“The price of milk is down 30 per cent while feed, fuel and electricity prices are all up and now we have these tremendous losses. It’s just a kick in the head.”Relief is in sight, however, as forecasters have predicted that temperatures will slowly decline over the next few days.. Many people were camping out in their gardens or in parks while some were spending the night in their cars with the air conditioning running.More than 25,000 cattle and 700,000 fowl have died in the Californian agricultural region where the temperature has not dropped below 100F for two weeks.”The timing is horrendous,” said Andy Zylstra, president of the California Dairy Campaign. Inthe beach city of Santa Monica, some restaurants and bars were without power for three days.Cinemas and shopping malls have been packed with people trying to escape the heat because, even in Los Angeles, less than half of the homes have air conditioning. California is baking in a heat wave that has so far caused 105 deaths.Coroner’s officers were working overtime to deal with the bodies, aid workers were going door-to-door to check on the elderly across the state and hospitals were overwhelmed with people suffering heat-related illnesses.
In Fresno County’s morgue, the walk-in freezer was stuffed with bodies, with some piled on top of others, said the coroner, Loralee Cervantes. Deputy coroners and technicians were working in rooms with the temperature reaching 90F (32C). “They’re working until they can’t bear it any more,” said Ms Cervantes. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
As the temperature reached 119F in Los Angeles, power cuts triggered by air conditioners operating constantly plunged many areas into darkness. But then, who cares, so long as you can endlessly celebrate yourself?. All hopefuls in the presidential race next year, including the runaway Socialist contender, S?l? Royal, have joined the “blogosphere”.
Other bloggers include the footballer, Zinedine Zidane.One of the most popular French blogs, outside France, is www.bonjour-america , launched by Cyrille de Lasteyrie to explain France to foreigners It is obsessed with Cyrille’s hero, Clint Eastwood Most blogs are hardly visited One per cent of French blogs take 80 per cent of all hits. “This is the first time an entire generation has been able to talk to itself without anyone else intervening.” One of the reasons blogs are so popular is that, in France, everyone is his or her own political party. A more conservative survey, by the respected media study company M?am?ie, puts the number of active French blogs at just over three million – still proportionately far ahead of the US and by far the largest number in Europe. Britain is estimated to have more than one million blogs.Why are the French such keen bloggers? Sociologists and internet experts say the form might have been invented for the French. The blog is an instantly published diary: a newspaper by oneself, devoted entirely to one’s own actions and thoughts. What a godsend for an endlessly opinionated and individualistic nation (which, famously, reads very few newspapers).
“It is clear that in France we have very large egos and love to speak about ourselves,” said Loic Le Meur, one of the first French bloggers, and now European managing director of the blog-hosting website, Six Apart. “If you look at Germans or Scandinavians, they really don’t talk about themselves.” Eighty per cent of French bloggers are 24 or younger. More than 50 per cent are women – mirroring the fact that girls and young women are more likely to keep diaries.”They are the information generation, born to computers,” said Pierre Bellanger, head of Skyrock, a radio station for the young, which runs Europe’s largest blog-hosting site, Skyblog. “Earlier it was a unique profession covered in glory and honour Today’s generation is more pragmatic They ask themselves: is it worth the risk?”. What is the French for a “blog”? The answer is “un blog” – and the French have seized on them more enthusiastically than any other nation.
By several yardsticks, the French are more rabid bloggers than even the Americans, who invented them. According to one recent survey, six million French men and women, or one in 10 of the population, have blogs, or interactive internet diaries, devoted to their personal lives, thoughts, anguishes, loves and hatreds.
This figure, based on unchecked claims by French internet users, is regarded as exaggerated. Those who are lucky enough to do a stint in space are not likely to become rich either. A six-month non-stop tour of duty on the International Space Station will net them a one-off payment of around one million roubles (£20,000).Though Russia still celebrates Cosmonauts’ Day on 12 April, the date that Gagarin blasted into space, Khodakov believes space flight holds less of a romantic allure for young people today.