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Extreme heat grips Europe as UK hits new June record, France shuts down nuclear reactors and deaths rise across continent – as it happened

Teachers in France are risking their own and students’ health in overheated schools as a severe heatwave sets new record temperatures, education unions said, urging staff to strike over “unacceptable working conditions”. Several teaching unions on Thursday issued a joint statement denouncing a “blatant lack of preparation” by the government, after teachers have had to work in classrooms where temperatures reached up to 40C. The UK’s new provisional high of 36.4C (97.5F), recorded in Yeovilton, Somerset, surpassed Wednesday’s June record of 36.1C in Gosport, Hampshire, which had beaten the previous peak of 35.6C set in Southampton in 1976. The Netherlands issued its first-ever red alert for heat for Friday, warning of “dangerous” conditions as a record-setting heatwave scorched Europe. The national weather institute issued the alert for much of the country, where temperatures are forecast to reach 40C in some places. Switzerland registered its hottest ever June temperature on Thursday, with 38C measured in the northern city of Basel, breaking a previous record of 36.9C set eight decades ago, the Swiss weather service said. “Temperatures exceeded 37C for the first time in Switzerland during the month of June, breaking a record set in 1947,” MeteoSuisse said on X, adding that “a temperature of 38C was even recorded at the Basel weather station”. France’s main energy provider Thursday shut down two nuclear reactors as an environmental protection measure to avoid discharging too much hot water into rivers already warming in a record-breaking heatwave, AFP reported. Power plants critical to the country’s electricity production use river water to cool their reactors, which heats the water that is then released back into the river. In France, a three-year-old has died after finding himself trapped in a car in the Paris region in extreme heat, a prosecutor said, the third such fatality this week, AFP reported. The boy had slipped into the family car while his father thought he was napping, then found himself unable to get out with the child lock in the town of Saint-Gratien, the prosecutor said, after a police source and civil defence also reported the death. A heatwave sweeping Europe was starting to peak in Germany on Thursday, with several open-air events cancelled and temperatures expected to top 40C through the weekend, AFP reported. Large parts of the country are already under “severe to extreme heat stress” with temperatures soaring to around 37C, the German Weather Service (DWD) said. Italy’s latest heatwave has claimed five lives in less than 24 hours, as temperatures climbed to 41C across much of the country. After a 57-year-old man died while working in a field near Lodi, outside Milan, on Tuesday, four more deaths were reported on Wednesday. Over the past four days 212 people have died prematurely in Spain as a result of the heatwave, according to scientists using a system for monitoring mortality. As temperatures rise to 42C in some regions, often not falling below 30C at night, the June heatwave is breaking records that were set this time last year, making it the hottest June since 1950. In Germany, the country’s rail operator Deutsche Bahn, or DB, offered passengers booked for this weekend an option to cancel their ticket free of charge. The option is available to all passengers who booked their tickets before 23 June, and were due to travel between today and 30 June. The heatwave continues to disrupt the British education system with University College London, one of the UK’s largest universities, cancelling its student open days planned for Friday and Saturday, relieving thousands of prospective undergraduates and parents from travelling to central London.

‘Morale bombing’ Moscow is not justified | Letter

The main target of Ukraine’s largest-ever drone attack on Moscow was apparently an oil refinery on the city’s edge (Moscow oil refinery struck in Ukraine’s biggest air raid on city since start of war, 18 June). However, it also caused some civilian injuries and damage to private property. It is possible that this other damage was entirely unintended, but it is reasonable to suspect otherwise when the Ukrainian president speaks of bringing the war closer to ordinary Russians. The desired effect of such action is to increase those civilians’ sense of insecurity and force the Russian president to quell popular discontent by ending the war he started. Unfortunately, though, a strategy of “morale bombing” a city’s residents is one that suffers from being inherently unjust. Thus, it has the potential to undermine the legitimacy of Ukraine’s self-defensive war effort. Russian civilians are not morally liable to attack. Unlike enemy combatants, civilians lack the capacity to injure or kill, so they present no military threat to be violently neutralised. This is a distinction that must be recognised by both sides in the Russia-Ukraine war. Although Russia was wrong to invade its neighbour in February 2022, Ukraine still has a responsibility to avoid the deliberate harming of innocents when violently defending itself. Since the invasion, Russia appears to have targeted the civilian residents of Ukrainian cities on many occasions. However, for the simple reason that two wrongs do not make a right, Ukraine does not gain any moral permission to retaliate against Russia by launching indiscriminate attacks. Ukraine should instead underline the justness of its cause by always respecting the innocence of all civilians. Prof Christian Enemark University of Southampton • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

Rescue teams race to Venezuela amid fears thousands killed in earthquakes

Rescue teams are racing to Venezuela’s shattered northern coast after almost simultaneous earthquakes reduced dozens of buildings to rubble, with thousands of people feared dead. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said the defence department would help search and rescue teams deploy to the affected region after Venezuela’s main gateway, the Simón Bolívar international airport, near the capital, Caracas, was badly damaged by 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes less than 40 seconds apart, late on Wednesday afternoon. He said the most immediate need was search and rescue. “They have [lots of] collapsed buildings and so they will need a lot of help in terms of digging through that,” Rubio told reporters, adding that the next 72 “golden” hours were critical. “In search and rescue you are trying to get to people while you can still save their lives – they are buried under rubble.” The coastal area near the international airport, around the cities of La Guaira, Catia La Mar and Caraballeda, appears to have sustained by far the worst damage, with a string of large tower blocks levelled and people desperately hunting for missing loved ones. In some cases families of four or five people have disappeared. “This is an utter tragedy,” the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, said in a televised broadcast, declaring the La Guaira region a disaster zone. Caracas also sustained severe damage, with several buildings collapsing in the Altamira and Los Palos Grandes neighbourhoods. On Thursday afternoon the official death toll was raised to 188, with 157 people missing. Tom Fletcher, the head of the UN’s humanitarian agency, Ocha, said: “We are fully mobilised right now … We will surge in people, we will surge in solidarity and, most important, we will surge in search and rescue support … for people who have lost so much … Now is the time for action.” The UN agency reported that more than 100 buildings had collapsed in the La Guaira region alone. They included a large block of flats called the Ritasol Palace and the seafront Eduard’s Hotel. Those missing include children as young as five as well as elderly people. The quakes were so strong that they were felt in the Brazilian city of Manaus, in the Amazon, more than 1,000 miles to the south of Caracas, forcing people to flee their homes. As aftershocks continued to shake northern Venezuela on Thursday, world leaders offered their condolences and support to a nation already reeling from years of economic and humanitarian crisis and political repression. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said: “France stands ready, alongside its European partners, to provide assistance to the affected populations … A team of 85 French specialised rescuers … will be deployed immediately.” Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, voiced “great concern and dismay” for the people of Venezuela, who had already shown “great resilience in the face of adversities”. The US president, Donald Trump – who turned Venezuela’s political landscape on its head by ordering the abduction of its dictator, Nicolás Maduro, on 3 January this year – said: “The USA stands ready, willing, and able to help! I have instructed all agencies of our government to get ready to move quickly. We will be there for our new and great friends. Early reports are not good!!!” Rodríguez, Venezuela’s former vice-president who took power with Trump’s blessing after Maduro’s downfall, expressed gratitude for the global outpouring of solidarity, writing on social media: “Venezuela will never forget the helping hand extended to our people during these difficult times.” In a televised address, she said the region worst devastated by Wednesday’s “unprecedented seismic phenomenon” was the state of La Guaira, the capital of which bears the same name. “There are dozens of collapsed buildings there and right now we are engaged in the really arduous task of rescue work in the hope of saving the lives God will allow us to,” she said. Aerial footage painted a devastating picture of the situation in La Guaira, which authorities consider the disaster’s “ground zero”. The sweep of Caribbean beach towns and resorts to the west of the airport lay in ruins, with many seafront buildings completely destroyed.

Iran rejects UN-backed plan to free ships trapped in strait of Hormuz

Iran has rejected UN-backed plans for the mass evacuation of ships through the strait of Hormuz, creating a new threat to the free passage of commercial ships through the strait. The proposal, backed by Oman, was potentially the first phase of a broader Omani proposal to consult on setting up a new management of the strait based on voluntary fees and modelled on the Malacca and Singapore strait mechanism. The intervention showed that Oman and Iran’s visions for the strait may differ, although they were consulting each other to try to align their plans. Iran’s intervention also damaged efforts led by Saudi Arabia to convene a conference to normalise relations between the Gulf states and Iran in a new proposed non-aggression pact. Shipping through the strait had been steadily increasing since Iran and the US signed a memorandum of understanding last week. As part of the deal, Tehran agreed it would make its best efforts to ensure full freedom of navigation was restored to the strait and no fees or tolls would be imposed for a minimum of 60 days. But on Thursday the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps rejected the coordinates of two new temporary shipping evacuation lanes announced by the UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) in conjunction with Oman. A pre-existing transit separation scheme (TSS) route remains impassable due to mines. The IMO proposed two routes, one to the north of the TSS in mined Iranian sovereign waters, and another that was much more passable to the south in Omani waters. The IMO and Oman had advised that the evacuation of hundreds of ships, some which have been trapped for months, had to be coordinated with both organisations so that transit days and waiting areas could be allocated. The statement issuing the coordinates was given by the Oman National Hydrographic Office, but it appeared from the IRGC’s negative reaction that it did not have Iran’s agreement. The IRGC force described any alternative transit routes as “unacceptable and completely dangerous”. “Traffic of vessels outside the official routes is prohibited, and we warn against any traffic outside the communicated routes,” it said. The statement further emphasised that coordination with the IRGC navy was “mandatory” for any transit through the strategic waterway. The strait has proved to be Iran’s key negotiating lever and it does not want to weaken that lever while bargaining is still under way on lifting US sanctions, asset relief and the future of its nuclear programme. The speaker of Iran’s parliament and its chief negotiator, Mohammad Ghalibaf, said the chokepoint would not return to the status it had prior to 28 February, the date of the first combined US-Israeli attack on Iran. “Everyone should know that the administration of the strait of Hormuz will never go back to the way it was before the war,” Ghalibaf said. Lebanon, along with the strait, has emerged as a stumbling block for US-Iran talks, which are meant to lead to a permanent peace after 60 days of talks. Iran has demanded that Israeli troops withdraw from southern Lebanon, where they occupy more than 600 sq km of land. Israeli and Lebanese officials denied on Thursday that there had been any Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, pushing back on a statement from a US official who said Israel had called back some troops in a gesture of goodwill towards the Lebanese government. In recent weeks, Lebanon and Israel have been discussing a phased withdrawal of Israeli troops. The Lebanese army would take control of the vacated areas to prevent Hezbollah from re-entering them and also to destroy any facilities belonging to the armed group. An Israeli government spokesperson, David Mencer, said on Thursday that any “redeployment” of the Israeli military in southern Lebanon would come only after Hezbollah was disarmed. A day earlier, Israel’s defence minister had said Israel would not withdraw from Lebanon. Israel’s bombing of Lebanon has repeatedly proved an obstacle to US-Iran talks, with a flare-up in fighting last week prompting Iran to threaten the closure of the strait. A ceasefire brokered over the weekend has largely stopped the fighting in Lebanon, although Israeli troops have continued to carry out airstrikes and shoot at cars in areas close to the areas they occupy in southern Lebanon. On Thursday, an Israeli drone strike on a car killed three people in south Lebanon. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said Israel and Lebanon were making progress on their talks, telling reporters in Bahrain on Thursday that the two countries were “very close” to making a commitment of intent. Since the calming of fighting in Lebanon, diplomatic attention has returned to the strait of Hormuz. In a joint statement, the foreign ministries of Iran and Oman agreed to set up a working party on the future administration of the strait. Oman is eager that any proposal complies with article 43 of the UN convention on the law of the sea. Oman also believes that cooperation with the IMO humanitarian rescue mission makes it more likely that an agreement can be reached on a new long-term system. Gulf states and western countries have been warning Iran and Oman not to try to impose fees for services or tolls, which they insist would be in breach of the fundamental principles of the law of the sea. Oman, unlike Iran, is a full signatory to the UN convention and insists its scheme would only seek voluntary contributions linked to environment and safety services. In recent days, a stream of diplomats have been to Muscat to hear Oman’s thinking and whether it believes Iran’s plans are lawful or desirable. Tanker Trackers estimates that Iran has exported 40m barrels of crude oil since 15 June, of which half was on Friday last week. Arab states including Saudi Arabia and Qatar are strongly opposed to tolls, but some Saudi diplomats appear open to paying fees so long as it can be proven it is lawful and is not extortionate.

Israeli forces arrest Palestinian ‘doctor of the poor’

Israeli forces on Sunday arrested a prominent 71-year-old Palestinian physician known as the “doctor of the poor” in a pre-dawn raid on his home in the occupied West Bank, prompting widespread condemnation. Dr Mazen Al-Rantisi, a physician widely known for providing care to low-income Palestinians, was arrested in the al-Tira neighbourhood of Ramallah. He was later taken to the police station in the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, where he is believed to be under interrogation by the Special Investigations Unit. Israeli authorities have not said why he was detained or where he is currently being held. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the arrest is believed to be connected to Al-Rantisi’s position as chair of the Union of Health Work Committees, a Palestinian non-profit founded in 1985 that operates clinics serving thousands of patients each year, particularly in rural communities with limited access to healthcare. The organisation was declared an “unlawful association” by the Israeli military in 2020 under emergency regulations dating back to the British Mandate for Palestine. Two years later, Israeli forces shut its headquarters in Al-Bireh. Despite those measures, the group remains legally registered with the Palestinian Authority’s interior ministry. News of Al-Rantisi’s detention spread rapidly across the occupied West Bank, with an outpouring of support on social media. Former patients, activists and local leaders described him as a figure whose work reached far beyond the consulting room. Many recalled that he frequently waived consultation fees, supplied medicines to families unable to afford them and distributed donated prescriptions to vulnerable patients. For years, they said, his clinic served not only as a medical practice but also as a place of refuge for some of the poorest members of Palestinian society. The arrest prompted an online solidarity campaign, with supporters demanding his immediate release and information about his whereabouts. “The arrest of Dr Al-Rantisi is another alarming escalation in Israel’s crackdown on Palestinian civil society,” Naji Abbas, the director of the Prisoners and Detainees department at Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) told the Guardian. “By detaining a respected physician and the head of a leading Palestinian health organisation, the Israeli authorities are further blurring the line between legitimate security measures and the criminalisation of essential civil and humanitarian work.” “Dr Al-Rantisi’s clinic in Ramallah serves hundreds of patients,” PHRI added, “and his detention will inevitably disrupt access to medical care for those who depend on him. His arrest is not just about one doctor – it reflects a broader effort to undermine Palestinian civil institutions and intimidate those working to serve their communities under occupation.” Contacted by the Guardian about the arrest of Al-Rantisi, the Israeli military referred questions about the arrest to the Israel Prison Service. The service referred questions about the arrest to the Israeli military. Since 2020, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 1,100 Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank, at least a quarter of whom were children, UN data shows. No one has been charged over any of these deaths. According to the leading human rights organisation based in Israel, B’Tselem, as of March 2026, some 9,446 Palestinians were held in Israeli prisons; 4,691 of them were under administrative detention, imprisoned without charge, trial, or the ability to defend themselves. Fourteen other doctors from Gaza remain in Israeli detention without charge, amid allegations they have been subjected to harsh treatment. Palestinian doctors have alleged that they were subjected to torture, beatings and sexual violence in Israeli detention. Early in June, another prominent Palestinian doctor from Gaza, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, who was detained by Israeli forces in Gaza in late 2024 and has been held for more than 500 days without formal charges, was transferred without explanation to solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison.

‘Paralysed by fear’: Venezuelans tell of escape and loss after huge earthquakes

As a double whammy of powerful earthquakes rattled Venezuela’s northern coast on Wednesday, residents of the capital, Caracas, scrambled out on to the streets from shuddering, fractured buildings. “It was horrible. I felt like the house was moving to a different rhythm to the earth. I had to carry my mum out. She was paralysed by fear,” said 18-year-old Sebastian Rodríguez, whose family runs a shop in Centro Plaza, a brutalist commercial centre in the affluent neighbourhood of Los Palos Grandes. The robust reinforced concrete structure of the shopping centre – an architectural gem built at the peak of Venezuela’s 1970s oil boom – appeared to have been spared major damage, but the surrounding area had been far less fortunate. At least three buildings in Los Palos Grandes and neighbouring Altamira collapsed during the 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude quakes that struck within a minute of each other shortly after 6pm local time. As night fell, emergency workers, volunteers and the relatives of victims rushed to the scene hoping to find survivors in the wreckage of residential buildings that had been reduced to a mangle of masonry and steel. “There is so much rubble,” gasped Jessica Galvis, 33, a critical care physician, who was waiting for news outside one fallen six-floor building where she believed a female friend had been buried. José Morillo, 61, said he had raced across town on his motorbike, praying that his trapped family members would all be found alive. “My brother, my son and nephews are all inside,” Morillo said, before a female relative was pulled from the building’s ruins, seemingly still alive. At the foot of the spectacular Ávila mountain, Altamira and Los Palos Grandes are home to some of the city’s wealthiest residents and the location of numerous upmarket hotels, restaurants and foreign missions, including the British, German and Brazilian embassies. Working-class areas such as Catia, whose residents had already been struggling with the effects of one of the worst peacetime economic crises in modern history, were also devastated. “My walls have crumbled. There’s water coming in through the roof,” said José Luis, a PE teacher who lives in Catia and was one of many people to lose his home. “The quake lasted so long and it smashed everything.” Luis said he was too frightened to go back indoors and, like many Caraqueños, planned to spend the night sleeping rough, on mattresses, pieces of cardboard or in tents. “The government needs to send people, firefighters … if there’s another quake like that one, this building will collapse,” he pleaded. “This is what we all fear.” Isra Colmenares, 58, from the same region, described how her building started violently swaying as the ground shook during the second earthquake, Venezuela’s worst since a 7.7 earthquake in 1900. “It was a truly hideous experience … It was the first time in my life that I’ve experienced anything like this – it was just so, so powerful,” Colmenares said. If the devastation was dramatic in Venezuela’s capital, about a 45-minute drive north the situation appeared to be even worse. The international airport, located in a port city called La Guaira, was closed after sustaining severe damage, which is likely to hamper the humanitarian response. Social media videos showed panicked travellers sprinting for cover as the terminal’s roof began to cave in, coating them in dust. Nearby, dozens of tower blocks and buildings– including at least one beachfront hotel – collapsed. When the earthquakes struck, the coastal region was still reeling from Donald Trump’s decision to launch a lightning-fast invasion to abduct Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, on 3 January this year. Several buildings in Catia La Mar, a seaside town west of La Guaira, were badly damaged when US air-to-surface missiles rained down on defence and radar systems along the coast, clearing the way for helicopter-borne special forces teams to fly south to Caracas to grab Maduro. On Wednesday, those communities again found themselves in the eye of the storm. With phone lines down, attempts to contact residents were unsuccessful. Their fate remained unclear. The official death toll stood at 164 on Thursday morning and was expected to rise. Writing on social media, Trump warned of “a devastating number of deaths”, adding: “We will be there for our new and great friends.” Social media filled with photographs of the missing, many of them from the stretch of shoreline between the airport and Catia La Mar. One was an eight-year-old boy called Brayne; another a five-year-old girl, Miranda. In one dwelling, at least five members of the same family had disappeared: Luisa, Ángel, Carmen, Yepxalit and Andrea. Amid the despair, there were rays of light. At about 1.30am, rescue workers were filmed freeing three siblings who had been buried under a pancaked building in La Guaira. “God, you are great!” one local man could be heard proclaiming as the children were pulled from a jumble of concrete, shaken but alive.

‘Constitutional coup’ claims as Zimbabwe senate approves extending presidential term

Zimbabwe is on the brink of amending its constitution to give the president more time in office, a change that the government says will bring stability but that opponents have labelled a “constitutional coup”. The upper house of Zimbabwe’s parliament voted on Wednesday 75-4 in favour of the constitutional amendments, which will allow President Emmerson Mnangagwa to stay in office until 2030 by extending presidential terms from five to seven years. The bill, which will also replace direct presidential elections with the appointment of the president by parliament, was passed by the lower house last week and the government said the president was expected to sign it into law next month. Opposition figures fear the changes could further tighten the hold on power of Mnangagwa, known as “the Crocodile”, and his Zanu-PF party, which has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. Mnangagwa, now 83, won a second term in office with 52.6% of the vote in the 2023 presidential election, amid criticism of the election process from international observers and opposition figures. Critics of the constitutional changes claimed Zimbabwe could slide back to the repression seen under Robert Mugabe, who resigned in 2017 after 37 years in power, after a coup led by Mnangagwa. Makomborero Haruzivishe, a spokesperson for the Constitutional Defenders Forum (CDF), a group campaigning against the amendments, said: “It is a calculated constitutional coup against the people of Zimbabwe. It strips citizens of the fundamental right to directly elect their president, replacing popular sovereignty with parliamentary selection by a captured legislature.” Nick Mangwana, the permanent secretary in Zimbabwe’s information ministry, said: “To characterise this legitimate legislative exercise as a ‘coup’ is not only factually incorrect but deeply disrespectful to the sovereign parliamentary processes of the Republic of Zimbabwe.” He said: “The primary objective is to enhance political stability and ensure policy continuity … We are not removing presidential term limits, we are simply adjusting the electoral cycle to reduce the frequency of highly contested, polarising elections.” Mangwana rejected suggestions that constitutional amendments had to be approved in a referendum, saying the attorney general had found no legal basis for requiring a people’s vote. Opponents of the constitutional amendments said they had been subjected to harassment and prevented from campaigning. Tendai Biti, one of the CDF’s convenors, said security forces had barged into his office six times since October 2025. Responding to a claim that Biti’s driver had been assaulted in one such incident in March, police said officers had been sent to Biti’s office “for the maintenance of law and order”. Also in March, Lovemore Madhuku, a lawyer who had filed a constitutional court challenge to the amendment bill, said he was beaten by a group of balaclava-wearing men who then drove off in unmarked vehicles followed by two police vehicles. Local media published photos of Madhuku with large welts across his upper back. Zimbabwe’s police force said in a statement: “The police were not involved in the alleged incident.” Mangwana said: “If any individual – whether Professor Madhuku, Mr Biti, or anyone else – possesses credible evidence of assault or harassment by state agents, my office urges them to formally lodge a complaint with the [police] or the relevant judicial authorities.” Mangwana said a consultation process had received 537,000 submissions, with an “overwhelming majority supporting the constitutional changes”. Jameson Timba, a minister during Zimbabwe’s government of national unity from 2009 to 2013, said he and his allies had been prevented from speaking during the public consultation events. Timba said: “We are just the tip of the iceberg. In almost every district that [the government] went to, people were being denied an opportunity to speak … Those public hearings are not a representation of anything. They are a fraud.” Zimbabwe became internationally isolated during the 2000s after Mugabe’s government confiscated more than 4,000 farms from mostly white farmers. Economic output plunged, resulting in hyperinflation in 2008, after which Mugabe was pressed into a coalition government with the opposition at the time. Many Zimbabweans view Mnangagwa’s rule as a continuation of Mugabe’s. In 2024, the US imposed sanctions on Mnangagwa, his wife, Auxillia, and nine other people, accusing them of corruption.