CAGLIARI, Italy — Sardinia is one of the world’s most beautiful islands, which raises the question: Where is everyone? Not tourists — there are plenty of those — but locals. The island’s population is 1.57 million, down from 1.64 million three decades ago, but half live in its two largest urban areas, while smaller towns and villages are withering. The big problem is that people aren’t having babies. With an average of 1.18 children per woman, Italy has one of the lowest fertility rates in the European Union. Sardinia recorded the lowest rate in Italy, at 0.91 children per woman. Just to keep a population stable, women should have an average of 2.1 children. High unemployment on the island and better job prospects elsewhere are doing the rest, emptying dozens of villages of their young people. “The last child was born here 10 years ago,” said Maria Anna Camedda, the mayor of Baradili, Sardinia’s smallest village with a population of 76. The place is tiny — less than 500 meters separates the “Welcome to Baradili” sign from the one marking the end of the village, which is well-maintained and adorned with photos — like a big family house. The risk of places like Baradili becoming ghost towns is prompting the island to try to lure in newcomers. A couple moving to a Sardinian village of fewer than 3,000 residents can receive up to €15,000 to purchase or renovate a home, up to €20,000 to start a business that creates local jobs, and a monthly subsidy of €600 for their first child plus €400 for each subsequent child until they turn 5. These incentives are part of an anti-depopulation package introduced by the island. They come on top of local emergency measures, such as the municipality of Ollolai’s offer of €1 houses for newcomers. Despite the incentives, migrants are snubbing the island. The risk of places like Baradili becoming ghost towns is prompting the island to try and lure in newcomers. | Tommaso Lecca/POLITICO Romania, Senegal, Morocco, China and Ukraine are the home countries of roughly half of the 52,000 foreigners residing in Sardinia, which is about 3.3 percent of the island’s population. The national average is 8.9 percent. In 2022, the number of foreigners moving to Sardinia did not account for even a quarter of the population decline that occurred that year. The Italian demographic winter, which is even tougher in Sardinia, recently forced Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government to allow 500,000 foreign workers into the country over the next three years. But the population collapse remains stark in small communities like Baradili. Over 30 years ago, the village closed its one-room primary school, in which all 15 local children, ranging in age from 6 to 10, learned together. Baradili and nearby villages opted for a rotating school system in which children attend classes in three different villages throughout the year. A free bus picks them up every morning. Attending high school or reaching a hospital is much harder, as both services are over 30 kilometers away. The challenges of serving communities like Baradili prompted Meloni’s government to acknowledge in the recent National Strategic Plan for Internal Areas that some parts of the country “cannot set themselves any goals for reversing the [depopulation] trend, but neither can they be left to their own devices.” The document proposed setting up “a targeted plan to assist them in a process of chronic decline and aging.” This wording provoked indignation, even among 140 Catholic Church representatives, who denounced the government’s plan as “support for a happy death” of villages. But Camedda is not impressed. “It was simply put down in black and white what the government — not just this government — has been doing for several decades,” she said. Baradili is doing everything it can to survive. It introduced a €10,000 subsidy on top of the incentives granted at the regional level. The village is served by a swimming pool, a football field, tennis and padel courts and even a motorhome park. In 2022, Baradili celebrated the arrival of four families, which brought nine new residents. EXPAT CAVALRY While many young Sardinians are leaving small rural villages to embrace urban life, some expats are taking the opposite direction. Ivo Rovira, a Spanish photographer working for the America’s Cup sailing competition, ended up in his new home village of Armungia by chance. In 2023 he spent several months in Cagliari, the capital city of Sardinia, snapping photos for the Italian sailboat Luna Rossa. “One day, in January, I was driving toward the interior of the island looking for some snow. I arrived in Armungia, a place I had never heard of before.” Rovira’s photographer’s eye was captivated by the landscape of the village, which has fewer than 400 residents. Ivo Rovira, a Spanish photographer working for the America’s Cup sailing competition, ended up in his new home village of Armungia by chance. | Tommaso Lecca/POLITICO “I parked the car and went for a walk. I found a house in the historic center with a ‘For Sale’ banner. Ten days later, I put down a deposit to buy it,” he said. After renovating the old house, which used to be a wine shop but had sat empty for 30 years, Rovira and his wife, Ana Ponce, moved to Armungia permanently. They also set up a restaurant that is open a few days per month, depending on demand. “It takes half an hour to drive to a supermarket along winding roads, but there is an international airport an hour away,” he said. “We don’t feel like digital nomads; we are real Armungians,” Rovira added. Bianca Fontana, an Australian with Italian roots, dreamed of moving to Italy after the pandemic. She joined a friend who was staying in Nulvi, a town of around 2,500 — larger than some tiny communities, but still eligible for the regional grants. A historical photo of the Secci family store, the house purchased by Ivo Rovira. Courtesy of the Sa Domu de is Ainas – Armungia Ethnographic Museum Collection. | Tommaso Lecca/POLITICO “I bought a house within two weeks. And I moved here about six months later,” Fontana said. She grew up in a country town in Australia before living in London and Shanghai. “I did get to a point where I was feeling quite exhausted in bigger cities, and I wanted to find a smaller, quieter place,” she said. Fontana now talks about her new life in Sardinia on her YouTube channel, which has over 3,000 subscribers. Many of them regularly comment on her videos about renovation grants, work on her own house, archaeological excursions and local wine. There is also an effort to keep locals from leaving. Marcello Contu left Sardinia at the age of 18 to move to Turin, and then lived in Barcelona and Australia. Bianca Fontana sits in front of a mural in the village of Nulvi. Courtesy of Bianca Fontana. | Tommaso Lecca/POLITICO But then he moved to the 120-person village of Bidonì to start a vegan cheese-making business. “The artisanal production of plant-based cheeses requires great attention, waiting times, experimentation, and daily care that are difficult to reconcile with chaotic environments,” he said. Contu’s products are now available in dozens of restaurants and shops across Sardinia and the rest of Italy. “Geographical isolation and a lack of services translate into a constant practical challenge: Sourcing raw materials or making deliveries often requires long journeys, with longer times and higher costs than for those working in better-connected areas,” he said. But Contu believes that small villages can become “ideal places for developing craft, creative, and sustainability-related activities, because they offer what large cities have often lost: time, spaces on a human scale, authentic relationships, and a strong connection with the local area and nature.” Rovira and Fontana are also impressed by the capacity of Sardinian villagers to stick together. Ivo Rovira and Ana Ponce in front of their new house in Armungia. | Tommaso Lecca/POLITICO Rovira was once told by a neighbor: “We live in such a small village that if we don’t help each other, we’re dead.” REALLY, REALLY CHEAP HOUSES Ollolai made a name for itself as the town of €1 houses — a project that started in 2016. According to Francesco Columbu, the local mayor, about 100,000 people registered interest in the €1 houses, but the municipality could only accommodate a few aspiring Ollolai residents. The scheme acts as an intermediary between owners of old houses — often split across different families of heirs — and those seeking to obtain them for peanuts. As a result, only a handful of foreign families have obtained a €1 house. Meanwhile, the village has continued to lose inhabitants, dropping from 1,300 when the offer began to 1,150 now. “While it’s possible that a cultured American or German who loves stone architecture or that of another Sardinian village moves there, this does not create the economic benefits needed to solve problems,” said Anna Maria Colavitti, professor of urban planning at the University of Cagliari. Colavitti analyzed the results of the €1 houses, concluding that they “alone are not enough, just as incentives for having kids are not enough,” she said. Colavitti’s study also showed that new owners sometimes decide to resell the €1 property at the same price they paid for it because they cannot afford the higher-than-expected renovation costs or are dissatisfied with their choice. But the mayor of Ollolai keeps fighting with the tools he has. “Ollolai will not die so easily. The inland villages of Sardinia have seen their fair share of crises. They went through periods of plague in the 1600s … yet they recovered,” Columbu said. “We have a better quality of life, and we’re an hour away from some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. I say the beautiful things will never die.”

BRUSSELS — Climate change was responsible for an estimated 16,500 additional deaths in Europe this summer, according to a study by epidemiologists and climate scientists published Wednesday. This represents 68 percent of the 24,400 estimated heat-related deaths that happened this summer in large European cities, according to researchers from Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “These numbers represent real people who have lost their lives in the last months due to extreme heat. Many of these would not have died if it wasn’t for climate change,” said Friederike Otto, a climate science professor at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, who contributed to the study. Climate change has made Europe’s largest cities, on average, 2.2 degrees Celsius warmer compared to a pre-industrial world. This not only makes them hotter in general, but increases the risk of heat waves, Otto said. This summer was the third hottest on record, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Extreme heat is also putting older people and those with underlying health conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes, at higher risk. People aged 65 and over accounted for 85 percent of the estimated excess heat-related deaths this summer, according to the study, highlighting how hotter summers are becoming increasingly deadly for Europe’s aging population. “An increasing heat wave temperature of just 2 to 4 degrees [Celsius] can mean the difference between life and death for thousands of people,” said Garyfallos Konstantinoudis, a lecturer at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change, who contributed to the study. “This is why heat waves are known as silent killers.” But this estimated death toll is just a snapshot, according to the researchers, as the study only focused on 854 cities with more than 50,000 people in the EU and the U.K. This represents only about 30 percent of Europe’s population. However, these deaths are “preventable” if countries continue to reduce their emissions and combat climate change, said Malcolm Mistry, assistant professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who contributed to the study. Italy and Spain were the most severely affected, with climate change contributing to an estimated 4,597 additional heat-related deaths in Italy and 2,841 in Spain. But the researchers also found that “although the excess mortality rates are lower in northern Europe, mainly because temperatures were lower, the proportion of deaths attributable to climate change is higher.”

CHIATURA, Georgia — Giorgi Neparidze, a middle-aged man from near the town of Chiatura in western Georgia, still has marks on his lips from where he sewed his mouth shut during a hunger strike last year. He says Georgian Manganese, a mining company with close links to the government, has wrought environmental devastation around his home and has ignored the rights of its workers. He is seeking compensation.  Europe, which imports Georgia’s manganese, is partly to blame for the black rivers and collapsing houses in Chiatura district, Neparidze says. The former miner-turned-environmental and civil rights activist claims that in one village, Shukruti, toxic dust from the pits is making people unwell. Filthy black water, laced with heavy metals, periodically spurts out of pumps there. Houses are collapsing as the tunnels underneath them cave in.  Manganese, a black metal traditionally used to reinforce steel, is crucial for Europe’s green energy transition as it is used in both wind turbines and electric car batteries. The metal is also vital for military gear like armor and guns. In 2022, the European Union bought 20,000 metric tons of manganese alloys from Georgia — almost 3 percent of its total supply. A year later the bloc added manganese to its list of critical minerals. But Chiaturans say their lives are being ruined so that Western Europeans can breathe cleaner air. “We are sacrificed so that others can have better lives,” Neparidze says. “There are only 40,000 people in Chiatura. They might feel ill or live in bad conditions but they are sacrificed so that millions of Europeans can have a cleaner environment.” Neparidze says cancer rates in the region are unusually high. Doctors at a hospital in Chiatura back up the observation, but no official study has linked the illnesses to the mines. An aerial view of Chiatura with the polluted Kvirila River running through the town | Olivia Acland Hope that things will improve appears dim. European companies often don’t know where their manganese is sourced from. As ANEV, Italy’s wind energy association, confirms: “There is no specific obligation to trace all metals used in steel production.”  Last year the EU enacted a law that was meant to change that. The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive obliges companies to run closer checks on their supply chains and clamp down on any human rights violations, poor working conditions and environmental damage.  But barely a year after it took effect, the European Commission proposed a major weakening of the law in a move to reduce red tape for the bloc’s sluggish industry. EU member countries, motivated by this deregulation agenda, are now pushing for even deeper cuts, while French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz want to get rid of the law altogether.  Meanwhile, Europe’s appetite for mined raw materials like manganese, lithium, rare earths, copper and nickel is expected to skyrocket to meet the needs of the clean energy transition and rearmament. Many of these resources are in poorly regulated and often politically repressive jurisdictions, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Indonesia and Georgia. Weakening the EU supply chain law will have consequences for communities like Neparidze’s. “Only an empty shell of the directive remains,” says Anna Cavazzini, a member of the European Parliament’s Green Party, adding that the legislature caved to pressure from businesses seeking to reduce their costs. “Now is not the time to abandon the defense of human rights and give corporations a free hand,” she says.  A resident of Chiatura standing on a collapsed house following a mining-related landslide in Itkhvisi village. | Olivia Acland As Georgia’s government pivots toward Russia and stifles dissent, life is becoming increasingly dangerous for activists in Chiatura. On April 29, four activists including Neparidze were arrested for allegedly assaulting a mine executive. A statement put out by Chiatura Management Company, the firm in charge of staffing Georgian Manganese’s underground operations, says that Tengiz Koberidze, manager of the Shukruti mine, was “verbally abused and pelted with stones.” Supporters call it a staged provocation in which Koberidze tried to incite violence, and say it’s part of a broader campaign to silence resistance. If convicted they face up to six years behind bars. Koberidze did not respond to requests for comment. Chiatura residents are protesting over two overlapping issues. On one side, miners are demanding safer working conditions underground, where tunnel collapses have long been a risk, along with higher wages and paid sick leave. When the mine was temporarily shut in October 2024, they were promised 60 percent of their salaries, but many say those payments never materialized. Workers are also raising concerns about mining pollution in the region. “The company doesn’t raise wages, doesn’t improve safety, and continues to destroy the natural environment. Its profits come not just from extracting resources, but from exploiting both workers and the land,” says one miner, David Chinchaladze. Georgian Manganese did not respond to interview requests or written questions. Officials at Georgia’s Ministry of Mines and the government’s Environment Protection and Natural Resources Department did not respond to requests for comment. A collapsing building in Shukruti. | Olivia Acland.  The second group of protesters comes from the village of Shukruti, which sits directly above the mining tunnels. Their homes are cracking and sinking into the ground. In 2020, Georgian Manganese pledged to pay between 700,000 and 1 million Georgian lari ($252,000 to $360,000) annually in damages — a sum that was meant to be distributed among residents. But while the company insists the money has been paid, locals — backed by watchdog NGO Social Justice — say otherwise. According to them, fewer than 5 percent of Shukruti’s residents have received any compensation.  Their protest has intensified in the last year, with workers now blocking the roads and Shukruti residents barring entry to the mines. But the risks are intensifying too. Since suspending EU accession talks last year amid deteriorating relations with the bloc, Georgia’s ruling party has shuttered independent media, arrested protestors and amplified propaganda. The country’s democracy is “backsliding,” says Irakli Kavtaradze, head of the foreign department of the largest opposition political party, United National Movement. Their tactics “sound like they come from a playbook that is written in the Kremlin,” he adds. ‘KREMLIN PLAYBOOK’ In the capital Tbilisi, around 200 kilometers east of Chiatura, protesters have taken to the streets every night since April 2, 2024 when the government unveiled a Kremlin-style “foreign agents” law aimed at muzzling civil society.  Many demonstrators wear sunglasses, scarfs and masks to shield their identities from street cameras, wary of state retaliation.  A scene from the 336th day of protests in Tbilisi in April 2025. | Olivia Acland. Their protests swelled in October last year after the government announced it would suspend talks to join the EU. For Georgians, the stakes are high: Russia already occupies 20 percent of the country after its 2008 invasion, and people fear that a more profound drift from the EU could open the door to further aggression. When POLITICO visited in April, a crowd strode down Rustaveli Avenue, the city’s main artery. Some carried EU flags while others passed around a loudspeaker, taking it in turns to voice defiant chants. “Fire to the oligarchy!” one young woman yelled, the crowd echoing her call. “Power lies in unity with the EU!” another shouted. They also called out support for protestors in Chiatura, whose fight has become something of a cause célèbre across the country: “Solidarity to Chiatura! Natural resources belong to the people!”  The fight in Chiatura is a microcosm of the country’s broader struggle: The activists are not just taking on a mining company but a corporate giant backed by oligarchs and the ruling elites.  Georgian Manganese’s parent company, Georgian American Alloys, is registered in Luxembourg and counts Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky as a shareholder. He is in custody in Kyiv over allegations that he hired a gang to kill a lawyer who threatened his business interests in 2003. Kolomoisky has also been sanctioned by the United States for his alleged involvement in siphoning billions out of PrivatBank, Ukraine’s largest bank.  Giorgi Kapanadze — a businessman closely connected with the ruling Georgian Dream party of Bidzina Ivanishvili — is listed as general manager of Georgian American Alloys.  Until recently, Kapanadze owned Rustavi TV, a channel notorious for airing pro-government propaganda. The European Parliament has called on the EU to hit Kapanadze with sanctions, accusing him of propping up the country’s repressive regime. Kolomoisky and Kapanadze did not respond to POLITICO’s requests for comment. The government swooped in to help Georgian Manganese in 2016 when a Georgian court fined it $82 million for environmental destruction in the region. The state placed it under “special management” and wrote off the fine. A new government-appointed manager was tasked, on paper, with cleaning up the mess. He was supposed to oversee a cleanup of the rivers that flow past the mines, among other promises. Manganese mining pit in Chiatura region, Georgia. | Olivia Acland But POLITICO’s own tests based on four samples taken in April 2025 from the Kvirila River, which runs through Chiatura, as well as its tributary, the Bogiristiskali, which were examined in a U.K. licensed laboratory, show the manganese levels in both rivers are over 10 times the legal limit. Iron levels are also higher than legally permitted. Locals use the polluted water to irrigate their crops. Fishermen are also pulling in increasingly empty nets as the heavy metals kill off aquatic life, according to local testimonies. The water from the Kvirila River flows out into the Black Sea, home to endangered dolphins, sturgeons, turtles and sharks.  A 2022 analysis by the Georgian NGO Green Policy found even worse results, with manganese in the Kvirila River averaging 42 times the legal limit. The group also detected excessive levels of iron and lead. Chronic manganese exposure can lead to irreversible neurological damage — a Parkinson’s-like condition known as manganism — as well as liver, kidney and reproductive harm. Lead and iron are linked to organ failure, cancer and cardiovascular disease. On Georgian Manganese’s website, the company concedes that “pollution of the Kvirila River” is one of the region’s “ecological challenges,” attributing it to runoff from manganese processing. It claims to have installed German-standard purification filters and claims that “neither polluted nor purified water” currently enters the river. Protesters like Neparidze aren’t convinced. They claim the filtration system is turned on only when inspectors arrive and that for the rest of the time, untreated wastewater is dumped straight into the rivers. BLOCKING EXPORTS Their protests having reaped few results, Chiaturans are taking increasingly extreme measures to make their voices heard.  Gocha Kupatadze, a retired 67-year-old miner, spends his nights in a tarpaulin shelter beside an underground mine, where he complains that rats crawl over him. “This black gold became the black plague for us,” he says. “We have no choice but to protest.” Kupatadze’s job is to ensure that manganese does not leave the mine. Alongside other protesters he has padlocked the gate to the generator that powers the mine’s ventilation system, making it impossible for anyone to work there. Kupatadze says he is only resorting to such drastic measures because conditions in his village, Shukruti, have become unlivable. His family home, built in 1958, is now crumbling, with cracks in the walls as the ground beneath it collapses from years of mining. The vines that once sustained his family’s wine-making traditions have long since withered and died. Gocha Kupatadze, an activist sleeping in a tarpaulin tent outside a mine. | Olivia Acland. For over a year, protesters across the region have intermittently blocked mine entrances as well as main roads, determined to stop the valuable ore from leaving Chiatura. In some ways it has worked: Seven months ago, Chiatura Management Company, the firm in charge of staffing Georgian Manganese’s underground operations, announced it would pause production.  “Due to the financial crisis that arose from the radical protests by the people of Shukruti village, the production process in Chiatura has been completely halted,” it read. Yet to the people of Chiatura, this feels more like a punishment than a triumph.  Manganese has been extracted from the area since 1879 and many residents rely on the mines for their livelihoods. The region bears all the hallmarks of a mining town that thrived during the Soviet Union when conditions in the mines were much better, according to residents. Today, rusted cable cars sway above concrete buildings that house washing stations and aging machinery.   While locals had sought compensation for the damage to their homes, they now just find themselves out of work.  Soviet-era buildings and mining infrastructure around Chiatura. | Olivia Acland.  Making matters worse, Georgian Manganese, licensed to mine 16,430 hectares until 2046, is now sourcing much of its ore from open pits instead of underground mines. These are more dangerous to the communities around them: Machines rip open the hillsides to expose shallow craters, while families living next to the pits say toxic dust drifts off them into their gardens and houses.  MORE PITS The village of Zodi is perched on a plateau surrounded by gently undulating hills, 10 kilometers from Chiatura. Many of its residents rely on farming, and cows roam across its open fields. “It is a beautiful village with a unique microclimate which is great for wine-making,” says Kote Abdushelishvili, a 36-year-old filmmaker from Zodi.  Mining officials say the village sits on manganese reserves. In 2023, caterpillar trucks rolled into Zodi and began ripping up the earth. Villagers, including Abdushelishvili, chased them out. “We stopped them,” he says, “We said if you want to go on, you will have to kill us first.” A padlocked gate to the mine’s ventilation system. | Olivia Acland Abdushelishvili later went to Georgian Manganese’s Chiatura office to demand a meeting with the state-appointed special manager. When he was turned away, he shouted up to the window: “You can attack us, you can kill us, we will not stop.” Two days later, as Abdushelishvili strolled through a quiet neighborhood in Tbilisi, masked men jumped out of a car, slammed him to the pavement and beat him up. Despite the fierce resistance in Chiatura, Georgian Manganese continues to send its metal to European markets. In the first two months of 2025, the EU imported 6,000 metric tons of manganese from Georgia. With the bloc facing mounting pressures — from the climate crisis to new defense demands — its hunger for manganese is set to grow. As the EU weakens its corporate accountability demands and Georgia drifts further into authoritarianism, the voices of Chiatura’s people are growing even fainter.  “We are not asking for something unreasonable,” says activist Tengiz Gvelesiani, who was recently detained in Chiatura along with Neparidze, “We are asking for healthy lives, a good working environment and fresh air.” Georgian Manganese did not respond to requests for comment. This article was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.

Russia’s saber-rattling in the Arctic is forcing Canada to deepen military cooperation with its Nordic NATO allies — a marked policy shift away from the United States. Prime Minister Mark Carney has dispatched two top Cabinet ministers to Sweden and Finland this week in pursuit of new defense deals — including a look at Sweden’s Saab Gripen fighter jet. Canada had previously decided on the Lockheed Martin F-35, a flagship export under President Donald Trump. But amid a trade war, at a time when other allies are turning away from the U.S. war plane, Canada is reconsidering its C$19-billion plan to buy a new fleet of F-35s. “Clearly, there are trade tensions [with the U.S.], and we want to become closer to our friends,” Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said Monday as Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Ebba Busch formally welcomed her to Stockholm. Canada’s Arctic defense strategy is shifting away from a bilateral relationship with the United States toward a broader NATO framework. With Sweden and Finland joining NATO after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine — and in the wake of Trump’s tariff attacks — Ottawa is widening its foreign policy focus to align with NATO as the foundation of its Arctic security. Busch said she welcomed a strategic partnership, “focusing on security and defense, investment and competitiveness, digital innovation and energy raw materials.” Joly name-checked Canadian ties to Saab, as well as to Sweden tech giants Ericsson and ABB (Asea Brown Boveri). “We have the crown jewels of the private sector of Sweden already in our country, but we want to do more,” the minister said. On Tuesday, Canada added one more jewel when Roshel, a Canadian manufacturer of armored vehicles, signed a “strategic partnership agreement” with Swedish steel producer Swebor. Roshel said in a statement that the partnership will “establish Canada’s first facility dedicated to production of ballistic-grade steel” — a key ingredient in military vehicles. Earlier in the trip, Joly visited Saab, the Swedish manufacturer of the Gripen — at one time a runner-up on Canada’s shortlist to replace its aging fleet of CF-18s. Lockheed Martin won that contract, and will deliver 16 of the stealth fighters so far. Joly is joined on this week’s trip by Stephen Fuhr, Canada’s new secretary of state for defense procurement, as Ottawa contemplates whether it will buy 72 more F-35s. Later in the week, Joly is to cut the ribbon on a joint Finnish-Canadian shipbuilding venture that will begin manufacturing a new fleet of icebreakers for Canada’s Coast Guard. Meanwhile in Europe, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand was scheduled to meet with Finland President Alexander Stubb on Tuesday. The tête-à-tête follows Stubb’s appearance at the White House Monday alongside other European leaders, supporting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Trump-brokered negotiation with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to end the war in Eastern Europe. Anand said NATO, which was founded during the Cold War on the premise it was an eastward-facing European bulwark against the Soviet Union, must confront Russia beyond Europe’s borders in the Far North. “NATO’s gaze also has to shift westward and north because of the changing geopolitical landscape, especially following Feb. 24, 2022,” Anand said Monday. “Our priority in terms of Canada’s Arctic foreign policy is to ensure that we leave no stone unturned to protect and defend Canada’s sovereignty,” she added. Anand said that will mean tens of billions of dollars of new spending on Arctic infrastructure. The minister added that it was no longer appropriate for civilian and military infrastructure projects to exist in bureaucratic “silos.” “When we talk about critical minerals in the north, yes, that’s an economic question, but it’s also a defense and security question, and it is embedded in our foreign policy,” Anand said. Anand met with foreign ministers from the Nordic 5 group of countries, including her host, Elina Valtonen, and their counterparts from Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland. They later issued a joint statement of unwavering solidarity with Ukraine. “The Nordic countries and Canada are ready to play an active role in combining the efforts of the Coalition of the Willing with those of the United States to ensure the strength and credibility of these security guarantees,” Anand and her Nordic counterparts said. They emphasized that Ukraine’s borders must remain intact, and that Russia has no “veto” over Ukraine’s possible pathway to EU or NATO membership. They also called for the return of thousands of Ukrainian children who were taken to Russia after the war started. “For as long as Russia continues its war of aggression against Ukraine, we — together with partners and allies — will continue to maintain and increase pressure on Russia’s war economy,” the Nordic 5 said. “Russia poses a long-term threat to European security.”

BRUSSELS — Man-made climate change made the July heatwave that blanketed Norway, Sweden and Finland 10 times more likely and 2 degrees Celsius hotter, according to a scientific report published Thursday. “However, this is likely an underestimate,” said the researchers from the World Weather Attribution, a group of climate scientists that draft rapid analyses showing climate change’s role in extreme weather events.  The findings, which used peer-reviewed methods and models to compare the recent heatwave to the pre-industrial revolution world, come after the Nordic countries spent two weeks in mid-July grappling with abnormally hot temperatures for the region. Healthcare and social services were strained, with some hospitals canceling surgeries and struggling to keep their buildings cool. It was also peak holiday season, leaving healthcare facilities operating with reduced staffing. “This heatwave was relentless,” said Clair Barnes, researcher at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, and one of the authors of the analysis. “Two weeks of temperatures above 30°C in this region is unusual and, of course, highly concerning.” The heat blast upended the region’s ecosystems. Reindeer fled from the countryside into cities, searching for water and escaping unexpected insects. The analysis noted that such changing migration patterns affect people’s livelihoods, such as Sámi reindeer herders. “I watched a reindeer stay in the same patch of shade for three days straight without grazing, a quiet sign of the strain the heat was causing,” recalled Maja Vahlberg, a climate consultant at Swedish Red Cross. Dry conditions also increased the risk of fires. And as climate change accelerates, the situation will only deteriorate further, the researchers warned: “Similar heatwaves are now estimated to be twice as likely as they were in 2018,” they said. “We definitely expect more of these events in the future and we also expect them to become more intense,” said Erik Kjellström, professor in climatology at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, who also worked on the study. The Nordic heatwave illustrates how pervasive climate change is becoming across Europe, spreading hot weather beyond areas built to accommodate it. “This heatwave was a stark reminder of the threat of climate change in cold-climate countries that aren’t normally considered vulnerable,” Vahlberg said. “Our infrastructure was not built to withstand these extreme temperatures, and our aging population is increasingly susceptible to dangerous heat.” Climate consultant at Swedish Red Cross Maja Vahlberg said that the Nordic heatwave “was a stark reminder of the threat of climate change in cold-climate countries that aren’t normally considered vulnerable.” | Jouni Porsanger/Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images HOT EUROPE While the situation has slightly cooled in the Nordics, Southern Europe is still baking. “And we can say with confidence that climate change has intensified those weather conditions,” Barnes said. A heatwave is currently sweeping through France and Spain, with temperatures reaching into the mid-40 Cs. Heat warnings were also issued in Germany, Italy, the U.K., Albania and Montenegro this week. In both France and Spain, national meteorological institutes said the heatwave will last at least through this week and possibly into next week. “Heatwaves have always happened, there will always be heatwaves, but all of the temperatures are just getting higher, so the chances of reaching these potentially dangerous temperatures are just ratcheting up as the world warms,” Barnes said. Additionally, most southern European countries, including Portugal, Spain, Greece, the Balkans and Turkey, are also battling wildfires. Two people died in Spain, including one firefighter, while thousands had to be evacuated across the country. In Greece, three people died and blazes are threatening the country’s third-largest city, Patras, west of Athens, forcing thousands to evacuate. In Albania, roughly 50 fires have been recorded over the past few days, with the most intense blazes hitting the southern region of Gramsh, where one elderly man died. Meanwhile, fires claimed at least 17 lives in Turkey last month. And in France last week, the country experienced its worst fire since 1949, according to national authorities. With climate change drying out the landscape, these blazes are only becoming harder to contain. According to the European Forest Fires Information System, more than twice as much area has burned thus far in 2025 as last year over the same period. The EU’s fire danger forecast for the coming days is bleak. It predicts “extreme to very extreme conditions across the entire continent,” citing numerous southern, central and eastern countries.  And in a sign of the changing patterns, it also notes that “high anomalies” can be expected “in Sweden, parts of Norway, and eastern Finland.”

BRUSSELS — Climate change supercharged last week’s European heat wave and tripled the death toll, a group of scientists said Wednesday.  Extreme temperatures baked large swaths of the continent in late June and early July, exposing millions of Europeans to dangerous levels of heat.  Looking at 12 European cities, the researchers found that in 11 of them, heat waves of the type that peaked last week would have been significantly less intense — between 2 to 4 degrees Celsius cooler — in a world without man-made global warming.  This climate-induced change in temperatures, the scientists said, led to a surge in excess deaths in those cities. Of the 2,300 additional fatalities linked to high temperatures, around 1,500 of them can be attributed to global warming, they estimated.  “Climate change is an absolute game changer when it comes to extreme heat,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London, which co-led the research.  A construction worker in Italy and a street cleaner in Spain were among those thought to have died of heat stroke last week. But most heat-related deaths, particularly among the elderly, go unreported. The scientists said the vast majority of deaths they analyzed occurred among Europeans aged 65 or older.  As a result, heat is often dubbed a “silent killer,” though it’s no less deadly than other climate-related disasters. The scientists noted that last week’s heat wave killed more people than devastating flood events in recent years, which resulted in several hundred deaths.  “Our study is only a snapshot of the true death toll linked to climate change-driven temperatures across Europe, which may have reached into the tens of thousands,” said Garyfallos Konstantinoudis, also a climate specialist at Imperial College London. Global warming, driven by burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, is increasing the severity and frequency of heat waves in Europe and worldwide. An aging population also makes Europe more vulnerable to the health effects of extreme temperatures.  The European Environment Agency has warned that heat-related deaths are expected to increase tenfold if the planet warms 1.5 C, and thirtyfold at 3 C. The planet is already 1.3 C hotter than in preindustrial times and on track to warm 2.7 C this century.  THE TOLL OF EXTREME HEAT The rapid analysis published Wednesday — which uses methods considered scientifically reliable but has not undergone peer review  — was led by researchers at Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.  The scientists looked at deaths in Milan (where they estimated 317 fatalities were due to changes in the climate), Barcelona (286), Paris (235), London (171), Rome (164), Madrid (108), Athens (96), Budapest (47), Zagreb (31), Frankfurt (21), Lisbon (also 21) and the Sardinian city of Sassari (six) between June 23 and July 2.  “These numbers represent real people that have lost their lives in the last days due to the extreme heat. Two-thirds of these would not have died were it not for climate change,” said Otto.  Last week’s heat also drove up wildfire risk across Europe, with fires still raging in many parts of the continent. The analysis does not include deaths linked to fire or smoke. In Spain, for example, two farmers were killed trying to flee encroaching flames last week.  The Spanish government separately monitors heat-related excess deaths and found that between June 21 and July 2, more than 450 people died due to extreme temperatures — 73 percent more than in the same period in 2022, which saw record numbers of deaths.  WESTERN EUROPE’S HOTTEST JUNE The EU’s Copernicus climate monitoring service, meanwhile, said Wednesday morning that last month was the third-hottest June on record worldwide.  For Europe, it was the fifth-warmest June, though the western part of the continent saw its hottest June on record, the scientists said — just above the 2003 record, which was followed by a summer marked by deadly heat.  The temperatures in Europe are further amplified by what Copernicus terms an “exceptional” marine heat wave in the Mediterranean Sea. The water surface temperatures have hit their highest level on record, not just for June but for any month.  “June 2025 saw an exceptional heat wave impact large parts of western Europe, with much of the region experiencing very strong heat stress. This heatwave was made more intense by record sea surface temperatures in the western Mediterranean,” said Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.  “In a warming world, heat waves are likely to become more frequent, more intense and impact more people across Europe,” she added.  Cory Bennett contributed to this report.