France and Spain race to control wildfires a Bordeaux suburbs evacuated – live

France is racing to beat back major wildfires in the Gironde region, and The Guardian reports the prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has asked the armed forces to bring forward the deployment of an Airbus A400M military transport plane to help fight the flames — moving up a timeline that had not originally been expected until the end of the month, owing to the technical preparation involved. The fires follow three successive heatwaves in as many months, and the strain is showing in the country's rivers too. The Loire, France's longest, has fallen to a historic low, its flow reduced to a trickle between sandbanks near Orléans. Two weeks ago, the national low water observatory reported that sixteen percent of French rivers had dried up, with little rain since.

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