Alpine glaciers melt, unleashing a cascade of rocks and endangering hikers. With wildfires raging in seven countries, the pope urges people to pray for rain. A French toddler dies of exposure in a sweltering parked car.

Europe sizzled over the weekend, and there was no immediate relief in sight for much of the continent. The heat broke records yesterday in Britain and Germany.

With the mercury hovering in the mid-30s Celsius (around 100 degrees Fahrenheit) for days, more than 40 deaths have been blamed on the heat.

In the French Alps, a police officer warned hikers about rock avalanches along a popular route on Mont Blanc. Glacial ice is melting, loosening rocks from the mountainside. On Saturday, helicopters swooped into the area to evacuate 44 climbers in danger, mountain police said.

In more arid regions, wildfires have blackened forests in Italy, France, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Croatia and the Netherlands.

Three separate fires were blazing in Portugal yesterday, with the worst in the southern region of Algarve. Pinus Verde, an association of forest-product producers, analyzed satellite images from NASA to calculate forestland destroyed in two weeks of blazes: 300,000 hectares, said daily Publico.

In northeastern Italy, firefighters worked for a third straight day to put out a fire in the countryside near Udine.

A 3-year-old French girl died on Saturday in a car parked outside her parents' home in Wimille, northern France, according to authorities.

The toddler's parents apparently lost track of who was watching her - each thought the little girl was with the other, police said.

In Germany, authorities are predicting a new record number of drownings this year. Cash-strapped municipalities have closed free swimming pools, forcing more Germans to head to rivers and lakes to escape the heat, where there is less supervision.

Klaus Wilkens, president of the German Lifesaving Society, told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that his organization was predicting 700 deaths by drowning by the end of the summer, compared to 598 last year.

The German weather service reported yesterday it had registered a new countrywide temperature record in the Bavarian city of Roth, which hit 40.4 degrees Celsius on Saturday. The previous record of 40.2 degrees Celsius was also in Bavaria, set in 1983.

Britons also gasped through a record-breaking day, watching thermometers climb above the 100 degrees Fahrenheit mark for the first time in Britain since temperatures have been recorded.

The record-breaker - 37.9 Celsius was measured at Heathrow Airport, near a parched and baking London, the national weather service said.

No quick relief was expected: Germany is expected to swelter until midweek; France is counting on at least another week of abnormally high temperatures; and weather experts in Italy expect the country to be steamy until September.

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