AFP UK

Demand for fins and meat has driven an estimated 71-percent decline in ocean sharks and rays since 1970

Endangered sharks, rays and skates in the Mediterranean are more frequently caught in protected than in unprotected areas, according to research published Tuesday highlighting the need for better conservation for critically threatened species.

The three types of elasmobranch are among the species most threatened by overfishing. 

While often landed as by-catch — or caught in nets of boats seeking to land other species — demand for their fins and meat has driven an estimated 71-percent decline in ocean sharks and rays since 1970. 

Although they are among the oldest marine species on Earth, their slow growth rate and late maturity mean one third of elasmobranchs are categorised by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as at risk of extinction. 

While dozens of nations have banned large-scale fishing of endangered shark, ray and skate species, true global catch figures are likely to be hugely underestimated as 90 percent of the world’s fishing fleet is made up of small-scale boats.

Researchers in Italy wanted to get a better idea of how species fare in the Mediterranean’s partially protected areas, which allow some fishing with restrictions.

They used photo-sampling and image analysis to compile a database covering more than 1,200 small-scale fishing operations across 11 locations in France, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Slovenia and Greece. 

– Protected areas –

The team then used statistical models to demonstrate that catches of threatened species were higher in partially protected areas than in areas with no protection at all.

“People assume that it is large-scale trawlers that are impacting biodiversity, which is true and there’s a lot of evidence for this,” said co-author Antonio Di Franco, from the Sicily Marine Centre.

“There is less research on small-scale fishing’s impact and our research shows that there is this potential.”

The team found that catches they analysed in partially protected areas landed 24 species of shark, skate and ray — more than a third of which are endangered.

This is likely in part due to the species’ preference for coastal waters, where most small-scale fisheries prefer to operate. 

“We don’t know the activity of small-scale fisheries in general, we don’t know how many nets they actually fish or where they fish,” said Di Franco. 

Overall, in the partially protected areas studied, 517 elasmobranchs were caught compared with 358 in non-protected areas. 

In terms of mass, the weight of shark, ray or skate species caught in partially protected areas was roughly double that in non-protected areas.

More than 100 countries have committed to increase the amount of protected oceans worldwide to 30 percent by 2030.

Di Franco said there were a number of steps countries could take to help threatened species, including fitting smaller fishing boats with GPS trackers and ensuring that protected areas were joined up, allowing the species to more easily change living regions.

“Protected areas are a great potential benefit to biodiversity but the point is to look at management,” he told AFP. 

“But often countries don’t have the capacity to properly manage stocks.” 

President Joe Biden signs the CHIPS and Science Act to support domestic semiconductor production, new high-tech jobs and scientific research

President Joe Biden signed into law Tuesday a multibillion dollar bill boosting domestic semiconductor and other high-tech manufacturing sectors that US leaders fear risk being dominated by rival China.

The Chips and Science Act includes around $52 billion to promote production of microchips, the tiny but powerful and relatively hard-to-make components at the heart of almost every modern piece of machinery.

Tens of billions of dollars more are allocated for scientific research and development.

The White House says the government commitment to bolstering high-tech industries is already drawing in large-scale private investors, with some $50 billion in new semiconductor investment alone. The lion’s share of that is a plan announced by US firm Micron to put $40 billion into domestic expansion by 2030.

Biden said at a White House speech that the cash injection from the Chips Act will help “win the economic competition in the 21st century.”

Entrepreneurs are “the reason why I’m so optimistic about the future of our country,” he said, and “the Chips and Science Act supercharges our efforts to make semiconductors here in America.”

One of the Democrat’s key themes since taking office has been the need to revamp US leadership in cutting-edge innovation and rebuild the homegrown industrial base in the face of China’s mammoth state-backed investments.

Semiconductors are of particular concern because they are vital to everything from washing machines to sophisticated weapons and nearly all are made abroad.

Although the semiconductor was invented in the United States, the country only produces around 10 percent of global supply, according to the White House, with some 75 percent of US supplies coming from east Asia.

“Today’s signing of the bipartisan Chips Act is a historic investment in America’s future. It will boost microchip production at home, strengthen our supply chains, increase domestic research and development, and bolster our national security,” said US Chamber of Commerce vice president Neil Bradley.

– Wider economic, political appeal –

Biden is also counting on the Chips Act to generate enthusiasm among voters, as his Democratic party tries to defend a thin congressional majority from a Republican takeover in this November’s midterm elections.

He told Americans that studies show the expansion of factories will create around a million construction jobs over the next six years — and these will be “union jobs” that pay “the prevailing wage.”

On Wednesday, Biden will sign another bill increasing funding for military veterans exposed to toxins. Like the Chips bill, this won bipartisan support in the usually bitterly divided Congress.

Shortly, Biden is also expected to be signing an enormous domestic investment bill — backed only by Democrats — aimed at fighting climate change and reducing health care costs.

Reflecting on the string of successes in Congress and the sudden momentum for his long stalled agenda, Biden predicted that “people will look back at this week and all we passed, and all we moved on, that we met the moment at this inflection point in history.”

“We bet on ourselves, believed in ourselves and recaptured the story, the spirit and the soul of this nation,” he said.

Vials of the JYNNEOS Monkeypox vaccine are prepared at a pop-up vaccination clinic in Los Angeles, California, on August 9, 2022

US health authorities on Tuesday authorized a new procedure for injecting the monkeypox vaccine that should make it possible to inoculate more people with the same amount of the drug, at a time when doses are running short in the country. 

The Food and Drug Administration also authorized giving the vaccine to people under the age of 18 who are considered to be at high risk of infection. 

For those over 18, health workers will now be able to administer the vaccine differently, via an intradermal injection — that is, between the upper layers of the skin — and not with a deeper, subcutaneous injection. 

The new method will “increase the total number of doses available for use by up to five-fold,” the FDA said in a statement. 

Two injections, four weeks apart, will still be necessary. 

The FDA said it was drawing on data from a 2015 clinical trial that showed a similar immune response in people given a subcutaneous injection compared to those given a fifth of the dose via an intradermal shot. 

At present, some 620,000 doses of the vaccine — manufactured by Bavarian Nordic, and marketed under the name Jynneos in the United States — have been distributed across the country.

Another 440,000 additional doses are still to be distributed, which could allow up to 2.2 million injections under the new strategy. 

The government has also ordered an additional five million doses, which will start arriving from September and run through 2023, affording the potential to administer 25 million doses. 

The decisions came after the FDA issued an emergency use authorization for the vaccine, a move that itself followed the declaration of a public health emergency last week. 

For the authorization in minors, the FDA said it had reviewed safety data for the vaccine, as well as data for another vaccine given in children against smallpox. 

“We feel very comfortable with the safety of the approach,” said Peter Marks of the FDA at a press conference, noting a recent increase in the number of children who have potentially been exposed to infected people. 

The United States has registered nearly 9,000 cases of monkeypox, a fifth of them in New York state. The vast majority of cases involve men who have had sex with men.

Belugas are a protected species that cannot survive long in fresh water

French marine experts launched an ambitious operation Tuesday to rescue an ailing beluga whale that swam up the Seine river, to return it to the sea, an AFP journalist at the scene reported.

A group of 24 police and fire service divers held a final briefing before moving to the river to begin efforts to lift it out of the water and onto a truck for transportation.

The four-metre (13-foot) cetacean, a protected species usually found in cold Arctic waters, was spotted a week ago heading towards Paris, and is now some 130 kilometres inland.

“It’s a long rescue operation, very technical, which required many skills,” Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet, secretary general of the Eure prefecture, told journalists earlier Tuesday.

It would involve around 80 people, including 40 firefighters and many police officers to secure the area, she added.

Divers and animal specialists including veterinarians would work to get the beluga into “a sort of hammock to suspend it above the water and bring it to a vehicle that will then transport it to the sea”.

As preparations for the operation got underway, people gathered along the banks of the river to observe their progress.

The animal’s movement inland has been blocked by a lock at Saint-Pierre-La-Garenne in Normandy, and its health has deteriorated after it refused to eat.

But its condition was “satisfactory”, Isabelle Brasseur of the Marineland sea animal park in southern France, Europe’s biggest, told AFP earlier on Tuesday.

Brasseur is part of a Marineland team sent to assist with the rescue, alongside the Sea Shepherd France NGO.

“What’s exceptional is that here the banks of the Seine are not accessible for vehicles… everything is going to have to be done by hand,” Brasseur said.

– ‘Have to get it out’ –

So far the beluga has not turned around, and experts have dismissed any attempt to “nudge” it back toward the Channel with boats, saying it would stress the weakened animal and likely prove futile.

The team will try to get the animal weighing 800 kilogrammes (nearly 1,800 pounds) onto a refrigerated truck.

“The truck will be refrigerated, at a temperature suited for the animal, humidity, a certain type of comfort, so there is no risk of asphyxiation,” Dorliat-Pouzet told journalists earlier.

There they hope to be able to treat it for several days before releasing into the open sea, the Eure authorities said.

“There it will, we hope, have a better chance of survival,” NGO Sea Shepherd France, which is assisting the operation, said on Tuesday.

It added that tranquilisation is not an option, since belugas are so-called “voluntary breathers” that need to be awake to inhale air.

“In any case, we have to get it out of there… and try to figure out what is wrong,” Brasseur said.

Veterinarians will keep constant watch during the move.

“There may be internal problems that we can’t see,” she said, despite the fact that belugas are “extremely hardy” as a species.

– Growing interest –

Interest in the beluga’s fate has spread far beyond France, generating a large influx of financial donations and other aid from conservation groups as well as individuals, officials said.

Sea Shepherd on Monday issued an appeal in particular for heavy-duty ropes, nets, mattresses and other equipment. 

Belugas are normally found only in cold Arctic waters, and while they migrate south in the autumn to feed as ice forms, they rarely venture so far.

According to France’s Pelagis Observatory, specialised in sea mammals, the nearest beluga population is off the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, 3,000 kilometres (1,870 miles) from the Seine.

The trapped whale is only the second beluga ever sighted in France. The first was pulled out of the Loire estuary in a fisherman’s net in 1948.

burs-jj/gw

Belugas are a protected species that cannot survive long in fresh water

French marine experts were preparing an ambitious operation Tuesday to rescue an ailing beluga whale that swam up the Seine river, and return it to the sea, officials said.

The four-metre (13-foot) cetacean, a protected species usually found in cold Arctic waters, was spotted a week ago heading towards Paris, and is now some 130 kilometres inland.

“It’s a long rescue operation, very technical, which required many skills,” Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet, secretary general of the Eure prefecture, told journalists.

It would involve around 80 people, including 40 firefighters and many police officers to secure the area, she added.

Divers and animal specialists including veterinarians would work to get the beluga into “a sort of hammock to suspend it above the water and bring it to a vehicle that will then transport it to the sea”.

As preparations for the operation got underway, people gathered along the banks of the river to observe their progress.

The animal’s movement inland has been blocked by a lock at Saint-Pierre-La-Garenne in Normandy, and its health has deteriorated after it refused to eat.

But its condition was “satisfactory”, Isabelle Brasseur of the Marineland sea animal park in southern France, Europe’s biggest, told AFP earlier on Tuesday.

Brasseur is part of a Marineland team sent to assist with the rescue, alongside the Sea Shepherd France NGO.

“What’s exceptional is that here the banks of the Seine are not accessible for vehicles… everything is going to have to be done by hand,” Brasseur said.

– ‘Have to get it out’ –

So far the beluga has not turned around, and experts have dismissed any attempt to “nudge” it back toward the Channel with boats, saying it would stress the weakened animal and likely probably futile.

The team will try to get the animal weighing 800 kilogrammes (nearly 1,800 pounds) onto a refrigerated truck and drive it to an undisclosed seawater basin.

There they hope to be able to treat it for several days before releasing into the open sea, the Eure authorities said.

“There it will, we hope, have a better chance of survival,” NGO Sea Shepherd France, which is assisting the operation, said on Tuesday.

It added that tranquilisation is not an option, since belugas are so-called “voluntary breathers” that need to be awake to inhale air.

“In any case, we have to get it out of there… and try to figure out what is wrong,” Brasseur said.

Veterinarians will keep constant watch during the move.

“There may be internal problems that we can’t see,” she said, despite the fact that belugas are “extremely hardy” as a species.

– Growing interest –

Interest in the beluga’s fate has spread far beyond France, generating a large influx of financial donations and other aid from conservation groups as well as individuals, officials said.

Sea Shepherd on Monday issued an appeal in particular for heavy-duty ropes, nets, mattresses and other equipment. 

Belugas are normally found only in cold Arctic waters, and while they migrate south in the autumn to feed as ice forms, they rarely venture so far.

According to France’s Pelagis Observatory, specialised in sea mammals, the nearest beluga population is off the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, 3,000 kilometres (1,870 miles) from the Seine.

The trapped whale is only the second beluga ever sighted in France. The first was pulled out of the Loire estuary in a fisherman’s net in 1948.

burs-jj/gw

The shell of a dead American Crayfish lies on the dried riverbed of the Infant River Thames in Ashton Keynes

The UK’s meteorological agency on Tuesday issued an “amber” warning for extreme heat while the country’s biggest water provider said restrictions loom, as Britain braces for another punishing heatwave later this week. 

The warning by the Met Office, covering much of southern England and parts of eastern Wales from Thursday through Sunday, predicts possible impacts to health, transport and infrastructure from the heat.  

Temperatures are set to soar to the mid-30s Celsius for several days, it noted.

The sweltering conditions come just weeks after the last heatwave pushed the mercury over 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time in Britain.

Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that carbon emissions from humans burning fossil fuels are heating the planet, raising the risk and severity of droughts, heatwaves, and other extreme weather events.

“Thanks to persistent high pressure over the UK, temperatures will be rising day-on-day through this week and an extreme heat warning has been issued,” Met Office deputy chief meteorologist Dan Rudman said in a statement.  

Months of exceptionally dry weather across England are taking their toll, with Thames Water — which supplies London and its surroundings — the latest water provider to warn of imminent restrictions.

The firm said it is planning to issue a so-called hosepipe ban in the coming weeks “given the long-term forecast” of hot and dry weather for the southeast.

Several other UK water suppliers have already announced similar moves ahead of this week’s heatwave, but Thames Water’s 15 million customers would make it the most impactful so far.

The Met Office has confirmed it was the driest July in England since 1935, and little or no rain is forecast for most of the parched areas in the short term.

“Water companies are already managing the unprecedented effects of the driest winter and spring since the 1970s,” said Peter Jenkins, of Water UK, which represents the industry.

“With more hot, dry weather forecast, it’s crucial we be even more mindful of our water use to minimise spikes in demand and ensure there’s enough to go around.”

The parched conditions have seen wildfires break out near houses, including on the outskirts of London, a relatively rare occurrence in Britain.

In neighbouring France, a “historic” drought currently exacerbated by a third extreme heatwave this summer has seen a spate of wildfires nationwide as well as water restrictions ordered in nearly all its 96 mainland departments.

More than 47,000 hectares have already burnt in France this year, including a record amount in July alone, according to the European Union’s satellite monitoring service EFFIS.

On Tuesday, more than 3,000 people in southern France’s Aveyron region, including holidaymakers, were evacuated as a fire swept through at least 700 hectares of vegetation without causing any injuries.

Iran says the satellite will monitor borders, enhance agricultural productivity and monitor water resources and natural disasters

An Iranian satellite launched by Russia blasted off from Kazakhstan Tuesday and reached orbit amid controversy that Moscow might use it to boost its surveillance of military targets in Ukraine.

As Russia’s international isolation grows following Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin is seeking to pivot Russia towards the Middle East, Asia and Africa and find new clients for the country’s embattled space programme.

Speaking at the Moscow-controlled Baikonur cosmodrome in the Kazakh steppe, Russian space chief Yury Borisov hailed “an important milestone in Russian-Iranian bilateral cooperation, opening the way to the implementation of new and even larger projects”.

Iran’s Telecommunications Minister Issa Zarepour, who also attended the launch of the Khayyam satellite, called the event “historic” and “a turning point for the start of a new interaction in the field of space between our two countries”.

Nasser Kanani, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, said on Twitter that “the brilliant path of scientific and technological progress of the Islamic republic of Iran continues despite sanctions and the enemies’ maximum pressure”.

Iran, which has maintained ties with Moscow and refrained from criticism of the Ukraine invasion, has sought to deflect suspicions that Moscow could use Khayyam to spy on Ukraine.

Last week, The Washington Post quoted anonymous Western intelligence officials as saying that Russia “plans to use the satellite for several months or longer” to assist its war efforts before allowing Iran to take control.

Less than two hours after the satellite was launched on a Soyuz-2.1b rocket, the Iran Space Agency (ISA) said “ground stations of the Iran Space Agency” had already received “first telemetric data”. 

The space agency stressed on Sunday that the Islamic republic would control the satellite “from day one” in an apparent reaction to the Post’s report.

“No third country is able to access the information” sent by the satellite due to its “encrypted algorithm”, it said.

The purpose of Khayyam is to “monitor the country’s borders”, enhance agricultural productivity and monitor water resources and natural disasters, according to the space agency.

– ‘Long-term cooperation’ –

Khayyam, apparently named after the 11th-century Persian polymath Omar Khayyam, will not be the first Iranian satellite that Russia has put into space. 

In 2005, Iran’s Sina-1 satellite was deployed from Russia’s Plesetsk cosmodrome.

Iran is currently negotiating with world powers, including Moscow, to salvage a 2015 deal aimed at reining in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

The United States — which quit the landmark Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA in 2018 under then-president Donald Trump — has accused Iran of effectively supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine while adopting a “veil of neutrality”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran last month — one of his few trips abroad since Moscow’s February 24 invasion. 

Iran’s Khamenei called for “long-term cooperation” with Russia during their meeting, and Tehran has refused to join international condemnation of Moscow’s invasion of its pro-Western neighbour.

Iran insists its space programme is for civilian and defence purposes only, and does not breach the 2015 nuclear deal, or any other international agreement. 

Western governments worry that satellite launch systems incorporate technologies interchangeable with those used in ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, something Iran has always denied wanting to build.

Iran successfully put its first military satellite into orbit in April 2020, drawing a sharp rebuke from the United States.

On the eve of the Khayyam launch, ISA praised “the high reliability factor of the Soyuz launcher”.

Borisov, who last month replaced bombastic nationalist Dmitry Rogozin as head of the Russian space agency, had acknowledged that the national space industry is in a “difficult situation” amid tensions with the West.

Russia will continue its space programme but end activities at the International Space Station — an outlier of cooperation between Moscow and the West — after 2024, he said.

President Joe Biden signs the CHIPS and Science Act to support domestic semiconductor production, new high-tech jobs and scientific research

President Joe Biden signed into law Tuesday a multibillion dollar bill boosting domestic semiconductor and other high-tech manufacturing sectors that US leaders fear risk being dominated by rival China.

The Chips and Science Act includes around $52 billion to promote production of microchips, the tiny but powerful and relatively hard-to-make components at the heart of almost every modern piece of machinery.

Tens of billions of dollars more are allocated for scientific research and development.

The White House says the government commitment to bolstering high-tech industries is already drawing in large-scale private investors, with some $50 billion in new semiconductor investment alone. The lion’s share of that is a plan announced by US firm Micron to put $40 billion into domestic expansion by 2030.

Biden said at a White House speech that the cash injection from the Chips Act will help “win the economic competition in the 21st century.”

Entrepreneurs are “the reason why I’m so optimistic about the future of our country,” he said, and “the Chips and Science Act supercharges our efforts to make semiconductors here in America.”

One of the Democrat’s key themes since taking office has been the need to revamp US leadership in cutting-edge innovation and rebuild the homegrown industrial base in the face of China’s mammoth state-backed investments.

Semiconductors are of particular concern because they are vital to everything from washing machines to sophisticated weapons and nearly all are made abroad.

Although the semiconductor was invented in the United States, the country only produces around 10 percent of global supply, according to the White House, with some 75 percent of US supplies coming from east Asia.

“Today’s signing of the bipartisan Chips Act is a historic investment in America’s future. It will boost microchip production at home, strengthen our supply chains, increase domestic research and development, and bolster our national security,” said US Chamber of Commerce vice president Neil Bradley.

– Wider economic, political appeal –

Biden is also counting on the Chips Act to generate enthusiasm among voters, as his Democratic party tries to defend a thin congressional majority from a Republican takeover in this November’s midterm elections.

He told Americans that studies show the expansion of factories will create around a million construction jobs over the next six years — and these will be “union jobs” that pay “the prevailing wage.”

On Wednesday, Biden will sign another bill increasing funding for military veterans exposed to toxins. Like the Chips bill, this won bipartisan support in the usually bitterly divided Congress.

Shortly, Biden is also expected to be signing an enormous domestic investment bill — backed only by Democrats — aimed at fighting climate change and reducing health care costs.

Reflecting on the string of successes in Congress and the sudden momentum for his long stalled agenda, Biden predicted that “people will look back at this week and all we passed, and all we moved on, that we met the moment at this inflection point in history.”

“We bet on ourselves, believed in ourselves and recaptured the story, the spirit and the soul of this nation,” he said.

Belugas are a protected species that cannot survive long in fresh water

French marine experts will attempt Tuesday to rescue a beluga whale that swam up the Seine river and return it to the sea, officials said, a complex and risky operation for an animal already sick and malnourished.

The four-metre (13-foot) cetacean, a protected species usually found in cold Arctic waters, was spotted a week ago heading towards Paris, and is now some 130 kilometres (81 miles) inland.

“An operation to transport the beluga astray in the Seine will be attempted this evening,” said government officials in the Eure department, who are orchestrating the effort.

The animal’s progress inland has been blocked by a lock at Saint-Pierre-La-Garenne in Normandy, and its health has deteriorated after it refused to eat.

But its condition is currently “satisfactory”, Isabelle Brasseur of the Marineland sea animal park in southern France, Europe’s biggest, told AFP.

She is part of a Marineland team sent to assist with the rescue, alongside the Sea Shepherd France NGO.

“What’s exceptional is that here the banks of the Seine are not accessible for vehicles… everything is going to have to be done by hand,” Brasseur said.

So far the beluga has not turned around, and experts have dismissed any attempt to “nudge” it back toward the English Channel with boats, saying it would stress the weakened animal and probably be futile in any case.

Starting at around 8:00 pm (1800 GMT), the team will try to get the animal weighing 800 kilogrammes (nearly 1,800 pounds) onto a refrigerated truck and drive it to an undisclosed seawater basin where it can be treated for several days before being released into the open sea, the Eure authorities said.

“There it will, we hope, have a better chance of survival,” said NGO Sea Shepherd France, which is assisting the operation, Tuesday.

It added that tranquilisation is not an option, since belugas are so-called “voluntary breathers” that need to be awake to inhale air.

– ‘Have to get it out’ –

“In any case, we have to get it out of there… and try to figure out what is wrong,” Brasseur said.

Veterinarians will keep constant watch during the move.

“There may be internal problems that we can’t see,” she said, despite the fact that belugas are “extremely hardy” as a species.

Interest in the beluga’s fate has spread far beyond France, generating a large influx of financial donations and other aid from conservation groups as well as individuals, officials said.

Sea Shepherd on Monday issued an appeal in particular for heavy-duty ropes, nets, mattresses and other equipment. 

Belugas are normally found only in cold Arctic waters, and while they migrate south in the autumn to feed as ice forms, they rarely venture so far.

According to France’s Pelagis Observatory, specialised in sea mammals, the nearest beluga population is off the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, 3,000 kilometres from the Seine.

The trapped whale is only the second beluga ever sighted in France. The first was pulled out of the Loire estuary in a fisherman’s net in 1948.

burs-jh/kjm

The shell of a dead American Crayfish lies on the dried riverbed of the Infant River Thames in Ashton Keynes

The UK’s meteorological agency on Tuesday issued an “amber” warning for extreme heat while the country’s biggest water provider said restrictions loom, as Britain braces for another punishing heatwave later this week. 

The warning by the Met Office, covering much of southern England and parts of eastern Wales from Thursday through Sunday, predicts possible impacts to health, transport and infrastructure from the heat.  

Temperatures are set to soar to the mid-30s Celsius for several days, it noted.

The sweltering conditions come just weeks after the last heatwave pushed the mercury over 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time in Britain.

Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that carbon emissions from humans burning fossil fuels are heating the planet, raising the risk and severity of droughts, heatwaves, and other extreme weather events.

“Thanks to persistent high pressure over the UK, temperatures will be rising day-on-day through this week and an extreme heat warning has been issued,” Met Office deputy chief meteorologist Dan Rudman said in a statement.  

Months of exceptionally dry weather across England are taking their toll, with Thames Water — which supplies London and its surroundings — the latest water provider to warn of imminent restrictions.

The firm said it is planning to issue a so-called hosepipe ban in the coming weeks “given the long-term forecast” of hot and dry weather for the southeast.

Several other UK water suppliers have already announced similar moves ahead of this week’s heatwave, but Thames Water’s 15 million customers would make it the most impactful so far.

The Met Office has confirmed it was the driest July in England since 1935, and little or no rain is forecast for most of the parched areas in the short term.

“Water companies are already managing the unprecedented effects of the driest winter and spring since the 1970s,” said Peter Jenkins, of Water UK, which represents the industry.

“With more hot, dry weather forecast, it’s crucial we be even more mindful of our water use to minimise spikes in demand and ensure there’s enough to go around.”

The parched conditions have seen wildfires break out near houses, including on the outskirts of London, a relatively rare occurrence in Britain.

In neighbouring France, a “historic” drought currently exacerbated by a third extreme heatwave this summer has seen a spate of wildfires nationwide as well as water restrictions ordered in nearly all its 96 mainland departments.

More than 47,000 hectares have already burnt in France this year, including a record amount in July alone, according to the European Union’s satellite monitoring service EFFIS.

On Tuesday, more than 3,000 people in southern France’s Aveyron region, including holidaymakers, were evacuated as a fire swept through at least 700 hectares of vegetation without causing any injuries.