A marine heat wave in the Mediterranean Sea is combining with a powerful heat dome to cause Europe to swelter under a brutal early summer heat wave.

It’s a pattern that’s popping up frequently as the planet warms: The influence of Mediterranean marine heat waves has been more pronounced in recent summers, with the ocean heat playing a role in spiking temperatures on land, contributing to deadly floods and stoking devastating fires.

Water temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea are up to 9 degrees above average for this time of year amid a significant marine heat wave. The most intense warming is present in the western Mediterranean, including just south of France.

This is helping to cause high humidity to surge north and to keep temperatures elevated at night across the heat wave-affected regions.

The heat wave, which also involves hot air flowing north from Africa, is also reinforcing the marine heat wave in a feedback cycle.

Temperatures have broken records in Spain and Portugal as swaths of Europe brace for more records to fall through Wednesday as the heat wave intensifies.

The town of El Granado in Spain saw temperatures spike to 46 degrees Celsius (114.8 Fahrenheit) on Sunday, a new national record for June, according to Spain’s national meteorological service AEMET. Last month was Spain’s hottest June in recorded history, as temperatures “pulverized records,” Aemet said Tuesday.

In Portugal, a provisional temperature of 46.6 degrees Celsius (115.9 Fahrenheit) was recorded in the city of Mora, about 80 miles east of Lisbon, according to the country’s weather service IPMA, which would be a new national record for June.

Scorching heat is sweeping almost the entirety of France. Multiple towns and cities endured temperatures above 100 degrees on Monday, according to provisional recordings from Météo France.

A red heat wave warning, the highest designation, is in place for 16 French départements Tuesday, including Île-de-France, where Paris is located. The Eiffel Tower summit is closed to tourists Tuesday and Wednesday due to the heat.

The United Kingdom is also baking, currently enduring its second heat wave of the summer. Temperatures pushed above 90 degrees on Monday, making for very uncomfortable conditions in a country where fewer than 5% of homes have air conditioning.

“The current June-July heatwave is exposing millions of Europeans to high heat stress,” Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting, said in a statement.

“The temperatures observed recently are more typical of the months of July and August and tend to only happen a few times each summer.”

Wildfires are sweeping several countries as the temperatures spike. Fires broke out Sunday in Aude, in the southwest of the country, burning nearly 400 acres. In Turkey, 50,000 people have been evacuated as firefighters tackle fierce blazes mostly in the western Izmir and Manisa provinces.

Temperature records are also poised to fall Tuesday and Wednesday in Germany as the heat dome expands east, and before a series of relief-providing cold fronts begin to swing into northwestern Europe from the west.

Human-caused climate change is causing heat waves to be more frequent, intense and long-lasting. Europe is the fastest-warming continent, and is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world. Climate change is also leading to more frequent and intense marine heat waves.

CNN
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President Donald Trump’s tariffs are designed to boost US manufacturing, restore the balance of trade and fill America’s coffers with tax dollars. The White House’s record on those three goals has been a decidedly mixed bag.

But Trump has a fourth way that he likes to use tariffs. Trump has repeatedly threatened tariffs as a kind of anvil dangling over the heads of countries, companies or industries.

The subjects of Trump’s tariff threats have, at times, immediately come to the negotiating table. Sometimes, threats just work.

The most recent example was over the weekend, when Canada backed off its digital services tax that was set to go into effect Monday. Trump had railed against the tax on online companies, including US corporations that do business in Canada. On Friday, he threatened to end trade talks with America’s northern neighbor. Trump also said he would set a new tariff for Canada by the end of this week.

On Sunday, Canada backed down, saying it would drop the tax to help bring the countries back to the table.

“To support those negotiations, the Minister of Finance and National Revenue, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, announced today that Canada would rescind the Digital Services Tax (DST) in anticipation of a mutually beneficial comprehensive trade arrangement with the United States,” the Canadian government said in a statement.

On Monday, United States and Canada restarted trade discussions.

“It’s part of a bigger negotiation,” said Prime Minister Mark Carney in a press conference Monday. “It’s something that we expected, in the broader sense, that would be part of a final deal. We’re making progress toward a final deal.”

Trump’s first tariff action of his second term came against Colombia after President Gustavo Petro in late January blocked US military flights carrying undocumented migrants from landing as part of Trump’s mass deportation effort.

In turn, Trump threatened 25% tariffs on Colombian exports that would grow to 50% if the country didn’t accept deportees from the United States.

Colombia quickly walked back its refusal and reached an agreement to accept deported migrants.

“You can’t go out there and publicly defy us in that way,” a Trump administration official told CNN in January. “We’re going to make sure the world knows they can’t get away with being nonserious and deceptive.”

Trump ultimately dropped the tariff threat.

Citing a lack of progress in trade negotiations, Trump in late May said he was calling off talks with the European Union and would instead just impose a 50% tariff on all goods from there.

“Our discussions with them are going nowhere!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on May 23. Later that day in the Oval Office, Trump said he was no longer looking for a deal with the EU.

But three days later, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spoke with Trump and said the EU would fast-track a deal with the United States. Trump then delayed the 50% tariff deadline until July 9.

Although a deal hasn’t yet come through, Trump’s threat got Europe to get serious, in the White House’s view, on trade, when it had been slow-walking negotiations, trying to get a consensus from its dozens of members.

The Trump administration attributes a large number of corporate investments in the United State to its tariffs and tariff threats, although it’s often hard to draw a clear line from Trump’s trade policy to a particular company announcing it will build an American factory. Those decisions often take years of planning and are costly processes.

For example, shortly after Trump doubled down on steel and aluminum tariffs and included finished products like dishwashers and washing machines in the 50% tariff, GE Appliances said it would move production from China to Kentucky. The company said it had planned the move before Trump announced the derivative product tariffs – but Trump’s trade war accelerated its plans.

In some other cases, Trump’s threats have largely gone nowhere.

Furious with Apple CEO Tim Cook for announcing the company would export iPhones to the United States from India – rather than building an iPhone factory in the United States – Trump announced a 25% tariff on all Apple products imported to the United States. He threatened the same against Samsung.

But Trump never followed through with his threat, and Apple and Samsung haven’t budged on their insistence that complex smartphone manufacturing just isn’t practical or possible in the United States. Skilled manufacturing labor for that kind of complex work isn’t readily available in the United States – and those who do have those capabilities charge much more to work here than their peers charge in other countries. Complying with Trump’s demands could add thousands of dollars to the cost of a single smartphone – more than Trump’s threatened tariff.

Trump similarly threatened Hollywood in May with a 100% tariff on movies made outside the United States. That left many media executives scratching their heads, trying to figure out what the threat entailed – a threat that ultimately never materialized. The administration later acknowledged Trump’s statement about the tariff was merely a proposal, and it was eager to hear from the industry about how to bring lost production back to Hollywood.

Nevertheless, Trump’s threats against the movie industry raised awareness about the bipartisan issue, and California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom subsequently posted support for a partnership with the Trump administration to incentivize movie and television makers to film in the state again.

Trump’s threats don’t always work, and sometimes his tariffs have kicked off a trade war, raising prices in a tit-for-tat tariff escalation. But a handful of times, including this weekend, his tariff threats have gotten America’s trading partners to agree to major concessions.

CNN’s Luciana Lopez and Michael Rios contributed to this report.

Paris
CNN
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This summer in Paris, a sunset cigarette under the Eiffel Tower could come with an unexpected price tag.

Starting July 1, France has banned smoking in all outdoor areas frequented by children — including parks, beaches, public gardens, bus stops, school entrances, and sports venues. The sweeping measure is part of President Emmanuel Macron’s pledge to create “the first tobacco-free generation” by 2032.

Lighting up in these zones could cost smokers more than a dirty look from a passerby. Those who break the rules — including unsuspecting tourists — face a fine of 90 euros if they pay within 15 days, going up to 135 euros (around $150) after that.

“France is positioning itself as one of Europe’s most proactive countries in terms of tobacco control,” Raquel Venâncio, senior policy officer at Smoke Free Partnership, a coalition of European tobacco control advocacy groups, told CNN.

While countries like Spain and Italy have introduced restrictions on smoking in certain areas at local or regional levels, France stands out as the only European country to enforce a nationwide ban against beach smoking.

But not all citizens support the new measure.

“The more time goes by, the more the government wants to take away our basic freedoms,” Elise Levaux, a 25-year-old student in Paris, told CNN. “If you’re being respectful — not throwing away cigarette butts in a park or beach, not disturbing others — I don’t see the problem. Why should smoking suddenly be treated like a crime?”

The restrictions are undoubtedly a major shift in a country long synonymous with cigarette culture. From Brigitte Bardot to Charles de Gaulle, French icons were rarely seen without a Gauloises — the archetypal French brand — in hand. “France’s intellectual circles and cinematic culture have normalized cigarettes for generations,” Venâncio observed. “For decades, there was no political will to ban smoking.”

But the national relationship with tobacco is changing.

Smoking in France is at its lowest level since the 1990s, the National Committee against Tobacco (CNCT) reports. Today, around a third of adults in France smoke, with 23% of the adult population saying they smoke daily, according to a 2024 report from the French national public health agency. Tobacco use is declining among young people, with only 16% of 17-year-olds reporting they smoke daily in 2022, the most recent data available — down from 25% six years prior.

Still, France remains one of Europe’s most tobacco-dependent countries, fueled in part by what officials have called an “explosion” in cigarette smuggling, largely from Bulgaria, Turkey, and Algeria. In 2024 alone, France consumed an estimated 18.7 billion illicit cigarettes, according to a KPMG study carried out for tobacco giant Philip Morris — accounting for a staggering 38% of tobacco use and making it the largest illicit tobacco market in Europe.

Most regular smokers begin in their teenage years, with nearly 90% of them picking up the habit before turning 18, according to the Ministry of Health.

“I’ve been smoking since I was 14,” said Jane, 25, who declined to give her last name. “Most of my friends started just as young. Fine or no fine, we’re going to continue smoking. It’s part of the French identity — we fight for what we want. We’re not robots.”

In a statement shared with CNN, Minister of Health Catherine Vautrin said that “protecting youth and denormalizing smoking” is an “absolute priority” for the government. “At 17, you should be building your future, not your addiction,” she said. “Where there are children, tobacco must disappear.”

Unlike Belgium and the United Kingdom, which recently prohibited the sale of disposable vapes, France’s new rules do not ban e-cigarettes — at least for now. The new regulations do, however, include a reduction in authorized nicotine levels in vaping products, as well as strict limits on flavors like cotton candy, which critics say are designed to appeal to young people.

“These products serve as gateways to addiction and will be regulated, starting in 2026,” Vautrin said.

Tobacco use remains the leading preventable health risk in the European Union, causing nearly 700,000 premature deaths each year, according to EU figures. In France alone, it accounts for 75,000 deaths each year — equivalent to 200 deaths per day, according to the country’s health ministry.

Beyond the direct toll on smokers and those around them, tobacco products also pose an environmental hazard. An estimated 20,000 to 25,000 tons of cigarette butts are discarded across France each year, according to the Ministry of Health.

France banned the sale of cigarettes to minors under 18 in 2009. But enforcement has been lax: a study by the National Committee against Tobacco (CNCT) found that nearly two-thirds of tobacco shops continue to sell cigarettes to underage customers. And while minors are prohibited from buying tobacco, no law prevents them from smoking — a legal loophole that the government has promised to address in future legislation.

In contrast to Sweden — the only European country to have fully banned smoking on restaurant and bar terraces — France continues to permit smoking in these spaces. Even the UK, which has some of Europe’s strictest anti-smoking policies, allows smoking in pub gardens.

“We’ve been trying to push for a ban on terrace smoking for almost a decade, but it’s very challenging,” Amélie Eschenbrenner, spokeswoman for the French National Committee for Tobacco Control (CNCT), told CNN. “Having a cigarette with a glass of wine — it’s an integral part of French culture.”

But tradition isn’t the only barrier. According to Eschenbrenner, the main obstacle to banning terrace smoking is lobbying by the tobacco industry.

France has almost 23,000 licensed tabacs — tobacco shops that occupy the corners of many urban streets. A CNCT study found that tobacconists enjoy a level of popular support comparable to that of public health agencies. “They use their popularity to sway decision-makers, especially parliamentarians,” Eschenbrenner explained. “That’s why enforcing a widespread ban is so difficult.”

CNN approached a dozen tobacconists in Paris seeking their view on the new law, but none wanted to speak.

Still, change may be on the horizon. “In 2007, when France enforced a ban on smoking inside restaurants, bars and nightclubs, there was a lot of push-back,” Eschenbrenner recalled. “But over time, people got used to it and accepted it. The same is likely to happen with these new regulations — and, hopefully, with a future ban on terrace smoking.”

As part of its strategy to reduce cancer rates, the European Commission aims to reduce tobacco use to less than 5% of the EU population by 2040. In the same vein, France’s government has indicated that the latest restrictions may be the first step in a wider crackdown on tobacco.

“Tobacco is poison,” said Vautrin. “It kills, it costs, it pollutes. I refuse to give up the fight. Every day without tobacco is a life gained. Our goal is clear: a tobacco-free generation — and we have the means to achieve it.”