Europe Is Burning

Good morning. The war in the Middle East is escalating, and missiles are flying across the region. There’s more below. But first, I want to take you to Europe.

The fires threatening central Spain and southwestern France over the past two weeks may be small by American standards. In Europe, though, they are tremendous. Some are the largest in their countries’ modern histories, raging in places not accustomed to fires of this scale: on the outskirts of Madrid, for instance, or near the ancient vineyards of Bordeaux.

Firefighters have been struggling to contain the fires before another heat wave descends on the region today, with temperatures soaring to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Last month was the hottest June on record in Western Europe, and climate experts say the continent can expect even higher temperatures in the future. The heat dries vegetation, making it more susceptible to fire. (It also exhausts firefighters.)

And more destruction may lie ahead. Last year had a record-breaking fire season across Europe, my colleagues report, with more than 2.5 million acres burned, about 60 percent of them in August. The fires of the last two weeks have put 2026 ahead of last year at the same time.

These charts tell the terrible story:

‘A wake-up call’

The fires have been particularly hard on Madrid, which in recent years has become a booming European capital. Residents can’t recall a time when such a large fire advanced so close to the city, reports Jason Horowitz, our bureau chief there:

In a country led by a government that has defined itself by the seriousness with which it takes climate change, the flames have come unsettlingly close to the capital. The fires around Madrid have brought to tears the region’s president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Experts say they are a harbinger for the damage to come on the world’s fastest warming continent.
“These are difficult hours,” Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Monday afternoon during a news conference in Castellón, on Spain’s eastern coast, where a new fire raged and forced thousands of new evacuations.

“This is a wake-up call,” one Madrileño told Jason. Another said that even before the fires, weeks of record-breaking heat had exhausted her. “It just keeps spreading,” she said, looking at a sunset ruined by smoke. “Just don’t let it reach here.”

‘Be prepared’

The fires scare people in Bordeaux as well, particularly in the region’s storied vineyards, home to world-famous appellations like Lafite Rothschild, Pomerol and St.-Émilion. Mark Landler, our Paris bureau chief, visited one of them this week, a chateau built around a castle that dates to 1365.

“For the wine industry, it’s one thing on top of the other,” a director at the chateau told him. There’s been drought, heat waves, weak sales because drinking habits are changing, and President Trump’s tariffs on French wine. “It doesn’t make our lives very easy,” he continued. “In the face of that risk, we need to be prepared.”

And so, Mark reports, the chateau is readying itself for the once inconceivable possibility that fire could reach its grounds and buildings, with plans to evacuate the chickens, goats, horses and llamas that live there.

LINDSEY GRAHAM’S FUNERAL

World leaders and U.S. politicians gathered at the Washington National Cathedral to honor Lindsey Graham, the longtime South Carolina senator who died this month at 71.

Peter Baker, The Times’s chief White House correspondent, reported from the service yesterday. He writes of Graham:

He simply did not fit the cookie-cutter Washington mold. He had little time for staid, heavily edited speeches and all the time in the world for freewheeling Sunday talk shows. He liked to riff. He liked to tease. He liked to surprise and provoke. He could be funny and angry, charming and exasperating, sometimes all at once.

President Trump eulogized Graham as “one of the great figures in Senate history.” Graham, he said, was “truly hawkish: He never saw a war that he didn’t like.”

Some of the foreign dignitaries whose wars Graham championed were in attendance, including Benjamin Netanyahu and Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump met separately with both leaders, but he kept the meetings and their details private.

Today, a procession and public funeral will be held in South Carolina, followed by a private burial.

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— That is how many Italian honeybees live, and work, in hives on the roof of The Times’s headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. Check ’em out.

SPORTS

FIFA: Soccer’s governing body announced plans to sell a stake in a new company that will run its premier events. A member of Trump’s extended family is expected to be involved through the lead investment firm.

Women’s soccer: In Malawi’s first-ever Women’s Africa Cup of Nations game, the team stunned Nigeria, the 10-time reigning champion.

RECIPE OF THE DAY

Here’s the plan. Make chłodnik litewski, this Polish chilled-beet-and-potato soup of extreme excellence, and get it into the fridge to cure so that its flavors marry and its color deepens. You’ll eat it tomorrow for dinner. While the beets are roasting and you’re cooking the potatoes, order a pizza. That’s dinner tonight.

Eight seasons after its debut on Showtime, Lena Waithe’s crime-and-trauma series “The Chi,” the longest-running Black drama on cable television, wrapped up last week. Waithe sat down with The Times’s Salamishah Tillet to talk about the show’s evolution, the pressures she faced and what she was trying to achieve.

“There was this desire to compare it to ‘The Wire,’” Waithe said. “There’s no greater compliment, but I’m not that interested in the system. I’m more interested in the people that have to deal with the system and what kind of impact it has on their lives.”

Read the conversation.

More on culture

Marlon James’s “The Disappearers,” a novel about a hate crime in 1980s Jamaica, was nominated yesterday for the Booker Prize, alongside a dozen other books, including Douglas Stuart’s “John of John” and “The Things We Never Say” by Elizabeth Strout. Here are all the nominees.
Emily Wilson, whose translation of Homer’s “Odyssey” was a touchstone for Christopher Nolan as he adapted the story for the screen, absolutely roasted the movie in The London Review of Books. “I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script,” she writes. Whatever you think of the film, it’s fun to read.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS

Take the stairs — and follow eight other tips experts say will increase your longevity.

Stop exchanging your grill’s empty propane tank for a “full” one. Have it refilled instead. You’ll get more fuel for less money. (There is no link. This is my learned experience.)

Replace your dishwasher detergent with one of the ones Wirecutter recommends. I’m sure you like yours. But it’s doubtful you’ve done as those scullions have, and tested over 30 different varieties.

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