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Venezuela quake death toll reaches 920 as interim president vows to save ‘as many as possible’

Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has vowed to fight to save “as many people as possible” as the official death toll from the country’s worst earthquake in more than a century almost doubled, but frustration was growing at the perceived sluggishness of the government’s response. Rodríguez’s brother, Jorge, who is the president of the national assembly, said on Friday that the official number of dead had risen to 920. Delcy Rodríguez had earlier said that almost 3,000 people were injured. Speaking during a tour of La Guaira, the most devastated region, she said foreign search and rescue groups were starting to arrive. “We offer our solidarity [to families of victims],” Rodríguez said late on Thursday outside the ruins of an eight-floor seafront hotel that had been obliterated by twin 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude quakes. Volunteer searchers and the relatives of the many missing voiced exasperation and anger at the lack of an official response as they waited for government teams. Rotny Bombart, a 33-year-old paramedic, said he had spent five hours hunting for his mother, María Eugenia, in a collapsed tower block in La Guaira called OPP 33. “It has 15 floors. Or rather, it used to, because there’s nothing left of it now,” Bombart said after being treated at a public hospital in the capital, Caracas, for a gash to his right arm sustained during the search. Bombart said that at first no government emergency workers had appeared at the scene. In their absence, desperate local people seized the initiative, picking their way through the rubble with bare hands and basic tools. “You’re prepared for emergencies, but not for this. Nothing prepares you for this,” he said, recalling seeing dismembered bodies, dead people and children in the wreckage. Another searcher, Diego González, said he had spent hours digging his 34-year-old cousin, Helari Rodríguez, out of the debris of Residencias Belo Horizonte, an apartment building in the seaside town of Catia La Mar. “It took us four hours to pull her out of the rubble with the help of some friends,” he said. “People are working with their bare hands. Tools are essential. But Catia La Mar is destroyed – very few buildings will have survived.” On Thursday, the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said that on Donald Trump’s orders he had mobilised troops to “support the Venezuelan people” in their hour of need. “Our mission is clear: save lives and rapidly deliver critical aid where it is most needed,” Hegseth tweeted. US Southern Command said Marine Corps Maj Gen Kevin J Jarrard had landed in Caracas to oversee the use of “the US military’s unparalleled logistical and operational capabilities” to help with the search. Other countries, including Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Spain, France, Turkey and Switzerland, have offered to send humanitarian aid and rescue teams. Thirty-six hours after the back-to-back earthquakes devastated Venezuela’s northern coast, there was scant sign of government help reaching many areas, exposing how years of economic misrule and corruption have left authorities woefully unprepared for a disaster on this scale. Chaotic footage from the José María Vargas hospital in La Guaira captured the extent to which Venezuela’s public health system had withered as Rodríguez’s predecessor, Nicolás Maduro, led the country into economic freefall. Patients could be seen lying on the floor as they waited for treatment in the facility’s car park. Orlando Pérez, a Latin America expert at the University of North Texas at Dallas, said: “It seems they weren’t prepared at all. Natural disasters reveal the true capabilities of a government because you have to respond quickly, you have to respond efficiently, you have to do search and rescue, you have to provide services in situations where it’s difficult. And it seems that the government has been caught flat-footed completely. “It’s incredible because this is a resource-rich country,” Pérez added. Venezuela boasts the world’s largest proven reserves of oil but under Maduro was plunged into one of the worst peacetime economic crises in modern history. “Yet you have completely degraded health infrastructure, buildings that were not built to code that collapsed very easily,” Pérez said. “They have had the resources but they have squandered it. The health infrastructure in particular is very weak. Hospitals lack equipment, they lack medicine – and that is going to cost lives.” An opposition activist, Jesús Armas, said successive Chavista administrations had failed to invest sufficiently in the emergency and healthcare services that would have enabled them to better cope with a disaster they should have anticipated, given Venezuela’s location along the boundary between the Caribbean and South American tectonic plates. “Every 50 or 70 years we have a [major] earthquake ... We should have been prepared,” he said. “Yesterday we saw people working in these [destroyed] places – people from civil protection and the police and national guard – without gloves, without helmets and without any kind of tools ... So we need all the international support possible.” Compounding the problem was Venezuela’s severe migration crisis, in which nearly 8 million citizens had fled abroad to escape economic crisis and political repression. “A lot of doctors, a lot of engineers that we need right now, a lot of experts in civil protection and rescue operations [have all left] ... This is a tragedy.” Writing on X, Juan Pablo Guanipa, a prominent opposition politician, questioned why Venezuela’s armed forces were not doing more to help civilian victims. “So far we have not seen real mobilisation or action [from the military] in the face of this grave situation that we are facing. We have seen families, neighbours and rescue workers trying to save lives with their own hands,” Guanipa said. “Right now, all of us need to be involved, the armed forces included.” Pérez said he was puzzled by reports that there had been little sign of action by Venezuela’s Bolivarian national armed forces (FANB). He said: “What I am hearing from people is that they have not seen large contingencies of FANB personnel and equipment being mobilised … We know that the FANB’s capabilities had been degraded; that it was an armed force that was structured to prevent a coup. That it was top heavy with a lot of brass and not a lot of capability down in the middle and the bottom – and that it was involved in illicit activities.” But even so, Pérez thought the “lack of coordinated response and presence seemingly of the FANB” was striking.

Carney announces contest to revamp uninhabitable Canadian PM residence

10 Downing Street has two things: mice and a chief mouser. For more than a decade, an officially recognized feline has kept the residence’s rodent infestation to a minimum. Over a similar period, the official residence of Canada’s prime minister has seen an unchecked explosion of rodents. Nests and vast quantities of feces were found throughout 24 Sussex, the 35-room mansion overlooking Ottawa. They took over the attic, basement and crawl spaces. Decomposing carcasses filled the walls of the decrepit building. Now, the prime minister, Mark Carney, has announced a competition for the country’s leading architecture firms to revive the storied building “to a standard worthy of the country that it serves”. The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada will design the framework and bring together an independent jury of experts in architecture, heritage conservation and design, which will recommend the winning design to cabinet. “24 Sussex Drive will be built by Canadians for Canadians,” Carney said on Friday, telling reporters that the winning design would be announced on 1 July 2027: Canada Day. “At a time when much of the world is buffeted by crisis, Canada’s history, our institutions and our traditions matter more than ever,” he said, standing outside the uninhabitable building. The prime minister said that while foundations of identity largely take the form of language, culture and laws, buildings can stand as testaments “made of timber and stone … in which we recognize ourselves”. Originally named Gorffwysfa (Welsh for “the place of peace”), the sprawling estate has housed 11 prime ministers since the government took it over in 1951. But its shortcomings have long plagued heads of government. Jean Chrétien, prime minister from 1993 to 2003, brought reporters to witness the need for buckets to catch rainwater from a leaky roof. Only after a storm blew off sections of the roof did he finally get the needed repairs. “It’s a symbol of the public office of the head of our federal government and of the democratic traditions that office represents. And yet it has not been cared for with the respect that it deserves,” he said. “Now it’s in critical condition.” Years of negligence have left the official residence of the prime minister plagued with mold, cracked windows, failing plumbing and an electric system widely seen as a fire hazard. In 2023, National Capital Commission (NCC), the group tasked with preserving heritage buildings in Ottawa, shut down the residence because of the voluminous safety hazards. The following year, it said it had stripped away the asbestos, mould, lead and rodents carcasses, leaving the building empty but with an estimated C$40m cost to fully renovate and upgrade. On Friday, Carney said it was difficult to estimate a cost because much of that would rely on the final design. Last month, former governor general Mary Simon, whose term recently came to an end, said it was inappropriate for a prime minister to live on the grounds of Rideau Hall. But Rideau Cottage, the a 158-year-old building meant originally for the secretary of the governor general, was chosen out of necessity for former prime minister Justin Trudeau and his family, given the inhospitable state of 24 Sussex. Carney has continued the tradition, residing at Rideau Cottage. Carney told reporters that while 24 Sussex has long been a symbol of the country, it “must also be a home, and the women and men who will lead our country in the future will need a residence for their families”. He was adamant that he would never live in the residence, given the starkly contrasting timelines for reconstruction and politics. “I and all public officials are stewards of the offices we hold. We don’t own them. We serve them to serve Canadians and we have a responsibility to leave things better than we found them.” Legendary architect Moshe Safdie, who envisioned many of the country’s most acclaimed buildings, will chair the jury assessing design plans. “It’s an extraordinary site with extraordinary potential,” Safdie said. “Something wonderful can be developed here.”

Survivors tell of ‘brutal and fast’ Venezuela quake as hunt for survivors goes on

Nearly all of Ligia Level’s family lived in a trio of apartment blocks along Hotel Avenue, a seafront sweep of palm-specked resorts and high-rise condos along Venezuela’s Caribbean coast. When a powerful “doublet” of earthquakes jolted the region on Wednesday afternoon, those buildings and the lives within them came crashing down. Level, 67, leapt from her first floor window, breaking her foot as she scrambled to safety. Her relatives appear to have had less luck. On Thursday, she sat outside one of the three buildings, Residencias Villamar, wondering if there was any chance her niece and nephew had made it out alive, perhaps by jumping from their fifth floor apartment on to a mattress outside. Level believed her mother and sister, who had lived next door in a condominium called Residencias Anna Mar, were almost certainly dead. “We’ve lost them,” she wept as she waited by the wreckage of the buildings for news – and for government help to arrive. “Please, we absolutely need international help here. Anything and anyone we can get,” she implored, as volunteers scoured the rubble for survivors in the absence of civil protection teams. “We were not prepared for something like this – we’re not used to this.” Hotel Avenue is in La Guaira, a rundown port city surrounding Venezuela’s main international airport that has been shattered by the devastating earthquake. In a televised address, Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, declared La Guaira the area worst affected by what she called an “unprecedented seismic phenomenon” and lamented the “utter tragedy” that had befallen the region’s residents. “We hope to save as many lives as possible,” Rodríguez vowed while touring “ground zero” on Thursday, promising that international rescue teams were starting to arrive. The acting president’s brother, Jorge Rodríguez, the president of the national assembly, said 250 buildings had been destroyed, most of them in La Guaira. As the Rodríguez siblings spoke, social media feeds filled with the names and faces of those who have not been seen since the disaster reduced large chunks of La Guaira – and nearby towns such as Catia La Mar and Caraballeda – to a tangle of metal, concrete and dust. One missing man was named as Carlos Ravelo, an airline pilot who was also last seen in Residencias Villamar. “Any information could be crucial in helping us find him!” begged a message on an online flier circulated by friends. Also missing from the same building was the Bencomo family, Lonardys, Marysville and Paola, who an online plea for help said had run a local creche. Other posts suggested even larger families had disappeared during the catastrophe: entire families, with four, five or even six members including young children, were feared lost as a result of Venezuela’s worst earthquake since October 1900. Relatives of the missing flocked to medical centres in the capital, Caracas, hoping against hope they had been taken there. Outside the public Domingo Luciani hospital, David Guevara scanned handwritten patient lists for the names of his aunts, Andrea Laya and Gabriela Fleritt. They had lived in Residencias Las Palmas, another block of flats in La Guaira, but had not been heard from since the quake. “We’ve talked to neighbours but they can’t find those two,” said Guevara, whose seven-year-old nephew, Sebastián, was undergoing surgery for injuries to his arms and legs after being found alive. The “earthquake patients” lists laid bare the multigenerational impact of a disaster that has injured thousands and left at least 920 people dead nationwide. The record of patients taken for surgery included two four-year-olds called Ana and Axiel, a six-year-old boy called José, and seven-year-old Jesús. The trauma centre, meanwhile, had taken in a 73-year-old called María, a 19-year-old called Antony and a 55-year-old called Carmen. La Guaira has tasted tragedy before, most notoriously in 1999 when mudslides killed more than 15,000 people at the start of the former president Hugo Chávez’s 14-year presidency. But even by those standards, the scenes described by survivors of this week’s calamity were spine-chilling. The catastrophe was caught on camera by a pair of fishers who were out at sea as their city fell apart. “My God!” one of them can be heard gasping as huge dust clouds envelop the coastal areas of La Guaira, where their families live. Héctor Morán Cirkovic was by the swimming pool at the Playa Grande Yachting Club, just a few hundred metres north of Residencias Anna Mar, when 40 seconds of intense shaking brought building after building to the ground. “It was brutal and very fast. There weren’t even five seconds to leave. Everybody [around us] was shouting and in shock, thinking life is over. There was lots of fear, panic and hysteria,” said Cirkovic, a 61-year-old retired architect. Cirkovic recalled watching as five buildings collapsed “vertically in front of my eyes”. In all, he saw about 30 nearby buildings that had come crashing down. An engineer, Francisco Garcés, speaking on the state-run TV channel VTV, compared the strength of the quakes to that of the energy released by an atomic bomb. “We have just witnessed … an extraordinary seismic event – extraordinary for the country and also an extraordinary event in terms of the planet,” Garcés said, noting how this week’s earthquake had released 32 times more energy than the 6.5-magnitude quake that ripped through the same region in 1967. Garcés warned of aftershocks as the Caribbean and South American tectonic plates responsible for the cataclysm continued to move, and said that once the rescue effort was over, engineers would need to study why La Guaira had sustained such intense damage. For now, nearly 48 hours after the disaster, the focus remains on finding survivors, even as hopes start to fade. “So many people have died,” said Diego González, who rushed his cousin to the Domingo Luciani hospital for treatment after spending four hours digging her out of her collapsed home in Catia La Mar, a seaside town to the west of La Guaira. “Catia La Mar is destroyed. Very few buildings will have survived,” he added. Rotny Bombart, a 33-year-old paramedic, had come to the same hospital to treat an arm wound he had sustained while spending five hours digging his mother, María Eugenia, out of a collapsed 15-floor apartment block in La Guaira. Bombart eventually found her after hearing her cry for help. “Nothing prepares you for this,” he said, recalling how he had seen dismembered bodies, dead people and children in the disaster zone – but scant sign of government help.

Venezuela earthquakes: 589 confirmed dead so far as international rescue teams arrive – as it happened

We will soon be closing this liveblog, but find our latest reporting from Venezuela here. Here is a summary of today’s events: Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, said the number of people killed in the double earthquake has risen to 589, with 2,980 injured. “We are going to rescue the people who are trapped,” she said. “We are working tirelessly on this task.” Rodríguez also said that the government has decided ⁠to militarise the state of La Guaira after ‌the earthquakes. La Guaira, the coastal region north of Caracas, was the worst affected by Wednesday’s twin earthquakes and has been declared a “disaster zone”, with at least 100 buildings collapsed including high rise apartment blocks, according to the UN. Rescuers, equipment and other emergency aid are arriving in Venezuela to help with relief efforts. Countries including the US, Mexico, India, El Salvador, and Germany are helping in the efforts. The Spanish foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, has raised the death toll of Spaniards to three and the number of missing to 99. The US treasury department has temporarily removed sanctions on Venezuela. This will let the Venezuelan government make temporary transactions for earthquake relief – which would not be possible otherwise due to economic sanctions in place.

‘Everyone is talking about Cape Verde’: World Cup run delights diaspora community in UK

For as long as she can remember, 13-year-old Lauryn struggled to find a map that included Cape Verde. Now, to her great delight, the tiny African island nation is finally centre stage. “Seeing our country shown across the world at the World Cup makes me feel incredibly proud,” Lauryn says. “After the first match, everyone was talking about Cape Verde. People saw the talent and the skill of our players.” Cape Verde, or Cabo Verde as the diaspora community in the UK knows it, are having a historic run at their first ever World Cup. The African nation, made up of 10 islands, has defied expectations by holding its own against the tournament’s leading teams. Located in the Atlantic Ocean about 370 miles (600km) off the coast of mainland Africa, and with a population of just over 500,000, it is one of the smallest nations to compete at the tournament. Lauryn, who has already published her first book, Unsung, says she scrolled through social media before Cape Verde’s opening match against Spain. “There were lots of posts on social media saying Cape Verde only had a 1% chance of winning. But after everyone saw our goalkeeper’s performance, everything changed.” That 1% prediction has since become a rallying cry for the Cape Verdean diaspora in Britain, which is estimated to number in the low thousands. “Our slogan in the Cape Verdean community became: ‘They gave us 1% chance, but we had 99% faith,’” Lauryn says. The team held a stunned Spain to a 0-0 draw. Their next match, against Uruguay, felt like a “constant heart attack”, says Annabella Lopes of the Cape Verdean Association UK. The game ended 2-2. Now, the team, quickly becoming fans’ favourite underdogs, face Saudi Arabia in their final group stage match, which kicks off at 9pm ET on Friday in Houston, Texas – or 1am Saturday for Lauryn and others watching in the UK. A win will secure them a historic spot in the knockouts, while a draw will give them a fighting chance to qualify as one of the eight best third-placed teams. Lauryn’s younger brother, 10-year-old Joylen, who plays football for Chelsea’s academy, says watching the tournament has strengthened his belief in the team. “I think we can definitely go very far. I knew people shouldn’t underestimate us because if we can draw against Spain and Uruguay, imagine what we can do against other teams.” It has also inspired his own ambition. “It makes me want to reach my highest level,” he says. For Lopes, the team’s performance sends a powerful message to the Cape Verde diaspora community across the world, as well as those who hail from small countries. “The success happening on the pitch reflects the resilience and strength of our people,” she says. “The fact that you are small, and the fact that people don’t know you, doesn’t mean you can’t achieve great things.” She adds that it is not about winning or losing. “The important thing is to take part. Cape Verde is taking part, Cape Verde is competing, Cape Verde is achieving, and Cape Verde is making history.” Much of the admiration has centred on the veteran goalkeeper Vozinha, whose Instagram page went from hundreds of thousands to nearly 10 million followers over the space of two games. Nancy Rodrigues, a 38-year-old NHS physiotherapist living in the UK, says she treated the “really nice” goalkeeper when living in Angola. “He definitely deserves all the attention he’s getting now,” she says. “It’s amazing because everyone knows Cape Verde through him. That feels incredible.” Elisangela, a 36-year-old accountant, known as Elly, says the team’s success has electrified the diaspora community across the world. “We have never experienced a moment like this before. Everyone is excited. People are calling each other, checking in and asking how they’re feeling and how they’re living through this moment with their families and friends.” Lauryn and Joylen’s mother, Christina, hopes the team’s success leads to interest in the country that goes much further than football. “We are creative people. There is so much talent, not only in football but also in music, literature and the arts.” She says she is particularly proud of the values and resilience the team is showing on the world stage, and points to the Cape Verde manager, Bubista, and his tradition of giving a gift to the coach of the opposing team before the start of each game. “That’s part of who we are. We come as warriors on the pitch, but we honour and respect one another,” she says. “I think that’s what people are seeing. They’re not seeing arrogance. They’re seeing humility, unity and men crying because they care so much. It’s beautiful.”

Russia preparing possible ‘provocation’ in Baltic states or Poland, sources say

Two countries on Nato’s eastern flank have warned that Russia is preparing a possible “provocation” in the Baltic states or Poland in an effort to test the cohesion of the western military alliance. Western sources also fear there could be danger on the horizon because the Kremlin is coming under pressure from Ukraine’s campaign of long-range attacks on targets near Moscow and St Petersburg. On Monday, Latvian intelligence said: “We see indications that Russia is preparing military provocations against the Baltic countries or Poland.” However, it would be well short of a full-scale attack. A senior political source from a second Nato member made a similar statement last week. They said “we are picking up intelligence” that Vladimir Putin was “planning something against the Baltic states”. They said Putin might be willing to test US support for some of Nato’s smallest member countries – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – in a desperate effort “to throw the dice” as Russia struggles with its invasion of Ukraine. On Thursday night, Poland’s prime minister went on record with his own concerns. “We also share, without exception, the ‌opinion that the situation is very unstable and various types of ⁠escalation can be expected in the coming weeks and months,” Donald Tusk said at a press conference after the Eastern Flank summit in Gdansk. “We will want to prepare as a group of countries directly exposed to this risk.” Latvian intelligence said Russia was not capable of opening a second front, but was considering “hybrid attacks, such as missiles, drones or other actions designed to send a signal: stop supporting Ukraine, or you will have your own problems”. Though the warnings appear linked, there was only limited supporting detail, unlike the detailed warnings released by the CIA and MI6 before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But they come at a time when Russia’s advance in Ukraine has stalled, raising questions about whether the Kremlin would turn to alternative strategies to break the deadlock or change the dynamics in its favour. Keir Giles, a Russia expert with the Chatham House thinktank, said: “Moscow will be looking for ways to disrupt the current trend, through horizontal escalation [spreading the conflict to other countries] or doing something elsewhere. We should not expect Russia to passively lose.” Russia’s relative weakness was underlined this week when drone relay stations in Belarus stopped operating after Ukraine threatened to attack them. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, had given Belarus a one-week warning last Friday, saying the equipment enabled Russian attacks on his country. One Telegram channel reported that the Belarusian authorities in the Brest and Gomel regions of the country had demanded the mobile operators dismantle the repeaters because they were interfering with grouse nesting sites. Nato will hold its annual summit in Ankara, Turkey, this month amid uncertainty about US commitment to the alliance. On Wednesday, Donald Trump said he felt “let down” by European allies who did not allow the US air force to bomb Iran from airfields in their countries. Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine there have been several waves of Russian sabotage and provocative activity, including the planting of firebombs in DHL parcels in the UK, Poland and Germany in the summer of 2024. Last September, 19 Russian decoy drones crossed into Polish airspace, prompting Nato to scramble jets to try to shoot them down as people in three eastern provinces were told to shelter indoors. Ukraine has gradually developed a homegrown deep strike attack capability able to hit targets 2,000km inside Russia. Last week nearly 200 drones hit several locations in Moscow and black oil rained down on parts of the Russian capital after a refinery was bombed. A western military source said there was a concern that Russia could lash out if Putin thought he was under pressure as the war shifted to the skylines of Moscow and St Petersburg. “I cannot lie, that is a period of danger,” they said. Worries about a possible Russian escalation also surfaced in autumn 2022, when a sudden set of reversals in Kharkiv province led to western fears that Moscow could even use a nuclear weapon to protect itself. But there was no evidence of steps to an actual deployment and the frontline stabilised by the end of the year.

Paris bans drinking alcohol in public as hospitals hit heatwave breaking point

Drinking takeaway alcohol in the street has been banned in Paris this weekend and the city’s pride march has been cancelled to spare overwhelmed ambulance services and overcrowded hospitals in the deadly heatwave. “As you know, drinking alcohol with the sun beating down can have a devastating effect,” the ⁠Paris police chief, Patrice Faure, told BFM TV. Emergency services had reached full capacity as the number of serious heat-related illnesses rose, he said. “We are reaching a saturation point in hospital facilities.” Paris Pride, which draws hundreds of thousands of people on to streets throughout the city, was seen by police as a major health risk in the extreme temperatures. It will be held in September instead, organisers have said. The Solidays music festival will also be cancelled. The street-drinking ban comes into force on Friday afternoon before France play Norway in the World Cup. Dehydration, cardiac arrests and heat-induced illnesses have become a major problem in Paris this week as temperatures break records day and night. The alcohol ban is intended to stop people buying beer, wine and spirits from shops and drinking them in the street and beside the city’s canals and the Seine. It began at noon on Friday and will run until 7am on Saturday morning. It will then come into force again at noon on Saturday and run until 7am on Sunday. All sales of takeaway alcohol from shops and supermarkets will be banned from 6pm on Friday through to Saturday morning, and again on Saturday at the same time. Restaurants, bars and cafes with public seating areas are not included in the ban and their customers can still drink alcohol. “I must ensure that the pressure decreases,” Faure said of hospital services. Full statistics on deaths related to the heatwave are not yet available, but the Paris mayor, Emmanuel Grégoire, said this week that deaths in the city will have certainly risen. Paris hospitals, like many across France, are full, authorities said, with some patients being treated in corridors. The city’s ambulance services are responding to 2,500 callouts a day, double the usual figure, and many are related to dehydration and heat-related health crises. It is not certain how far the alcohol ban will be respected. There was a ban on drinking takeaway alcohol in the street last weekend during the Fête de la Musique in Paris and several other towns, but the cleanup operation in Paris after the festival collected piles of beer cans and wine bottles. The French health minister, Stéphanie Rist, said the ambulance service in Paris had reported four times more cardiac arrests than normal over a 24-hour period. Young people were also suffering them, she said. Temperatures in Paris hit a June record ⁠of 40.9C (105.6F) on Wednesday and pushed close to 40C on Thursday. Higher temperatures are predicted in some areas on Friday. At least 55 people have drowned in France since the start of the heatwave, and three young children have been found dead in hot cars. More than 44 million people in France, out of a total population of 67 million, have been under the highest red alert for heat this week, and at least several more days of stifling heat are forecast.

Mexico’s new UK ambassador from ‘party of poor’ has 10 houses and £1m of jewellery

With his million-dollar jewellery collection and his two Rolls-Royces, Mexico’s new ambassador to the UK will fit right in with the Mayfair crowd. Former attorney general Alejandro Gertz Manero was appointed to the post by President Claudia Sheinbaum last year, but only recently disclosed his financial assets. The list includes 10 houses, seven cars, including two Rolls-Royces – one worth $150,000 (£115,000) – jewellery worth over $1m and an art collection valued at nearly half a million dollars. He also reported bank accounts in Mexico, the US, Spain and Switzerland, and owns a property in the US worth over $1m and a flat in Madrid bought for €1m (£860,000). In the public filing, Gertz Manero said many of the assets were inherited. In Mexico, wealthy politicians are nothing new and, as corruption is commonplace, there is an intense focus on the lifestyles of public officials. But the ambassador’s opulent assets stand in stark contrast to the governing Morena party (to which he belongs), which has long held the motto: “For the good of all, first the poor.” Morena “have associated themselves with austerity historically as part of their political platform”, said Viri Ríos, a public policy expert and the director of Mexico Decoded. “What’s been created is a contradiction between what Morena appeals to narratively versus what the party really is, which is a mix of officials, politicians, and personalities of all kinds and levels of wealth.” The party founder and former president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a close ally of Gertz Manero, was famed for driving around in an old sedan and advocating for “Franciscan austerity”. He also slashed his own salary and gave up the lavish presidential residence and private jet. “There can be no rich government if the people are poor,” López Obrador often said, a phrase picked up by Sheinbaum. But Gertz Manero is hardly the first Morena politician to be ensnared in scandal for luxury taste: the party has been plagued by numerous instances of its members caught wearing expensive clothing or watches and travelling to exotic destinations. Last year, the former president’s son, Andrés Manuel López Beltrán, caused outrage when he was spotted at a $400-a-night hotel in Tokyo. A local news outlet later reported that the political scion spent $2,600 at a hotel restaurant. In a public letter posted to Instagram, López Beltrán admitted to the trip but said he used his own money, and called the incident “a political lynching campaign steeped in hatred, classism and slander”. The scandal erupted months after Morena issued new party guidelines advocating for “austerity” and stating that “displays of material ostentation such as jewellery, designer clothing, high-value properties or cars, luxury restaurants or tourism” ran counter to its principles. Also last year, the local news outlet N+ reported that Senator Adán Augusto López Hernández, another close ally of López Obrador, had received nearly $4.5m in private income in 2023 and 2024, prompting a furore. López Hernández admitted to receiving the funds, telling reporters: “Beyond my work as a public official, I also provide legal services; all my income is declared, as shown in the tax returns … I have never hidden my income.” Last month, the former president’s other son, José Ramón López Beltrán, was photographed at a Cartier store in Cancún. His wife, Carolyn Adams, who was also photographed at the store, later posted on Instagram that “differences of opinion should never become personal attacks, defamation or campaigns of hate built around a simple photograph”. Just weeks ago, a local Morena politician in Tulum also attracted criticism online for posting a TikTok video of himself on a private jet wearing luxury clothes. The party later opened an investigation. According to Ríos, the outrage triggered by these scandals is less about politicians being personally rich and more about instances where their opulent tastes far exceed their government salaries – something that could prove costly come election time. She said Morena had “made a strategic error in associating all types of wealth with a lack of morality”. “If that’s going to be your position, then from the beginning you must prevent anyone who is very wealthy from joining the movement,” Ríos added.