INCENDIE DE FORÊT: As many as 300,000 people in France and Spain have been forced from their homes by raging wildfires. Successive heat waves have fed fires around the cities of Bordeaux, Valencia, and Madrid, causing the largest evacuations in Europe since World War II.

  Spanish authorities say two people were killed over the weekend.

  Temperatures in Bordeaux are expected to hit 99 tomorrow and 106 on Wednesday, aggravating the situation.

  A huge Bordeaux fire in the south-west of France is reported to have has created a “pyrocumulonimbus,”  a giant fire thunderstorm fueled by its own winds and lightning.

THE SHOOTING GALLERY: Three people were killed and four wounded, including a two-year-old boy, in a shooting yesterday at the Bite of Seattle food festival near the Space Needle.  

  Police arrested one man and are hunting for a second. Two guns were recovered. They say that the two had been shooting at each other.

THE WAR ROOM: Oil prices fell and stock futures rose this morning as the US paused attacks on Iran. The renewed fighting in recent weeks had caused gasoline prices in the US to rise about $4 a gallon.

  Unable to get Iran to surrender or come to the negotiating table, President Trump is now reported to be facing a risky shortage of weapons, particularly defensive missiles, in the Middle East. 

  Trump had previously blustered that he was prepared to carry out a massive attack. “I am considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before,” he told Axios last Thursday. “I am close to making a decision. We are all set for it.”

  Republican armchair warrior Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said yesterday on CBS’s “Meet the Press” that, “The president likes the daily attacks. He believes that sometimes you have to kill a few chickens to scare the monkeys.” 

IT’S POLITICAL: Maine Democrats over the weekend selected former logger Troy Jackson to be their new nominee for US Senate, replacing the oyster fisherman Graham Platner whose campaign collapsed under an accusation that he had raped a former girlfriend.

  Jackson is taking up the populist progressive campaign abandoned by Platner to unseat long-term Republican incumbent Susan Collins. “They will say that a grassroots campaign, powered by working people, cannot defeat Susan Collins and every powerful interest standing behind her,” Jackson said in his acceptance speech. “They are wrong again.” 

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: The Gordie Howe International Bridge from Windsor, Ontario to Detroit is set to open today. The $4.5 billon bridge paid for by Canada is named after one of the toughest and most enduring hockey players who ever lived.

  Canada proceeded with a one-sided ribbon-cutting celebration last Friday after disinviting US officials following recent tariff announcements by Donald Trump.

INFITE SCROLL: 

— Under criticism that it was minimizing the deaths and casualties in the Iran war, the Pentagon reversed itself, restoring four deaths to the war total, bringing it to 18, and updating the number of wounded to 624. The Pentagon had eliminated four dead and hundreds of wounded from the casualty lists because they occurred during what was supposed to be a period of ceasefire.

— Protections end today for about 350 immigrants primarily from Haiti, who were allowed to live and work in the US because their home country is so dangerous. The Supreme Court allowed President Trump to end the protections and those people can now be deported. 

THE SPIN RACK: One person was killed Saturday and 16 injured when a man described as an “Islamist” drove a car into the crowd at Berlin’s gay pride parade. The man got out of his car then wounded some people with a knife or machete before running off. The suspect was shot and killed in a confrontation with police last night. —  You can bet on it. The prediction market Kalshi … a gambling operation … is protesting a Wisconsin law that makes it illegal to place a bet on an election in which you vote. Kalshi calls it “voter suppression.” Elections commissioner Ann Jacobs said, “We don’t want people voting for someone who isn’t the best person for the job simply because it is going to line a voter’s pocket.” — In its efforts to bring the war home to Russia, Ukraine’s drone campaign against Crimea’s power grid has left hundreds of thousands of people in the Russian-held territory without electricity for days at a time.

 THE OBIT PAGE: Paul Andrews, who held an annual convention known as the Woodstock of UFOs in the California desert, died on June 30th at his home in Walnut Creek, California. He was 77.

  It was a convention for people who could share and discuss their beliefs and their purported personal contacts with extra-terrestrials. The could attend lectures on interstellar science and don night-vision goggles to search for alien vehicles in the night sky. 

  Andrews said he had been a believer in the paranormal since he was a child when he witnessed “luminous beings of light” visiting his sister in her bedroom.

BELOW THE FOLD: Chicago now has an active “Scream Club,” a group of as many as 300 people who come together every week and scream out over the waters of Lake Michigan to let it all go loose. There’s a lot to scream about these days.

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