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- <text id=90TT2241>
- <title>
- Aug. 27, 1990: World Notes:Europe
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Aug. 27, 1990 Talk Of War
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 45
- World Notes
- EUROPE
- The Long, Dry Summer
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> At last, a few brief showers fell in Britain, France and
- Spain. Very brief. The spotty precipitation last week was not
- enough to reverse the effects of the worst drought to stifle
- the Continent in decades. Intense heat over the past month has
- only aggravated the drastic water shortages afflicting
- countries from England to Turkey. While much of northern Europe
- is largely unaffected, in Spain and Italy, parched grasslands
- have become playgrounds for arsonists. On the first weekend in
- August, more than 3,100 acres of woodland near Livorno on the
- Tuscan coast went up in smoke. Agriculture and tourism have
- also been burned. In the olive-growing Puglia region of Italy,
- farmers face losses of up to $1 billion. Water taps in the
- hotels of Cagliari, Sardinia, run dry 15 hours a day. Britain
- and France have imposed stiff restrictions on water use--and
- heavy fines on wastrels.
- </p>
- <p> "You have to go back to the '40s to find a comparable
- situation," says Emmanuel Choisnel at France's national weather
- institute. "But even then, the needs weren't the same. The
- demand for water has increased enormously. This is serious."
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
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