The average August temperature in Paris, which has warm but not torrid summers, is 24C (75 Fahrenheit).. Mattei, in an interview with France-Inter radio said: "We can now state what's happening to us is a veritable epidemic,"and was the result of an "exceptional" heatwave combined with longer life expectancy.Yesterday, days after the first complaints accusing the government of a slow response to heat-related deaths, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin asked the Paris region to launch an emergency hospital plan to provide for a massive influx of patients.M. General Funeral Services, France's largest undertaker, said it handled some 3,230 deaths between 4-10 August, 37 per cent higher than usual.Many people died while locked inside apartments, raising concerns about hygiene and odour. A police officers' union in Paris called on the government to deploy the army to help retrieve bodies.The ministry said its estimate was partly drawn from studying deaths in 23 Paris region hospitals between 25July-12 August and from information provided by General Funeral Services.M. We were all asleep in my home when it happened and some things, like the television, fell down But the damage is small."There was some panic. It mostly scared tourists, who have not felt such intense things We have lived through many earthquakes," he said ..

There have been around 3,000 people heat-related deaths in France since abnormally high temperatures swept across the country two weeks ago, the health ministry said today. Lefkada is linked by a bridge.The quake hit as residents of the Ionion islands held memorials for the 50th anniversary of a series of devastating quakes that flattened the island of Cephalonia and killed 476 people.Antonis Kalogerakis, an official at the Civil Defence Operations, said "nothing serious" was immediately reported: "All's well that ends well."Ilias Georgakis, a resident of Lefkada, said: "It was very strong. A fire official, Panayiotis Fourlas, said there did not appear to be widespread serious damage to buildings.People raced into the streets and frightened tourists sought to leave the islands. For a woman to quit her job in Italy, where the labour market is so rigid, is a drastic step."It's uncertain whether she will find another one."But summer is also the time when family psychologists are busiest It's the time when marriages break up.".

A powerful earthquake struck the Greek island of Lefkada today, causing panic among residents and tourists and some injuries and damage. I don't make things dirty so I don't have to clean up," she says. "And I enjoy eating junk, sitting in front of the telly with a packet of crisps, something I can't do with the children around. Eating watermelon ice cream in the middle of the night ..."Lisa Fontana, 49, working for a newspaper in Milan while her husband shares parental duties with his mother-in-law in the Alps, says: "The increasingly common phenomenon of separate holidays is the inevitable result when both partners are working. Exempted from the usual family duties, she is rediscovering the meaning of freedom.After work she says she meets her friends. "We go dancing the salsa or the merengue, or just get together for a good natter. When the children and husbands are around the place we never manage to get to the end of a sentence "My main indulgence is that I don't cook.

And it can be the opportunity for an important experience."For the women left behind in the furnace of the cities, the experience is also by no means all negative. Paola Melloni, 43, is a production secretary with a television company in Rome, and her two sons, aged 13 and 11, are spending the holiday in a village in Molise, on the other side of the Apennines, with their father, a bank employee. "The inversion of roles is very good for the child," says Federico Bianchi, a psychologist at Castelbianco University. "They don't behave naughtily because the father doesn't respond to that. And the reversal of roles is no longer seen as an offence to the dignity of men."Domenico De Masi, head of Sociology at La Sapienza University in Rome, told Virginia Piccolillo of Corriere della Sera newspaper: "This is one symptom of a much vaster phenomenon: a 'feminisation' of society that has fortunately rescued men from the precipice of extreme rationalisation."The trend is a congenial one for many families: fathers, overworked the rest of the year, get the opportunity to re-acquaint themselves with their children. "These block councils are likely to become a mechanism of co-operation between corrupt cops and petty criminals to jointly extort and slander citizens."They were an avenue for power abuse in Soviet times, and are likely to be so again."In the worst years, under the dictator Joseph Stalin, people were encouraged to submit anonymous denunciations of neighbours suspected of anti-state opinions, which often led to the victim's arrest, and imprisonment or execution.