<div><em>
<h1><font size="2">The 2010 global trend for record setting high temperatures continued to express itself during July with brutal unprecedented heat and resulting fires in Russia:</font></h1>
<h1><a href="http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/thick-smog-from-heat-wave-fires-covers-moscow/411074.html"><font size="2">http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/thick-smog-from-heat-wave-fires-covers-moscow/411074.html</font></a></h1>
<div class="article_date"><font size="4">Thick Smog From Heat Wave Fires Covers Moscow</font> </div>
<div class="article_date">
<div class="article_date">27 July 2010</div></div>
<div class="article_date">
<p>Muscovites struggled to breathe on Monday and Red Square was blanketed in smoke as a record-setting heat wave that has already ruined crops caused fires that set the area around the capital ablaze.</p>
<p>The Emergency Situations Ministry said 34 peat fires and 26 forest fires were blazing Monday in the Moscow region, covering 59 hectares. Experts warned that the air had become dangerous.</p>
<p>Airports serving Moscow were unaffected by the thick smoke, whose sharp, cinder-filled smell permeated the city and crept into offices, homes and restaurants via windows and doors.</p>
<p>"This is awful. It is going to damage people's health," said telephone engineer Davit Manukov, 25, standing by the Kremlin where black clouds of smoke enveloped its golden onion domes.</p>
<p>The Emergency Situations Ministry said it was the worst such attack since a smog outbreak in 2002, which was also a result of smoke from fires caused by hot weather.</p>
<p>The Moscow government agency overseeing air pollution, Mosekomonitoring, said the amount of harmful impurities in Moscow's air exceeded the norm by five to eight times.</p>
<p>"The ecological situation in Moscow has become unfavorable," its chief specialist, <a class="related_dotted" href="http://www.themoscowtimes.com/mt_profile/Alexei_Popikov/">Alexei Popikov</a>, said by telephone, adding that it would last several days.</p>
</div>
<div class="article_date">-----------------------------------</div></em></div>
<div><em></em> </div>
<div><em><a href="http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-07-25/summer-heat-baking-alive.html?fullstory">http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-07-25/summer-heat-baking-alive.html?fullstory</a></em></div>
<div><em></em> </div>
<div><font size="4">No end in sight as Russia dries up in heat wave</font></div>
<div> </div>
<div>Published 25 July, 2010, 09:06</div>
<div>Edited 26 July, 2010, 08:44</div>
<div> </div>
<div><em>“This is a serious abnormality. The Russian weather service has never measured such temperatures in Moscow in July,” </em>said Dmitry Kiktyov, Deputy Director of the Hydrometeorological Center of Russia. <em>“According to our calculations, it hasn't even reached its peak yet.”</em></div>
<div><em>-------------------------------------------</em></div>
<div><em>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett</em></div>