accompanied by all sorts of moral commentary about how horrendous it is that inncent civilians are killed and/or mutilated etc etc.

Yet here we have something perfectly natural - heat from the sun during high summer, killing people and not a peep from the journalists concerned about the horrors of non terrorist organisations like big business whose contribution to increased green house gasses is leading to global warming and hence to the sort of temperature increases that are becoming more frequent in Europe.

There is not a peep of outrage concerning the fact that for the most part France does not seem to know how to handle heat. For a country that colonized parts of Africa, the Middle East and South East Asia where temperatures are routinely within this range, this is simply silly.

French people should be extremely familiar with how to cope with the effects of heat in a hot environment. The government and the people of France have failed to realise that temperatures of this kind are NORMAL in other places in the world and BILLIONS of people experience these sort of temperatures daily without keeling over and dying.

What is the world coming to when we have governments that issue Orange alerts when temperatures reach 38 degrees Celsius?

In many places around the world that is considered to be a cool day!

You have to warn people about behaving sensibly? "Stay in the shade and drink plenty of water?"

The world has gone nuts!