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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. 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 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 the autumn of 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 to ban drinking alcohol in public as hospitals hit heatwave breaking point

Parisians will ⁠be temporarily banned from drinking alcohol in public as hospitals in the capital buckle under a deadly heatwave ‌gripping France ‌and much of Europe. “We are reaching a saturation point in hospital facilities,” the head of Paris police, Patrice Faure, said on Thursday. He warned the new measures, which include a ban on alcohol takeaway sales, were needed to stem increasing hospitalisations. “I must ensure that the pressure decreases,” Faure said. The French health minister, Stéphanie Rist, on Thursday 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 cardiac arrests, she said. The public drinking ban begins at noon on Friday and lasts until 7am Saturday, and then repeats the same hours from Saturday to Sunday. It does not include restaurants and cafes with public seating areas. Takeaway alcohol sales will be banned from 6pm Friday to 7am Saturday, and again 6pm Saturday to 7am Sunday. Temperatures in Paris hit a June record ⁠of 40.9C (105.6F) on Wednesday and pushed close to 40C on Thursday. At least 48 people have died in France from drowning since the start of the heatwave, and three young children have been killed by heat in cars. Paris officials have implemented a series of measures to help its 2 million residents cope. Alcohol sales at some public events have already been banned, many schools have closed and parks are staying open around the clock. The Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, two of the most visited tourist attractions in the world, earlier this week cut their opening hours because of the scorching heat. More than 44 million people in France, out of a total population of 67 million, have this week been under the highest red alert for heat. Two nuclear reactors in France were shut down on Thursday to avoid discharging too much hot water into rivers already warming in the record-breaking heatwave. Earlier this week, soaring temperatures killed hundreds of thousands of birds at poultry farms in Brittany and the Pays de la Loire. France is forecast to face at least several more days of stifling heat. With Reuters

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, killing at least 235 people but with thousands more fatalities feared. Officials said at least 4,300 people were injured as rescue missions continue. 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 evening the official death toll was raised to 235, with an earlier count putting the number of people missing at 157. 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. Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, Canada and Qatar promised to send aid. 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!!!” The US Treasury moved to waive some sanctions until 23 October to allow transactions related to earthquake relief efforts in Venezuela that would otherwise be prohibited. 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.” Rodríguez also appealed to businesses to make heavy construction equipment available for rescue operations. The first rescuers from the Dominican Republic were about to arrive and more from other countries were expected over the coming hours, 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.

Xi Jinping has hosted more than a dozen leaders this year, as ‘middle powers’ look beyond the US

Xi Jinping meets Bangladesh’s new prime minister on Friday, the latest in a wave of world leaders to visit Beijing this year as the Chinese leader builds his influence and economic ties, and seeks to “shift the balance of power” away from the west. Xi’s meeting with Tarique Rahman comes less than two weeks after the Chinese leader welcomed Myanmar’s military chief-turned-president, Min Aung Hlaing, in Beijing. In May, Xi hosted leaders from the US, Russia, Brunei, Serbia, Tajikistan and Pakistan, while a host of foreign ministers also came to China for lower level meetings. More than a dozen world leaders - including presidents and prime ministers - have visited so far this year, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the UK’s Keir Starmer and US president Donald Trump. “The long list of world leaders travelling to Beijing to meet with Xi reflects the growing recognition of China’s increasing global influence,” said William Yang, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group. Many of the leaders to visit China this year, including Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney, framed their trips as a chance for “middle-power” countries to chart an independent relationship with Beijing against a backdrop of an increasingly capricious US. China can use such visits to “promote the alternative multipolar world order that it has been championing while weakening these countries’ trust and confidence in the US,” Yang said. China is presenting itself as a source of stability – and for many poorer countries, loans – at a time when from the perspective of many countries, the US is retreating from its leading position on the world stage. And despite Trump’s pomp-filled state visit, Beijing has not been shy about about courting leaders from authoritarian and Global South countries, either. Myanmar’s military chief-turned-president got the red carpet treatment in Beijing. The Chinese leader signalled his “firm support” for Min Aung Hlaing’s regime, before reiterating his commitment to the “principle of non-interference” in the war-torn country’s “internal affairs”. Min Aung Hlaing, accused by UN experts of overseeing war crimes and genocide in Myanmar, appeared a happy man. Only his second foreign trip since cementing power over the south-east Asian country in a widely condemned election six months ago,he has grown increasingly isolated since overthrowing Myanmar’s democratically elected government in a 2021 coup. But this proved of little concern to Beijing, which signalled its “acceptance of the legitimacy of the Myanmar military’s rule in Myanmar” with this week’s visit, according to Ja Ian Chong, a professor at the National University of Singapore and a non-resident scholar at Carnegie China. This approach can be viewed as part of Xi’s wider project to influence international order so “no country has a right to tell others how to manage their own domestic affairs”, according to Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at Soas University of London. “Engagement with less glamorous leaders from less rich countries is very much what the strategy is about,” said Tsang. “[Xi is] fundamentally shifting the balance of power from the hands of the advanced democracies … to the Global South, with China as its leader.” Earlier this month, Xi adopted a similar playbook as he sidestepped another thorny issue when visiting Kim Jong-un in a rare overseas trip. Despite previously expressing strong opposition to North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, the issue was conspicuously absent from readouts. Stabilising ties took precedence, with Beijing’s silence viewed as tacit acceptance of North Korea’s nuclear-armed status. Chinese state media has been keen to present Beijing as the new hub of global diplomacy. In May, the Global Times ran a piece which said that the back-to-back visits of Trump and Putin “underscores both the intensity of China’s diplomatic calendar and its expanding influence on the world stage”. That is despite the fact that when it comes to actually solving international crises, Beijing’s influence has been limited. Although credited with initially pushing Iran towards ceasefire talks with the US, Beijing has not been a peacemaker in that conflict. While Beijing helped to broker a detente between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023, China does not wield a decisive influence over Tehran. And when it comes to the war in Ukraine, China’s 12-point plan for a political settlement, published in 2023, has long been forgotten and is overshadowed by Beijing’s enduring support for Russia’s invasion. Additional research by Yu-chen Li

Experts say three recent powerful earthquakes are not related

A 5.6-magnitude earthquake struck a rural part of northern California on Wednesday. Hours later, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake hit the northern coast of Japan and two powerful earthquakes rocked Venezuela in a devastating mass casualty event. The tremors happened in the span of eight hours, prompting online speculation over whether they were related. Experts say they were not. The episodes do share a similarity in that they all occurred along well-known plate boundaries with high seismic hazard, according to William Barnhart, assistant coordinator for the US Geological Survey’s earthquake hazards program. But their timing on Wednesday was simply a coincidence. “Earthquakes happen every day all over the world. Most of them happen far from people,” Barnhart said. “Yesterday was just a very peculiar day where you had a couple of fairly significant earthquakes happen in areas where people felt them.” It is possible for a large earthquake to trigger tremors in other parts of the world, Barnhart said. But it’s unusual that such a cascade effect would happen thousands and thousands of miles apart, according to Martin Hudson, an adjunct professor of civil and environmental engineering at UCLA. “If you look at the last 100 years of earthquakes, we’ve never seen earthquakes this far apart be related,” he said. In comparison, the initial 7.1-magnitude temblor in Venezuela likely triggered the ensuing 7.5-magnitude quake because of their proximity. “A fault might be ready to go, and then if there’s a nearby earthquake, it causes it to tip over the edge,” Hudson said. In any given year, there are dozens of earthquakes greater than magnitude 7 across the world, Hudson said. “It was a terrible happenstance that it was in a populated area in Venezuela,” he added of the ongoing calamity, where at least 188 people have been confirmed dead.

Major wildfire rips through moorland close to Greater Manchester

A major wildfire close to Greater Manchester has torn through large areas of moorland for more than 24 hours, forcing road closures and smoke warnings as fire crews battle to bring it under control. The blaze, on Tintwistle Moor, near Glossop, has burned an area of more than 500 square metres of moorland and woodland, with thick plumes of smoke directly affecting the villages of Tintwistle, Hollingworth and Woolley Bridge. Dramatic drone footage posted on social media by Derbyshire fire and rescue service shows a dense area of woodland rapidly burning as smoke pours into the sky. Since breaking out about 10pm on Wednesday, a water-dropping helicopter, as well as six fire engines and various moorland support teams, have been drafted in, with fire crews saying they expect to remain on the scene overnight on Thursday as they try to halt the blaze. Residents in areas as far away as Bolton, Crumpsall, Bury, Oldham and Rochdale have reported a strong smell of smoke, while ash has been landing in gardens and on cars across the region. Warnings to avoid the area have been issued with people urged to keep windows and doors shut. The Woodhead Pass (A628) – a major route connecting Manchester and South Yorkshire over the Pennines – is closed in both directions while emergency services continue to try to bring the wildfire under control. According to National Highways, the busy route is closed between the A57 for Hollingworth and the A616 for Flouch. “Traffic travelling from further afield may wish to use alternative trans-pennine routes such as M1, M62 and M60,” the service said. The fire comes as the UK swelters in record June temperatures with severe high temperature warnings issued for much of the country, including Manchester and Derbyshire. Derbyshire fire and rescue service said: “The fire is affecting approximately 500 square metres of moorland and woodland. Wildfires like this require a huge response and people are asked to keep this in mind as the warm weather continues. “The ground is tinder dry and the slightest spark from a campfire, a tiny burning ember from a barbecue, or a flake of ash from a discarded cigarette could soon escalate to a major incident so please act responsibly.” The UK Health Security Agency has extended its red heat-health alert to 11pm on Friday. It is only the second red alert ever issued by the agency. The Met Office also extended its red alert for south-east England until 9pm on Friday.

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.