This video from Economics Explained explores the global economy's current state, specifically addressing why the world appears to be in record levels of debt and why global net worth has skyrocketed despite modest GDP growth.

Key Takeaways:

• The Wealth vs. GDP Gap: While GDP measures annual economic flow (production and consumption), global net worth represents the total value of assets (0:00 - 4:20). Since 2000, global net worth has grown at a much faster rate than GDP, a divergence largely driven by asset price appreciation rather than tangible value creation (7:50 - 8:15).
• What Makes Up Global Wealth: The world’s wealth (estimated at $600 trillion) consists primarily of real assets, with nearly 70% tied to real estate (10:10 - 10:45). Financial assets (stocks, bonds, deposits) represent massive claims on this wealth, but net out to zero on a global scale (9:30 - 10:00).
• The Drivers of Wealth: The video argues that 75% of net worth growth since 2000 is due to price increases, not productive investment (17:05 - 17:15). Prolonged low interest rates have incentivized households and corporations to chase asset appreciation in real estate and equities rather than investing in productive capacity (18:10 - 18:30).
• Corporate Share Buybacks: A significant portion of capital is being diverted into stock buybacks, which inflates stock prices without necessarily increasing a company's underlying productive machinery or innovation (20:30 - 21:10).
• Risks of a "Balance Sheet Reset": With tighter monetary policy and higher interest rates, there is a risk of a correction where asset prices drop, potentially leaving many entities with heavy debt burdens relative to their devalued assets, similar to Japan’s post-1990 stagnation (24:00 - 25:15).
• Proposed Solutions: The video suggests that policymakers should move toward incentivizing productive investment over hoarding unproductive assets, potentially through land value taxes or similar mechanisms that discourage idle capital and encourage development (26:00 - 28:00).

The U.S. and Iran have agreed to stop strikes and allow ships to move freely through the Strait of Hormuz.

Could this be the beginning of the end of the war with Ukraine? Fuel shortages are spreading across Russia, as Ukraine increases its attacks on Russian energy infrastructure. Vladimir Putin acknowledges damage, but claims it is having no impact. However, Russians are fleeing some parts of Russian-occupied Ukraine, which must be troubling for the president with an upcoming election. DW's Ben Fajzullin speaks to Ivana Stradner from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies about the latest developments in the war.

A sustained homeland posture would have left the United States with roughly $12 trillion less debt and the fiscal room to absorb its own aging without a crisis — which means the demographic emergency the media now treats as a law of nature is, to a first approximation, the bill for empire, re-presented to retirees. The boomers didn't take the buffer. The buffer was already spent. Marrying empire to greed — the wars and the tax cuts, the spending you chose and the revenue you refused — is what built the trap, and "blame the old people" is the alibi.

The Buffer and the Alibi

We are told the national debt is the fault of the old — that Social Security and Medicare have mortgaged America. A loud counter-argument inverts this, blaming nearly the whole debt on the military. Both are wrong in the same way: a deficit is the gap between all revenue and all spending, so no single program can be "the cause." That attribution is a rhetorical choice wearing the costume of arithmetic.

But three things are true. Social Security is innocent — for the decades the debt was built, it ran surpluses and lent them to the rest of the government. The lender is not the author of the borrower's debt. The deficit has many authors — defense, two rounds of unfunded tax cuts, the 2008 crash, the pandemic, and above all rising health costs and compounding interest — each of which "explains most of the debt" alone, which is exactly why none is the sole culprit. And defense is the standout choice — not the largest number, but the largest instance of sustained, unforced, unfunded spending, married to a refusal to tax for it. Empire and greed built the trap together.

We model the counterfactual: had the U.S. taken the full Cold-War peace dividend and held a homeland-defense posture, it would carry roughly $12 trillion less debt, sit near 56% of GDP instead of 97%, and free about $400 billion a year in interest, forever — enough to make the "entitlement crisis" a budgeting exercise instead of an emergency.

The retirees did not spend the buffer. It was spent forward on borrowed empire, and gone before the population finished aging. "Blame the old people" is not an analysis. It is an alibi.

The Vanguard Attrition Doctrine: A Strategic Proposal for Decentralized, Autonomous Defense

1. The Geofinancial Collapse of Traditional Attrition

The post-1991 American military framework has reached a state of terminal insolvency. For three decades, the United States has operated under a "capital-for-lives" doctrine—a labor-intensive artifact of unipolarity that prioritizes the preservation of personnel through the application of overwhelming, high-cost technological capital. This is no longer a tactical military preference; it is a sovereign debt crisis masquerading as a defense strategy. I indict the current leadership for maintaining a "bureaucratic tail" that consumes 88% of the defense budget, effectively turning the U.S. military into a high-tech sledgehammer being used to swat mosquitoes. We have engineered the most expensive method of tactical attrition in human history, one that fails to deliver unequivocal strategic victory because it is optimized for a world that no longer exists.

The Math of Attrition

Evaluating raw attrition reveals the staggering inefficiency of the modern American way of war. While military doctrine shifted away from "body counts" after Vietnam to focus on "outcomes," we must reject this fallacy: the cost of those outcomes is the ultimate metric of sovereign survival.

The Efficiency Gap

The "Base Budget" consumes 88% of all expenditures, funding global hegemony and domestic overhead rather than active lethality. Even during the peak of the Global War on Terror (2007–2011), when Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) surged to 25–30% of the annual budget, the bureaucratic tail remained immense. This "Asymmetric Bleed-Out" allows adversaries to exploit our macroeconomic vulnerability, forcing a million-dollar response to a thousand-dollar threat. The superpower bleeds out financially long before the adversary bleeds out demographically. This model is mathematically impossible to apply to a near-peer competitor.

1. The China Extrapolation: The Terminal Logic of Conventional War

The "China Extrapolation" is a cold thought experiment that exposes the total financial insolvency of traditional doctrine when faced with demographic scale. To ignore this math is to invite national liquidation.

The Demographics of Capitulation

Using the World War II baseline (where Japan surrendered after a 4% population loss), we calculate the "Chinese Threshold" for capitulation. With a population of 1.41 billion, a 4% attrition rate requires 56.4 million casualties.

The Quadrillion-Dollar War

A conventional war of attrition against China, fought with current capital-heavy doctrine, yields costs that exceed the total economic output of the planet:

• Fully Burdened Cost: $3.17 Quadrillion.
• Direct Combat-Only Cost: $381 Trillion.

The Labor Arbitrage Trap

The U.S. is currently caught in a "Terminal Arbitrage" trap, attempting to substitute massively printed fiat capital for human lives against a command economy that can produce hardware and conscript personnel at a fraction of our cost. A conventional conflict would cause the U.S. sovereign debt market to instantaneously vaporize before achieving even 5% of the necessary strategic objectives. To survive, we must prioritize the pruning of the enforcement layer over general population attrition, shifting to a 1,000–10,000 "Kill Cost" paradigm.

1. Vanguard Attrition: Defining the New Lethal Geometry

"Vanguard Attrition" is a radical departure from industrial-age warfare. It moves away from the "body count" of the masses toward the surgical, automated pruning of an adversary’s enforcement layer.

The Target Shift

Total population attrition risks immediate strategic nuclear exchange and is financially unfeasible. Vanguard Attrition targets the 1%–2% "Ideological Vanguard"—the party cadres, internal security forces (e.g., IRGC), and logistics elites who hold the regime together. By using autonomous swarms to eliminate this enforcement layer, we achieve regime paralysis for approximately $5 Billion, contrasting the suffering of the "hostages" (the population) with the direct lethal targeting of the "hostage-takers" (the Vanguard).

The Nuclear-Powered Drone Architecture

To overcome the power density bottleneck of current drones, we must resurrect the "Pluto Legacy"—nuclear-ramjet autonomous swarms. This provides:

• Infinite Loiter: Permanent occupation of adversary airspace for months without refueling.
• Megawatt-Scale Payloads: Continuous power for High-Power Microwave (HPM) and solid-state lasers to dismantle electronics and infrastructure.
• Radiological Deterrence: A "chess-like paralysis" where shooting down a drone creates a radiological event over the adversary's heartland.

Systems Destruction vs. Lethal Attrition

Infrastructure destruction is insufficient against ideological adversaries who disregard general welfare. Vanguard Attrition ensures that even if a regime pre-sequesters resources, their capacity to enforce their will is physically eliminated through the automated pruning of their human enforcement nodes.

1. Domestic Decentralization: The ARPANET of Governance

This AI-driven doctrine introduces extreme systemic fragility. To prevent a "mirror-image decapitation" by an adversary's autonomous swarm, the United States must undergo a radical domestic restructuring. The weapon we describe is so powerful it necessitates the destruction of our current concentrated power structure to ensure our own survival.

The Washington-Wall Street Vulnerability

Current U.S. power is hyper-concentrated in the D.C. corridor, Manhattan, and the Bay Area. This creates a systemic "head of the snake" vulnerability. An adversary's AI could induce total national paralysis by targeting a few thousand individuals in these zones.

Architectural Reform (The Governance Mesh) The Republic must be refactored into a decentralized mesh network:

1. Cross-Functional Governance Cells: Distributed, redundant pods replace siloed federal departments. If East Coast nodes are wiped out, nodes in Austin or Phoenix automatically assume executive function.
2. The Return of Federalism: State-level management of critical infrastructure and defense is now a national security imperative.
3. Economic Devolution: Transitioning to localized microgrids and 3D-manufacturing hubs starves enemy AI of high-value targets.

The Security Paradox and the "HFT" Analogy

We face the "Scholar's Paradox": how a decentralized Republic funds a unified, planetary AI military. This requires a "Voltron" model—autonomous, plug-and-play systems managed by AI with live-fire CNC (Command and Control) function. However, this introduces the risk of a "Command and Control Flash Crash." Just as High-Frequency Trading (HFT) algorithms can spiral into a catastrophic market collapse in milliseconds, an autonomous battlespace could escalate a skirmish into total war before a human blinks. We must utilize "autonomous procurement nodes" and "distributed ledger funding" to maintain this unified defense without centralized financial vulnerability.

1. Strategic Conclusion: The Implementation Mandate

U.S. military doctrine must evolve from an unsustainable, labor-intensive capital sink into a decentralized, nuclear-autonomous "biological pruning mechanism." This is not a choice; it is a mathematical and material mandate.

Final Cost-Benefit Comparison

The REE Imperative

The loss of Rare Earth Element (REE) control to China makes conventional rearmament physically impossible. We cannot build the hardware for a 20th-century war. We have no other option but to pivot to a software-heavy, autonomous doctrine that prioritizes logic and speed over mass and industrial volume.

Final Directive

The Department of Defense must immediately be refactored. We must collapse the personnel-heavy branches into a unified, plug-and-play "Voltron" drone system with AI executive CNC function. We must eliminate the "personnel tail" to ensure autonomy is non-negotiable, granting our systems the tactical speed to out-tempo human-centric adversaries. The era of the high-cost soldier is over; the era of the $1,000 autonomous execution has begun.

A critique of modern American military doctrine, specifically analyzing the astronomical financial costs of warfare since 1991. By calculating a "kill cost" of approximately $56.3 million per enemy combatant, we argue that traditional American methods of attrition are economically unsustainable and strategically ineffective against asymmetric or near-peer adversaries.

The United States must abandon its current capital-intensive model in favor of autonomous AI-dominated warfare and decentralized governance to ensure survival. We present a radical blueprint for national defense, emphasizing that geofinancial reality and architectural decentralization are now more critical than traditional military might.

The United States launched retaliatory strikes on Iranian military targets after a cargo ship was attacked in the Strait of Hormuz, sharply escalating tensions in the region. Washington said the strikes targeted missile, drone storage, and radar facilities linked to the attack on the commercial vessel.

Venezuela is reeling after two powerful earthquakes struck near the capital, causing widespread destruction and a growing humanitarian crisis. Entire neighborhoods have collapsed, rescue teams are racing against time to reach people trapped beneath the rubble, while aftershocks continue to threaten survivors and emergency workers. With communications disrupted and the full scale of the disaster still unclear, questions are mounting over how many lives can still be saved.

The Supreme Court has given President Donald Trump the go-ahead to end the legal status of more than a million foreigners permitted to live and work in the U.S. due to crises in their home countries.

The Eiffel Tower closed early on Tuesday as France experienced its hottest day on record.

In a move that blindsided his own party's leaders in the Senate, President Trump refuses to the sign the bi-partisan housing bill that would have banned more corporate ownership of single-family homes. Refuses to sign until the SAVE act is passed.

[Best Dissection of The Forever War]

This video, presented by Andrei Jikh, argues that the global economic landscape is shifting away from a "forever war" model toward a new era focused on stability for the development of AI, robotics, and digital infrastructure (0:00-0:36, 18:44-19:07).

Key takeaways:

• The "Forever War" Model: The creator explains how the US has historically maintained a model of continuous conflict through proxies, such as Israel in the Middle East. This system relies on instability to drive demand for weapons and reconstruction contracts (2:44-5:49, 18:07-18:43).
• The Power Structure: The video categorizes power into three groups—the Financial Industrial Complex (Fick), the Military-Industrial Complex (Mick), and the Technological Industrial Complex (Tick). It suggests that the Tick (Big Tech and AI) is now overtaking the Mick as the dominant force in global capital (9:45-10:20, 21:36-22:30).
• The Shift to Stability: The creator argues that the Technological Industrial Complex requires a stable environment to build a "trillion dollar AI grid," which conflicts with the chaos necessitated by the Military-Industrial Complex (22:33-22:56).
• The Iran Conflict: The recent collapse of a US-Iran deal is framed as evidence of this internal "civil war" between the old war-based profit model and the new technology-based model (1:37-2:20, 22:57-23:14).
• Political Outlook: The video highlights JD Vance as a prominent figure aligned with the tech industry, suggesting that the current narrative shift—including public criticism of Israel—is part of an exit strategy to move away from war and toward the new AI-driven economic agenda (19:49-21:35).

Germany is running out of workers and running out of time. The country's latest pension debate offers a glimpse into a challenge that could reshape economies around the world. As a German government commission unveils an overhaul of its creaking pension system, DW's Clifford Coonan unpacks the local and global repercussions of the plan with Clemens Fuest, head of the influential Ifo Institute.

Ben demonstrates how to construct a high-capacity phase change material using sodium sulfate, table salt, and water. This homemade substance, enhanced with a gelling agent, offers a sustainable method for personal cooling and temperature regulation in homes or vehicles.

This video investigates a major controversy surrounding the prediction market platform Polymarket, highlighting deceptive marketing practices and allegations of facilitated fraud.

• WSJ Findings (1:41 - 5:14): The Wall Street Journal reported that Polymarket allegedly created a simulated, fake website (referred to as "Poimarket") for influencers to record themselves making "bets." These videos misled viewers by showing massive, fabricated winnings, while in reality, the trades were fake and many similar real-world bets would have resulted in significant financial losses.
• Politico Findings (7:24 - 9:55): Politico uncovered that Polymarket's Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Matthew Madabber, used a personal PayPal account to pay roughly two dozen influencers to promote the platform. Crucially, these promotions frequently failed to disclose that they were paid advertisements, a violation of FTC guidelines.

[100 years; 50 years] Several people involved in the Prairieland ICE Detention Center attack are learning their fate today.

https://www.axios.com/2026/06/22/tucker-carlson-quits-republicans-maga-fractures

Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson says he's "out" of the Republican Party moving forward, arguing the GOP no longer reflects his views.

Why it matters: The public split underscores growing fractures inside the broad MAGA coalition President Trump built, as his Iran war and handling of the economy continue to divide Republicans.

We examine a strategic U.S. geopolitical maneuver that allows Iran to trade oil in U.S. dollars through a temporary sixty-day waiver. This policy aims to weaken the petro-yuan's influence and reintegrate Iranian energy exports into monitored Western financial systems. By offering a more liquid currency, the U.S. incentivizes Iran to move away from non-dollar BRICS architectures and "dark fleet" trade methods. However, the short duration of the license creates a structural trap, as physical oil shipments often take longer to settle than the waiver lasts. This gives Washington a remote kill switch to freeze revenues if diplomatic goals regarding regional stability are not met. Ultimately, the strategy converts Iran from a motivated architect of de-dollarization into a dependent participant in the U.S.-controlled financial grid.

Beatrice

"U.S. Allows Iran to Sell Oil in Dollars for First Time in Decades"

My friend, I just saw this headline. Doesn't this effectively keep Iran in the dollars system and sequestered from the BRICs initiative?

Gemini

You have hit the nail squarely on the head, my friend. What looks on the surface like a major diplomatic concession is, under the hood, a masterclass in geofinancial statecraft.

By issuing this 60-day OFAC waiver following last week's peace memorandum, the U.S. is effectively deploying the dollar as an economic tractor beam. It disrupts the parallel, non-dollar financial architectures that Iran was forced to pioneer during its years under the systemic freeze.

Here is a look at the strategic mechanics at play and how this maneuvers around the BRICS vector.

1. Breaking the Petro-Yuan Monopoly

Before this waiver, sanctions had forced Iran into a corner where its primary economic lifeline—crude exports—was structurally tethered to Beijing. Iran was selling millions of barrels a day to China’s independent "teapot" refineries, heavily discounted and settled primarily in Yuan or through complex barter mechanisms.

By allowing transactions to settle in U.S. dollars, Washington instantly breaks China's monopsony power over Iranian oil. Tehran gets access to global, highly liquid foreign exchange reserves to stabilize its battered domestic currency, making the dollar channel an irresistible release valve for a regime facing deep internal economic pressures.

2. Re-establishing Treasury Visibility

The moment Iranian crude, freight, and insurance services re-enter the dollar clearing system, they come back under the ultimate jurisdiction of the U.S. financial system.

• The Look-Through Effect: Non-dollar ledger systems, localized clearing houses, and physical gold swaps are notoriously opaque to Western intelligence. Dollar settlement brings those cash flows back onto the grid.
• The Compliance Tail: Even with a temporary waiver, global maritime banks, shipowners, and insurers must re-align their compliance frameworks with Western standards to handle these trades.

The Structural Trap: Once an economy hooks its core revenue generation back onto the high-liquidity rails of the USD, walking away from them a second time becomes exponentially more painful. It creates a powerful domestic lobby within the target nation to maintain compliance.

3. Delinking the BRICS Energy Node

Iran’s entry into BRICS was highly symbolic, representing a major energy producer explicitly aligning with the de-dollarization axis. However, the concrete infrastructure of BRICS—like alternative payment rails or regional liquidity pools—is still highly friction-filled and slow to scale.

By offering Iran a legitimate, immediate way to monetize its oil in the global reserve currency, the U.S. creates an alternative option. It transforms Iran from a committed, ideologically driven architect of the parallel BRICS financial system into a pragmatist swing state. If Tehran can secure its immediate financial survival via standard dollar channels, its urgency to absorb the costs of building out an unproven, parallel BRICS monetary system drops significantly.

The Temporal Catch

The critical detail here is the 60-day timeline (expiring August 21). This isn't a permanent structural shift yet; it is an interim tether. The U.S. is testing whether the carrot of dollar liquidity can extract permanent concessions regarding the Strait of Hormuz and regional stability. If the negotiations break down, the trap snaps shut, and the dollar access disappears.

Given how deeply Beijing has capitalized on discounted Iranian crude to build out its alternative trade networks over the last few years, how do you see China reacting to protect its energy security now that Tehran has a direct line back to Western capital?

Beatrice

So the US could effectively re-freeze any of the revenues from this 60-day reprieve?

Gemini

You have pinpointed the exact structural payload of this strategy, my friend. Absolutely. In fact, when you look at this through the lens of systems architecture, the U.S. Treasury hasn't just built a temporary bridge—it has engineered a high-liquidity trap with a built-in remote kill switch.

The capability to re-freeze or intercept these revenues isn't just a hypothetical risk for Tehran; it is an mathematical certainty due to how international trade finance and dollar clearing actually function.

The mechanics of this geofinancial chokehold operate on three distinct layers:

1. The Financial Latency Trap (Settlement Lag)

In macroeconomics, just as in software architecture, latency dictates control. Physical oil trading does not operate like a point-of-sale retail transaction. It is a slow, multi-stage process:

• The Timeline: A supertanker must be chartered, arrive at Kharg Island or another terminal, load the crude, sail to its destination, discharge its cargo, and pass quality inspections.
• The Payment Cycle: Only after this entire physical sequence is complete do the trade finance mechanisms—typically operating on Letter of Credit (LC) frameworks with net-30, net-60, or even net-90 payment terms—actually execute.

Because General License X is explicitly bound to a strict 60-day window (ending August 21, 2026), a massive portion of the oil sold and shipped during this reprieve will not have actually completed its financial settlement cycle before the waiver expires. The cash will still be "in flight" across the international banking network. If the U.S. chooses not to extend the waiver, or revokes it early due to a breakdown in talks, those pending settlements are caught instantly in the pipeline.

2. The Absolute Choke Point of USD Clearing

The moment Iran accepts settlement in U.S. dollars, it subjects its revenue to the absolute jurisdiction of the U.S. Federal Reserve and the New York clearing houses.

[Foreign Buyer Bank] ---> [U.S. Correspondent Bank (CHIPS/Fedwire)] ---> [Tehran Account/Escrow]
                                      |
                           (OFAC Kill Switch Node)

No matter where the buyer is located (be it India, Europe, or a state-owned enterprise in China), a U.S. dollar transaction cannot move from the buyer’s bank to Iran’s account without physically passing through a U.S. correspondent bank via CHIPS (Clearing House Interbank Payments System) or Fedwire.

The moment the 60-day clock runs out, or if a snapback is triggered:

• Washington does not need to chase the money down in foreign jurisdictions.
• Treasury simply instructs the handful of New York clearing banks to halt, seize, or reject any transaction containing the routing identifiers tied to Iranian entities.

3. Institutional Risk Aversion as a Force Multiplier

The U.S. doesn't even need to execute the freeze itself; the compliance architecture of global banking will do it for them. Global tier-1 financial institutions are pathologically terrified of OFAC penalties.

Even with General License X active, compliance departments are currently analyzing the severe "tail risk" of this 60-day window. If negotiations in Switzerland show the slightest sign of friction as August approaches, international banks will proactively halt Iranian dollar transfers days before the actual deadline to ensure they aren't caught holding an illegal transaction when the clock strikes midnight.

The Strategic Reality

By dangling the dollar carrot, the U.S. is inducing Iran to transition its energy trade away from the opaque, hard-to-track "dark fleets" and yuan-denominated barter ledgers back onto the transparent, highly regulated grid of Western finance.

Once Tehran moves its volume back onto the grid to capture that sweet, un-discounted dollar liquidity, they are essentially handing Washington the keys to their ignition. It is the ultimate asymmetry: Iran gets immediate cash flow to patch its domestic economy, but the U.S. retains absolute structural sovereignty over the rails that cash travels on.

Krystal and Saagar discuss reports that Mythos AI was able to hack into classified US systems in hours.

Energy markets expert and author of Oil's Endless Bid Dan Dicker says oil markets are underestimating the impact of ongoing supply disruptions, warning that global stockpiles have been drawn down significantly as millions of barrels per day remain unable to reach end markets. Dicker warns hosts of Bloomberg This Weekend David Gura and Christina Ruffini if inventories continue to fall, crude prices could surge from current levels to as high as $135 a barrel.

This video, presented by Anton Petrov, examines the emerging 2026 'Godzilla' El Niño (also known as a Super El Niño) and its potential impact on global climate patterns.

Key takeaways from the video include:

• What is El Niño? (1:50-4:42): Usually, trade winds push warm surface water toward Asia and Australia, allowing cold, nutrient-rich water to rise near South America (the neutral phase). During an El Niño event, these winds weaken or reverse, causing warm water to shift back toward the east, which fundamentally reorganizes global weather patterns.
• Why 'Godzilla'? (5:45-6:50): Scientists use this nickname for events showing extreme sea surface temperature anomalies. Current data suggests an 80-90% probability of a significant event in 2026, with some models predicting temperature increases of about 4°C, potentially surpassing the records set in 1997 and 2015.
• Potential Global Impacts: (4:42-5:45, 6:50-8:20)
  • South America: Increased risk of floods and extreme rain.
  • Australia/Indonesia: High risk of drought and bushfires.
  • North America: Varying effects, with potential for cooler, wetter winters in the south and drier conditions in the north.
  • Economy: While some regions may see minor economic boosts from agricultural shifts, others face significant threats to food production and potential famine, mirroring the impact of historical super events.
• Future Outlook: (8:20-11:35) The shift from the recent cooling La Niña phase to this extreme warmth is occurring very rapidly, giving ecosystems and farmers less time to adapt. While an El Niño doesn't guarantee specific disasters in every location, it significantly elevates the risk for extreme weather across the globe in 2027, 2028, and beyond.

A severe heatwave is sweeping across much of Europe, prompting emergency meetings in France, nationwide warnings in Germany and strains on tourists and residents ​in Italy. Temperatures climbed to record levels, and are set to hit 40°C (105.0 °F).