Good morning. We’re talking about a heat wave in Europe, a commotion in the Ukrainian government and a report on the shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas.
Extreme heat in Europe
A life-threatening heat wave is sweeping through Western Europe this week.
Spain and Italy raged over the weekend and forest fires raged in France, which have evacuated more than 14,000 people near Bordeaux since early last week, local authorities said. France’s national weather forecaster predicted temperatures of at least 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) on the country’s Atlantic coast until tomorrow.
Now the blistering weather is moving to Britain. Temperatures can rise to today and tomorrow 41 degrees Celsius, which would break records. Air conditioning is rare in the country, where buildings are built to trap heat (as cold temperatures were a bigger concern in the past).
Here’s a guide to staying safe and cool during a heat wave.
Climate change: Heat waves in Europe have increased in frequency and intensity over the past four decades.
The war in Ukraine: Partly as a result of the war, energy prices in Europe have skyrocketed, making air conditioning more expensive. The heat could hurt French wheat yields at a time when mountains of Ukrainian grain remain blocked from distribution by Russian warships.
Zelensky fires top officials
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday fired his attorney general and intelligence chief, the country’s top two law enforcement officers. It was the most significant government upheaval there since the beginning of the Russian invasion.
Zelensky said he was responding to a large number of treason investigations opened against law enforcement officials. US officials said the moves reflected Zelensky’s efforts to place more experienced leaders in key security positions.
Officials stressed that the resignation of Ivan Bakanov, the leader of Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service and a childhood friend of the president, was not the result of mishandling of intelligence or major penetration of Ukrainian intelligence services by Russia.
Understanding the war between Russia and Ukraine better
More strikes: Russian attacks intensified with a “mass attack” on Mykolaiv, according to a Ukrainian news agency. Ukrainian officials said Russia has launched at least 10 missiles towards the city. On Friday, a salvo hit two universities, a hotel and a shopping center.
Toll: After a short break, The Russian defense minister ordered troops to step up the attacks, intensifying fighting in the eastern Donbas region. Yesterday, lovers buried a 4-year-old girl with Down syndrome, one of 23 people killed by Russian missiles in Vinnytsia last week.
Europe: The continent finds itself at a vulnerable time as it faces tests of its democracies, a plummeting currency and the war in Ukraine.
Culture: President Vladimir Putin is making sweeping changes to the school curriculum to shape the views of young Russians. And our critic Jason Farago traveled to Ukraine to chronicle the country’s struggles to preserve and expand its artistic heritage during the war.
‘System failures’ in Uvalde
The first comprehensive assessment of law enforcement’s response to the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, found “systemic flaws” and “outrageously poor decision-making” in the police’s response.
Nearly 400 officers responded to the school during the attack on May 24. Still, the decision to finally confront the gunman was made by a small group of officers, the report found, concluding that others on the ground could have taken the lead and had done so before.
July 17, 2022, 5:15 PM ET
A flawless police response would not have saved most of the victims, who suffered devastating injuries when shot with a powerful AR-15 style rifle. But some survived, but died on the way to hospital, the report noted, adding in a footnote that “it is plausible that some victims could have survived had they not had to wait” for rescue.
Background: Dozens of officers waited outside two connected classrooms where the gunman killed 19 children and two teachers. It took 77 minutes for police to storm into the classroom after the gunman started firing.
THE LAST NEWS
Europe
Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has jailed critics on a large scale by holding them in custody, a Times investigation finds.
From September 2020 to February 2021, The Times estimates, about 4,500 people were held in pre-trial detention. At least one in four detainees had spent more than a year in detention, their cases being extended time and again without trial.
Uncovering decades of old graffiti
A graffiti artist known as the “King of Kowloon” wrote quirky, personal messages all over Hong Kong.
During his lifetime, his work was not considered political. Instead, the artist, Tsang Tsou-choi, covered public spaces with sprawling tangles of Chinese characters that heralded his unwavering belief that much of the Kowloon Peninsula belonged rightfully to his family.
Despite his fame, his works were often painted over by municipal workers who wanted to keep graffiti at bay. After his death in 2007, Tsang’s art almost completely disappeared from public space.
But this year, peeling paint on a concrete railway bridge revealed remnants of Tsang’s writings. “I thought old Hong Kong said hello again,” said a local artist.
The lost artworks have also found new political resonance in a changed Hong Kong, where a sweeping campaign against dissent has crushed the city’s former freewheeling eccentricity.
“He talked about these preoccupations in Hong Kong long before other people were — territory, sovereignty, expropriation and loss,” said Louisa Lim, who explored Tsang’s legacy in the book “Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong.”