By Andrew Higgins Una Regoje
The heat wave that has stifled Europe this week has barreled eastward, fraying nerves at escalating street protests in Serbia and leaving a river in the Czech Republic clogged with dead fish as the effects of global warming accelerate.
In Albania, across the Adriatic Sea from an Italy still sweltering from exceptionally high temperatures, a routine summer fire at a municipal dump in the central town of Elbasan turned into an out-of-control blaze.
Drained of energy by temperatures that reached 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 Celsius), firefighters struggled to control it. And with clouds of toxic smoke wafting from the dump, protesters gathered outside the Ministry of Tourism and Environment in Tirana, the capital, declaring that it had been renamed 鈥渢he Ministry of Smoke and Pollution.鈥
As in Western European countries that were hammered this week by the heat wave, older people in Albania were suffering most. Fatmir Dervishaj, 76, said she usually went out during the day to play dominoes with her friends, but had been stuck at home because of the heat.