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LONDON - Britain sweltered through its hottest day on record Sunday and Alpine glaciers melted as the heat wave that has baked much of Europe for days sizzled relentlessly on.
The heat and drought-driven fires across the continent prompted Pope John Paul II to urge people to pray for rain.
The national weather service recorded a reading of 100.22 degrees at Heathrow Airport, outside a parched and baking London, and 100.58 degrees at Gravesend in southern England.
More than 40 deaths - including a 3-year-old French girl who died in a parked car on Sunday - have been blamed on temperatures that have hovered in the 100-degree range for days.
Also . . .ACTIVIST TO QUIT: France's best-known farmer, Jose Bove, said Sunday that he will step down next year as spokesman of his radical union and antiglobalization movement, the Farmers' Confederation. Bove, who gained fame in 1999 by ransacking a McDonald's restaurant under construction in southern France, said he would leave the job in April, suggesting he doesn't want to continue to dominate the group.
NATO IN AFGHANISTAN: Afghanistan welcomed the impending NATO takeover of the 5,000-strong multinational peacekeeping force Sunday and urged that it be expanded beyond Kabul. Germany and the Netherlands have jointly led the force for the past six months. A change-of-command ceremony is scheduled for today.
EXERCISE CANCELED: The United States has canceled this year's Bright Star maneuvers with the Egyptian military because American forces are overstretched, the charge d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo said Sunday.