At Hospital de Clinicas in Caracas, staff have been asked to double up on the night shift to help treat the injured, a worker has said. Video filmed at the hospital showed a darkened hallway with ceiling panels hanging by cables and pieces of plaster scattered across the floor, Reuters reported.
The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, has said that Israeli troops would not withdraw from southern Lebanon, further complicating Iran peace talks as fighting in Lebanon continues to be an obstacle to permanent peace. Speaking on stage in an interview in Tel Aviv, Katz said Israeli troops would remain in south Lebanon – echoing sentiments from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. “The IDF is prepared … and we are not retreating. We announced that in any case we are not withdrawing, and as of this moment – and this is a political achievement – there is no American demand for Israel to withdraw from Lebanon,” Katz said. The US and Iran signed an accord last week extending a fragile ceasefire and setting the stage for 60 days of talks meant to lead to a permanent peace. The first hiccups to the memorandum of understanding (MOU) came last week after Israel continued its campaign in south Lebanon, leading Iran to threaten closure of the strait of Hormuz. Donald Trump on Wednesday put a positive spin on the talks, saying Iran was “being very nice” and “agreeing to everything that I want”. But in fact the US and Iran’s interpretation of the MOU has significantly differed, particularly over Lebanon. Iran has insisted that Israel needed to stop its war there and withdraw its troops in the south of the country. Israel has occupied large swathes of south Lebanon in what it calls a “security zone”. In the latest violence there, an Israeli drone targeted a vehicle near the town of Kfar Rumman, killing two people on Wednesday, according to Lebanese state media. Hezbollah accused Israel of another “violation” of the ceasefire. The Israeli military had said earlier it targeted two Hezbollah fighters near the city of Nabatieh and that it would continue operating to “remove immediate threats”. It later said it also targeted a vehicle “carrying suspects”. Israel and the Lebanese government are engaged in US-mediated talks, which, among other things, seek to arrange an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory. Israel is seeking a phased approach whereby it will hand off territory to the Lebanese army, tasked with keeping the area free of Hezbollah fighters. These talks do not involve Hezbollah, however, calling into question how effective they can be. Iran, which is not a part of the Israel-Lebanon talks, has worked hard to link a ceasefire with Iran to an end to fighting in Lebanon. “For us, a ceasefire in Lebanon is as important as a ceasefire in Iran and, further, an end to the war in Lebanon is as important as an end to the war in Iran,” Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on Wednesday. During remarks in the Oval Office, Trump suggested the US would deny involvement in a Tomahawk missile attack that struck a girl’s elementary school on the first day of the war, killing more than 150 people and probably dozens more. “I have to wait for it to be completed,” he said of the investigation. “I don’t know they’re ever gonna solve that problem. You could ask Pete. Maybe it wasn’t our missile.” The US is the only party to the conflict with Tomahawk missiles. He also indicated he would be willing to share F-35 fighter jet technology with President Recep Erdoğan as he planned to travel to Turkey for a Nato summit next month where jittery European leaders are expected to try to persuade Trump to remain committed to the alliance. “I’m going to probably do something that’s gonna make him very happy,” Trump said during a meeting with Mark Rutte, the alliance’s chief. “Except for the fact that it was being held in Turkey by President Erdoğan, I don’t think I would have gone to it.” Trump again suggested that the US had been “let down” by Nato, which he admitted he had not informed of his plans to strike Iran. “We demolished [Iran] in literally the first week but it would have been nice if they would have said: ‘We’d like to help,’” he said. Fighting started in Lebanon after Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel on 2 March in retaliation for the killing of the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, triggering an Israeli invasion. Israeli strikes have killed more than 4,200 people in Lebanon since then, while Hezbollah attacks have killed at least 36 Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and three Israeli civilians. A ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah mediated by the US on Saturday has stopped most fighting in the country, with some exceptions. Israeli drones struck a car outside the city of Nabatieh on Wednesday, killing two people, according to the Lebanese ministry of health. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was on day two of his three-day tour of the Arab Gulf. His visit to Gulf allies was his first high-profile visit to the region after the signing of the MOU last week, and was meant to allay concerns that the Iran deal was too conciliatory. Rubio arrived in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday to kick off his tour of the Gulf, having lunch with the president of the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, as well as the foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and the national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Rubio is also slated to visit Kuwait and Bahrain. All three countries were hammered by Iranian strikes during the four-month war with Iran, bombings that Iran said were a result of their hosting US bases that were used to carry out attacks on Iran. The Gulf countries, which are close allies of the US, are concerned that the proposed Iran-US deal is too conciliatory to Iran. All countries faced civilian deaths and lasting economic damages from the Iranian attacks, particularly the UAE, which relies on tourism and expatriate labour for much of its non-oil revenues. In particular, there are worries that a proposed $300bn fund to Iran and the waiving of sanctions on the country would allow for the reconstruction of its military and for future threats against Gulf countries. Rubio emphasised the US’s commitment to the UAE’s security, as well as discussing the safe transit of oil and gas through the strait of Hormuz, during a meeting with the UAE president, a state department read-out said. The strait was mostly shut by Iran during the four-month war, disrupting shipping through the vital sea passage and sending energy prices soaring globally. Gulf states, which rely heavily on oil and gas exports, lost billions of dollars of revenues due to the strait’s closure. Asked by reporters if he would address allies’ concerns over the Iran deal, Rubio told journalists that the topic would “most certainly come up in these discussions”. “We want to hear from our partners,” Rubio said as he arrived in Abu Dhabi. “We want to make sure that their views are taken into account, and we understand their security concerns, their regional economic concerns as well.” Views in the Gulf over Iran see-sawed during the war, with monarchies at first furious with the Trump administration for starting a war without prior consultation. As Iranian strikes ramped up on Gulf countries, some then pushed the US to take a harder stance on diplomacy with Iran, disturbed by the extent to which Iran was willing to bomb them. The US has sought to reassure Gulf countries that the deal would not provide Iran with a windfall, nor would it allow Iran to control the strait of Hormuz. Trump said on Wednesday no money had been given to Iran and any unfrozen funds would be used to buy medical supplies and food from US farmers – something that Iran denied. Iran is also pushing for transit fees for ships going through the strait of Hormuz, a diplomat close to talks on the waterway told Reuters. Trump said on Wednesday the US had been told by Iran that there would be no tolls charged on ships sailing through the strait. Disagreements also emerged over inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites, after Trump said the country had agreed to allow inspections into “infinity” as part of last week’s MOU. The US said preventing Iran from reaching a nuclear weapon was one of its key aims when it attacked the country on 28 February, while Iran said its nuclear programme was purely civilian. Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, said no meeting had been held with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s chief, Rafael Grossi, despite his request, and there were no plans to conduct inspections of nuclear facilities until a final agreement had been signed.
Germany’s rail network ground to a halt late on Tuesday as a result of maintenance work that went wrong, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers unable to get home as the national operator faced widespread criticism over the chaos. The Deutsche Bahn (DB) meltdown was initially thought to have been caused by a cyber-attack, but it later emerged that it was likely to have been triggered by a scheduled attempt to replace an ageing component in the railway’s internal communication network, without which the trains are unable to run. Trains were brought to an abrupt halt as a precaution, leaving many stuck on tracks far between stops or standing in stations. Passenger and freight trains were affected. A system reset was carried after two hours, in the early hours of Wednesday, but undoing the chaos took much longer. The railway operator delivered a grovelling apology on Wednesday. “We are analysing the exact cause of the disruption meticulously and with the highest priority, to ensure that the same problem can’t recur,” said Philipp Nagl, the chief executive of DB InfraGO, the state-owned company responsible for railway infrastructure. “Currently it appears the cause of yesterday’s disruption to the GSM-R digital radio system was the planned replacement of a technical component.” The nationwide chaos comes on the back of years of mounting problems with the railway, including frequent delays, cancellations and interruptions. Once the envy of the world, and a byword for efficiency and punctuality, DB has faced growing problems caused by underinvestment and overcapacity. Punctuality stood at just 59% in February, compared with 66% a year ago, with one in three long-distance trains arriving late. At its height in the early 1990s, punctuality was about 85%. As Germany goes through a period in the economic doldrums, the state of the railways is viewed as a bellwether of the country’s fiscal and structural standing, and is often listed alongside creaking bridges and dilapidated roads and school buildings as an example of the catchup it needs. A pessimistic mood among the population over whether it can succeed is very palpable. The rail network is undergoing a multi-billion-euro overhaul which is leading to further frequent disruption on major routes. DB’s chief executive, Evelyn Palla, has said any significant improvement was likely to take several years. The fact that the communications system that broke down is based on 1990s 2G technology used in the first mass mobile phones is reflective of the wider problems. A 5G network is not scheduled to be introduced until about 2035 – leaving the operator scrambling to find and buy up old components around the world, which it is stockpiling to ensure it can continue to fix the system when needed. DB has unsurprisingly become the focus of the nation’s ire and mirth, and the butt of many jokes. Even much of the widespread infrastructure around the rail network is viewed as fragile. Most of the 52 escalators at Berlin’s sprawling central station malfunctioned recently and engineers had to be flown in from Finland to fix them. Europe’s biggest economy has a 20,750-mile (33,400km) rail network that carries about 50,000 trains a day, making it Europe’s biggest and busiest. DB was converted from a state administrative organisation into a private joint-stock company in 1994. The German government has always kept its 100% equity stake in the company. There were angry reactions across the political divide to the latest chaos. “That all the rail traffic in Germany ground to a halt because of a technical defect is a new low in what are already poor operating standards,” Oliver Krischer, the regional transport minister for North-Rhine-Westphalia state, told local media.
UK broke the all-time June temperature weather, with today officially being the hottest June day since the 1967 heatwave. Surrey rang in the high first at 35.7C before Wiggonholt in West Sussex beat that 35.8C. The previous record high was 35.6C in Southampton. Scotland also recorded its hottest day of the year, with temperatures reaching a high of 29.4C at Dyce in Aberdeen on Tuesday. Temperatures at Fyvie Castle in Aberdeenshire hit a high of 29C on the same day and reached 28.7C at Aboyne in Aberdeenshire, Leuchars in Fife and Edinburgh. Mainland Spain also recorded its highest daily average temperatures in June since at least 1950, with temperatures surpassing 39C in Bilbao today. Temperatures are expected to drop in most of the country though, with only parts of the Basque country in the north still marked red. At least 94 million people in Europe were expected to experience temperatures above 35C today, most of them in France and Spain, AFP estimated. More than 350 million people were expected to experience temperatures above 30C. The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that Europe’s heatwave is “putting people’s health are risk.” “The data are clear: temperatures across Europe are rising at roughly twice the global average rate, increasing the likelihood and severity of extreme heat in the future. We cannot afford further delay. Leaders must prioritise investment in climate-resilient health systems, while also accelerating #ClimateAction and mitigating the drivers of the climate crisis.”
My friend and former colleague Geoff Wadge, who has died aged 76, was a pioneer of the use of remote sensing to monitor and study active volcanoes. In particular he became renowned for applying radar to detect ground movements before an eruption begins. Radar can see topography through clouds and can detect surface changes caused by underground movements of magma that sometimes indicate an impending explosion, thereby reducing the need for visits by scientists to dangerous areas close to a volcano. Geoff was born in Burnley, Lancashire, to John Wadge and his wife, Doris (nee Owen), who ran a corner shop together. Educated at Burnley grammar school and motivated by teenage interests in pot-holing and the outdoors, he embarked on a geology degree at Imperial College London in 1968, followed by a PhD there, for which he studied Mount Etna in Sicily. His first job, in 1975, was as a lecturer in the geology department at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. After four years there he moved to the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, to research Caribbean tectonics and to begin his work on using remote sensing to monitor active volcanoes. In 1982 he joined the Seismic Research Unit of the University of the West Indies at its Trinidad campus, monitoring volcanoes of the eastern Caribbean, before returning to the UK to work as a senior research fellow in the department of meteorology at the University of Reading. In 1985 he was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council to undertake an assessment of the Soufrière Hills volcano in Monstserrat, in collaboration with the Seismic Research Unit in Trinidad. The resulting report, written with a colleague, Michael Isaacs, was delivered in 1987 to the government of Montserrat, and warned that the volcano could soon become active again; it did indeed begin to erupt in 1995 and continued to do so until 2010. Later he chaired the Scientific Advisory Committee for Montserrat, responsible for assessment of the hazard and risk relating to the Soufrière Hills volcano, from 2003 to 2014. Geoff worked at Reading University until his retirement in 2020, spending the last eight years there as director of its Environmental Systems Science Centre, focusing on environmental data, remote sensing and Earth observation. In 2015 he was awarded the Murchison Medal by the Geological Society of London. Among his other interests, Geoff had a passion for Morris dancing, which he taught to staff at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory. He also loved Caribbean music, and once, at a conference, accompanied the Montserratian singer Arrow in a rendition of his global hit Hot, Hot, Hot. In 1982 Geoff married Linda Grace, a bookkeeper. She survives him, along with their children, Hester and Sam, and grandson Alfred.
The defeated leftwing candidate in Colombia’s presidential runoff has conceded to the far-right, Trump-admiring millionaire lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella. Since Sunday night, the preliminary count had already pointed to a De la Espriella victory by a razor-thin margin of less than 1% of the vote. But his opponent, Senator Iván Cepeda, and the current president, Gustavo Petro, had initially refused to recognise the result, saying they would instead wait for the official scrutiny process. After the official count showed a 99.997% match with the preliminary results, Cepeda called a press conference in the capital, Bogotá, and finally conceded. “At this stage of the count, I have decided to accept the result of the process, which indicates that Abelardo de la Espriella is the new president of the republic. I do so as an act of democratic responsibility. I do so to contribute to coexistence, peace and dialogue among Colombians,” he said. The leftwing candidate, who finished with 12.7m votes – just 250,000 fewer than De la Espriella’s 12.96m – said, however, that “accepting the electoral result does not mean renouncing the truth or remaining silent in the face of facts that we consider serious and that marked this presidential campaign”. In a reference to Donald Trump’s posts in which he endorsed De la Espriella while describing Cepeda as a “radical left marxist”, the senator said: “We denounced the open and improper foreign interference in Colombia’s internal affairs. In particular, the interventions carried out by the government of the United States and especially those of President Donald Trump in favour of Abelardo de la Espriella’s candidacy.” On Tuesday night, in a 4,500-word social media post, Petro announced that he would begin the transition process with the president-elect. Petro wrote that he felt as though he were handing Simón Bolívar’s sword – the relic that belonged to the military leader of South American independence from Spain and is kept at Colombia’s presidential palace – “to a viceroy”, a reference to Trump’s backing of De la Espriella. The president-elect has announced that Colombia would join the “Shield of the Americas”, the Trump-backed initiative bringing together far-right governments across the region, which now overwhelmingly dominate Latin America. Once De la Espriella takes office on 7 August, only four countries in the region will be governed by the left. “Colombia will NO longer be governed by an administration that is complacent towards narco-terrorism. We will combat it as it should be fought,” wrote De La Espriella, who has pledged to resume a full-scale military offensive to defeat the country’s decades-long armed conflict.
An open air swimming lake in the eastern German city of Halle which has refused entry to bathers who don’t speak German has been told it must lift the ban or face possible legal action. The Heidesee lake, a lake in a flooded former open-cast mine, recently introduced a check at the entrance to filter out visitors whose German was deemed not good enough to follow safety instructions. Mathias Nobel, the lido’s manager, said he had taken the controversial step after a spate of cases in which visitors had ignored safety rules and lifeguards’ loudspeaker announcements. “I’m responsible for the bathing here. If anything happened, everyone would point the finger at me. You can’t reverse death,” Nobel told local media. The decision has led to anger and condemnation from critics who accused the venue of dressing up “a blanket entry barrier for entire population groups” as a safety precaution. A spokesperson for the national anti-discrimination agency, which has been consulted on the row and could take legal action, said: “Imagine how much of a fuss there would be if German-speaking travellers in Mallorca had to prove their knowledge of Spanish or Catalan, or Arabic on the Red Sea, before they could go swimming?” Authorities in Halle have demanded that Nobel drops the ban, saying it lacks proportionality. “The operator has to take into account the necessity of guaranteeing public access to the lido,” a city spokesperson said in a statement. “The public character [of the lido] cannot be undermined by the implementation of house rules which amount to a blanket entry barrier for entire population groups.” The authorities added: “Any action that might be perceived as xenophobic could damage the city’s reputation.” Germany’s life-saving association, the DLRG, said in a statement it firmly distanced itself from the Heidebad ban. In Germany, as in the US and other western countries, swimming pools have become unlikely focal points for racial tensions and rows about immigration, stirred up by the far right. Halle is in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, which has an election in September. The far-right anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which is leading the polls with about 42%, has seized on the row. “Our public swimming pools, once safe havens of recreation, are increasingly becoming genuine danger zones under the misguided policies of the established parties,” the party wrote in a Facebook post. “When private operators are forced to implement their own language controls to ensure the safety of swimmers, the state’s loss of control has definitively reached the heart of our society.” It uploaded a poster to social media with the slogan: “Those who don’t understand German, stay out.” The party has often used images of swimming pools in its posters and campaign literature, most famously in a colouring book for children that contained racist and xenophobic stereotypes. It included one image of women in full-body veils swimming in a pool while men with knives and pistols linger in the background. Nobel, a trained lifeguard, denied the measure being racist or xenophobic, saying it was particularly important that swimmers understood “the German bathing rules” at his pool because the lake was deeper than a conventional swimming pool and had a steeply sloping shoreline. The city authorities have called on him to find “milder ways” to deal with the communication issues, such as using pictograms that are universally understood or displaying safety messages in other languages.
The morning of 24 June 2016, the day after Britain voted to leave the EU, dawned grey and overcast in Brussels, after a stormy night. As the Guardian’s correspondent in the city, after a few hours’ sleep, I hurried to a breakfast briefing with Conservative MEPs at a smart hotel in the EU quarter. Large trays of eggs, sausages and beans were barely touched, as MEPs fielded questions they couldn’t answer: What happens now? When would the UK leave? Would David Cameron resign? A few hours later he did. In the EU institutions officials broke down in tears. A few top British EU civil servants prepared to resign. Anti-EU populists were jubilant. European leaders feared a domino effect of withdrawals. Sadness, shock and anger swirled on that humid day. The then-president of the European parliament, Martin Schulz, told me that EU lawyers were studying whether it was possible to speed up the triggering of article 50, the then-obscure and untested EU exit clause. Then European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker declared he would like to get Brexit negotiations started “immediately”. The idea of hurrying Britain out the door was soon dropped, but those statements reflected the febrile mood. After the initial shock, the EU rallied. Meeting without the UK for the first time on 29 June 2016, the 27 member states set out their red lines: no negotiations without notification of article 50, no cherrypicking and no splitting the four freedoms: free movement of goods, services, capital – and people. It was a playbook that stood the test of time. The dominos never fell. After three prime ministers, two elections and a long-running parliamentary crisis, the UK finalised its divorce and left. The EU carried on in the face of fundamental challenges: a global pandemic, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the return of Donald Trump, energy price shocks and fierce economic competition from China. Since the Brexit vote, the EU has embarked on common borrowing, along with joint purchases of weapons, gas and vaccines – decisions that would have been almost certainly more difficult with a British prime minister at the table. During its 47 years inside the European project, the UK was often a sceptical voice on deeper EU integration, negotiating opt outs or seeking to block decisions perceived as too federalist. A decade later Britain is heading for its seventh prime minister in 10 years, while its relationship with the EU remains contested. For the EU, by contrast, Brexit is a historical episode viewed with detachment. Jonathan Faull, the former head of the European Commission’s UK taskforce, said the EU has got used to Brexit. Faull, who resigned from the Commission after a 38-year career following the 2016 vote, said: “The final deal that was done is very much to the EU’s advantage. I think Frost and co negotiated badly,” he said referring to Lord Frost, the UK’s erstwhile chief negotiator on the post-Brexit agreement. “The trade and cooperation agreement leaves the EU pretty satisfied in economic terms. The status quo suits them. On the continent, there’s no great desire to reset relations with the UK. They seem to be broadly OK.” *** From Brexit to Breturn? In the UK, Britain’s relationship with the EU remains disputed. A poll published this week found that 60% of those aged 18-28 would support rejoining the EU. Britain’s most-likely next prime minister, Andy Burnham, has said he sees a “long-term case” for rejoining, but would not be advocating for it immediately. The former president of the European Council, Charles Michel, told the Guardian this month he expected the EU would react with “a positive spirit” if the UK ever requested to rejoin. Michel, Belgium’s prime minister at the time of the referendum, stressed this was solely a question for UK politics “if and when there is the readiness for a serious domestic debate”. Meanwhile, Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, has said he dreams of “Breturn”, while Spain’s leader Pedro Sánchez told the New Statesman earlier this year “we miss the UK within the EU”. Two-thirds of EU citizens would also support Britain rejoining the bloc: a poll for the European Council on Foreign Relations found 66% of respondents across 15 countries either “strongly supported” or “tended to support” UK membership. Support for rejoin ranged from lows of 56% in Bulgaria and 59% in France and Italy to highs in the Netherlands and Denmark. In reality, rejoin is not on the table. Georg Riekeles, who worked for the EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, thinks rejoining is a long-term prospect that ultimately depends on a British consensus. “The strategic, economic and geopolitical logic all point in one direction but rejoining is not a mood, it is a national choice requiring realism, discipline and trust. The EU would need to see a durable national consensus that the UK has really changed its mind.” Riekeles, now an associate director at the European Policy Centre, said Starmer’s departure “raises the question of stability” in the UK system. “What the EU will be looking for, I think, is a UK that has a stable and durable national consensus. Nobody wants to be on a rollercoaster ride.” To receive the complete version of This Is Europe in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.