A girl in Moscow wears a mask to protect her from thick smog last week

The fires are not the only problem. President Medvedev says Russia has lost about one-fourth of its grain crops this year to heat and dry weather. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has banned grain exports until the end of the year.

Russia is a major wheat exporter. But crops have been hit hard by the record heat this summer. During the past week, bread prices in Russia have jumped by twenty percent.

But skies cleared over Moscow after days of heavy pollution, and there were cooling rains. The city set a new record for itself when temperatures reached thirty-nine degrees Celsius on July thirtieth.

American scientists reported Friday that this July was the second warmest worldwide in records dating back to eighteen eighty. The government report said the average temperature for January through July was the warmest on record.

In China, heavy rains on Friday interfered with efforts to reach people trapped by new flooding and landslides in the northwest. Weeks of flooding have killed at least two thousand people across China.

In Africa, the U.N. Refugee Agency says flooding has left thousands homeless in Chad. The heaviest rainfall in forty years comes after two years of drought. Now, some crop fields have been flooded.

And, finally, scientists say an island of ice broke off from a glacier in Greenland earlier this month. The piece is four times bigger than Manhattan Island in New York. Some people are blaming this and recent weather events around the world on climate change. Others say breaks in the Arctic ice are normal and the only thing unusual this time is the size.