Organisers have been forced to scrap the swimming leg of the Hamburg Ironman this Sunday due to high levels of algae in the city's Alster river caused by the current heatwave.

The condition of the water has been deemed "potentially harmful to health", so the swimming has been replaced by a six-kilometre (3.7mile) run.

"In order to protect all athletes, there will be a 6km run instead of the swimming," organisers said in a statement.

After the hastily added short run comes the standard 180.2km bike race followed by a run over the marathon distance of 42.195km.

The excessive level of algae is due to the heatwave currently gripping northern Europe with temperatures set to again climb over 30 degrees Celsius on Sunday in Hamburg.

"We can't risk the athletes' health, so with a heavy heart, we decided to offer the duathlon variant on Sunday," explained Bjorn Steinmetz, CEO of Ironman Germany.

Roman rooftops all abuzz for air pollution study
Rome (AFP) July 27, 2018 - Italian beekeepers are spreading their wings into the study of pollution in Rome, working with the country's carabinieri military police to learn more about the state of the air in the Eternal City.

On the roof of a building in the heart of the capital that houses the Italian Federation of Beekeepers (FAI), 15 beehives are abuzz with activity.

"This is an experimental urban hive that we are using to collect data of scientific interest, in order for example to devise a plant biodiversity map of Rome," FAI president Raffaele Cirone told AFP.

"However we are also studying the adverse effects of being in the centre of a big city," added Cirone, who is looking for the harmful residue of fine particles PM10 and PM2.5, heavy metals and micro-plastics.

Instruments measuring the number of fine particles in the air are placed a few steps away from the rooftop hives.

Data taken from the instruments will be compared with the honey produced in the hives, which is periodically removed and analysed by the scientists.

"The scientists will be able to better understand the movements of these particles, if and how much they rise from the ground and whether they settle," Cirone said.

In total around a dozen roofs in the centre of Rome house the hives, including one at the top of a carabinieri building.

The aim is to move towards a larger colony of high rise helpers, Davide De Laurentis, deputy Commander of the force's forestry, environmental and agri-food unit, told AFP.

De Laurentis, who describes bees as "nature's sentinels", says that the initiative could be rolled out in other major Italian major cities that suffer from problems with pollution.

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No day at the beach as toxic algae hit Baltic coast
Warsaw (AFP) July 25, 2018
Polish health authorities said Wednesday they had closed scores of beaches along the country's Baltic Sea coast due to a massive toxic algae bloom triggered by a heat wave. "Swimming is prohibited on eight beaches along the open sea and about twenty beaches in Gdansk Bay because of the appearance... of cyanobacteria," Tomasz Augustyniak, health inspector for the northing Gdansk province, told AFP referring to blue-green algae. "The algae is toxic and poses a health risk," he said, adding that th ... read more