Airport security officer ‘is caught stealing $300 from a passenger by swallowing the cash’

• A screening officer in the Philippines has been caught allegedly stealing money 
• CCTV footage shows a female airport officer take $300 from a passenger’s bag 
• She then attempts to ‘swallow’ the dollar bills by placing them in her mouth 

By Jessica Hamilton

Published: 08:40 EDT, 21 September 2023 | Updated: 10:24 EDT, 21 September 2023

Ryanair passenger attacks staff and smashes furniture and a computer during Palma airport rampage after missing his flight

• Video shows topless man throwing furniture at wall before shouting at staff
• Do you know the man in the video? Contact: Rachael.Bunyan@mailonline.co.uk 

By Rachael Bunyan

Published: 08:24 EDT, 21 September 2023 | Updated: 12:41 EDT, 21 September 2023

Two holiday planes collide on the tarmac at Palma airport in Mallorca

• The incident happened at around 9am and caused wingtip of one plane to break  

By Rita Sobot

Published: 06:23 EDT, 19 September 2023 | Updated: 07:22 EDT, 19 September 2023

If you’ve been unfortunate enough to experience a flight delay or cancellation during the Gatwick Airport travel chaos, you could be entitled to compensation.

Here we reveal the circumstances that trigger a cash pay out. 

FLIGHT DELAYS

New data from the Civil Aviation Authority shows one in three trips were delayed by at least 15 minutes last year.

Delayed passengers could be entitled to free meals and compensation of up to £520 – and this section helps you understand how.

ASSISTANCE

Airline passengers delayed by two hours or more could be entitled to assistance such as two free phone calls or emails, free meals and refreshments, free hotel accommodation and hotel transfers, according to Which?, outlining the following:

Short-haul – Passengers flying up to 932 miles (1,500km) with a delay time of at least two hours are entitled to assistance.

Medium-haul – Passengers flying between 932 miles (1,500km) and 2,175 miles (3,500km) with a delay time of at least three hours are entitled to assistance.

Long-haul – Passengers flying more than 2,175 miles (3,500km) with a delay time of at least four hours are entitled to assistance.

Delayed passengers who meet the above criteria can contact their airline or approach staff at the airport for further information.

SEVERE DELAYS

Passengers whose flight has been delayed by more than five hours are ‘entitled to choose between being rerouted on a different flight or getting a refund’, Which? says.

Passengers can also request flight delay compensation, according to the watchdog, ‘if the delay is not due to extraordinary circumstances’. These include bad weather, strikes unrelated to the airline, such as with baggage handlers, acts of terrorism or sabotage, drone disruption and long security queues.

Claims are valid for up to six years after the flight if it flew in or out of the UK, it adds.

COMPENSATION 

Passengers of delayed flights are protected by the Denied Boarding Regulation if their flight departs from the UK or Europe or is operated by a UK or European airline, Which? says.

‘If you’re travelling with a non-EU based airline flying from a non-EU destination, the airline doesn’t have the same duty to look after you,’ it adds.

‘But you can check the airline’s ‘conditions of carriage’ to see what compensation you are entitled to.’

HOW TO CLAIM COMPENSATION

‘If your flight arrives at its destination more than three hours late, each affected passenger is entitled to claim flight delay compensation,’ Which? says.

The total value of compensation depends on the length and distance of the delayed flight as well as the reason for the delay, it adds.

Passengers can make a claim under the EU Denied Boarding Regulation if they meet the criteria, listed in a table by Which?, below.

HOW MUCH ARE YOU ENTITLED TO?

Short-haul – Passengers flying up to 932 miles (1,500km) who are delayed for more than three hours are entitled to £220, according to Which?

Medium-haul within the EU – Passengers flying more than 932 miles (1,500km) within the EU who are delayed more than three hours are entitled to £350 compensation, the watchdog says.

Medium-haul outside the EU – Passengers flying between 932 miles (1,500km) and 2,175 miles (3,500km) who are delayed more than three hours are entitled to £350 compensation, Which? explains.

Long-haul – Passengers flying more than 2,175 miles (3,500km) are entitled to £260 in compensation if they are delayed between three and four hours, or £520 if they are delayed longer than this, according to the site.

CONNECTING FLIGHTS

‘Passengers flying with a non-EU airline are entitled to compensation if a flight departing from the UK is delayed by at least three hours at the final destination,’ says Which?

The ‘final destination’ of a connecting flight refers to the last airport listed on the passenger’s ticket, it adds.

OUT-OF-POCKET EXPENSES

As well as compensation, some passengers are entitled to claim ‘extra out-of-pocket expenses under the Montreal Convention’, Which? says.

Examples are if you miss a night of pre-booked accommodation, miss a concert you have bought tickets to, or a day of car rental you have paid for, it adds.

FLIGHT CANCELLATIONS

COMPENSATION

Passengers travelling with a UK or EU-based airline, or flying from a UK or EU airport, should receive help from the company if their flight is cancelled, Which? says.

‘This is because your flight is protected by the Denied Boarding Regulation,’ it adds.

Depending on the circumstances, passengers could be entitled to ‘a refund or alternative flight, food, phone calls and accommodation, and flight cancellation compensation’, the watchdog further explains.

HOW TO CLAIM COMPENSATION

Which? says passengers can claim compensation for cancelled flights unless it is affected by ‘extraordinary circumstances’, as explained earlier in this article.

But even if extraordinary circumstances apply, you are ‘still entitled to meals, refreshments, accommodation and hotel transfers depending on the length of your flight and delay’, the consumer watchdog adds.

HOW MUCH COMPENSATION ARE YOU ENTITLED TO?

Short-haul – Passengers travelling less than 932 miles (1,500km) whose new flight takes off more than one hour before their original flight and arrives less than two hours after it are entitled to £110 in compensation, according to Which?.

If the passengers’ flight arrives more than two hours after the original flight, they are entitled to £220 in compensation, it adds.

Medium-haul – Passengers travelling 932 miles (1,500km) to 2,175 miles (3,500km) whose new flight departs more than one hour before their original flight and arrives less than three hours after it are entitled to £175 in compensation, Which? says.

If the passengers’ flight arrives more than three hours after their original flight, they are entitled to £350 in compensation, it adds.

Long-haul – Passengers travelling more than 2,175 miles (3,500km) whose new flight departs more than one hour before their original flight and arrives less than four hours after it are entitled to £260 in compensation, Which? says.

If the passengers’ flight arrives more than four hours after their original flight, they are entitled to £520 in compensation, it adds.

The figures above are for flights cancelled less than seven days before departure. 

CONNECTING FLIGHTS

‘If a connecting flight during your journey is affected by a delay and you departed from the UK or an EU country, you can still claim compensation,’ Which? says.

‘For example, if you were flying from Manchester to Sydney, connecting in Singapore, but your Singapore to Sydney flight was delayed, you’d still be entitled.’

HOW TO APPEAL A DECISION

Unresolved complaints about an airline can be escalated to an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) scheme and a list of approved providers are listed on the Civil Aviation Authority website, Which? says.

Airline passengers can also gain extra peace of mind at the airport by taking out travel insurance, says Quotezone.

CEO Greg Wilson said: ‘Depending on the type of policy, some travel insurance providers will offer cover for a delayed flight of over 24 hours, or if an alternative travel option hasn’t been offered.

‘Insurance policies for missed or delayed flight departure will pay for costs incurred from delayed flights or if travellers miss the trips because of a situation out of their control – such as getting into a serious accident and being taken to hospital.’

He adds: ‘In the case of an airline going bust before passengers are able to get home, taking out the right travel insurance before jetting off will help give travellers protection.’

Many travellers connect to airport Wi-Fi while waiting to board a flight, whether to get some work done or for some light entertainment to help pass the hours.

But as harmless as it may seem, using this Wi-Fi could leave you vulnerable to attacks by cybercriminals. 

Thankfully, there are ways to protect yourself. Speaking to MailOnline Travel, Claudia Gualdi, Travel Intelligence Data Lead for Riskline, a Copenhagen-based firm that provides risk assessments for hundreds of travel destinations around the world, reveals all…

HOW OFTEN IS AIRPORT WI-FI UNSECURE?

Gualdi notes that free airport Wi-Fi is convenient for travellers because it’s often too expensive to use mobile data when travelling overseas. However, she says that ‘no public Wi-Fi network is absolutely secure, especially because it can be accessed by anyone’ and ‘at airports, the risk is even bigger because thousands of travellers navigate at the same time on the same network’.

Gualdi says it’s ‘difficult’ to know how frequently these attacks occur, but a survey conducted by Forbes Advisor earlier this year found that 40 per cent of respondents had their information compromised while using public Wi-Fi. Of that group, 23 per cent reported that it happened at an airport.

WHAT ARE THE DANGERS OF USING AIRPORT WI-FI?

Gualdi explains: ‘Users of unsecure airport Wi-Fi are vulnerable to different types of cyber threats like identity and bank information theft, unauthorised access to emails, password theft or malware from infected downloads.’

She says that ‘there are also risks of even more complex attacks’. One example is a ‘man-in-the-middle attack’, which ‘allows hackers to eavesdrop on communications’. Another is a ‘sniffing attack’, in which ‘unprotected data can be extracted’ from your device by the hacker.

HOW CAN YOU VERIFY THE SAFETY OF AIRPORT WI-FI?

‘It’s hard to verify the safety of each Wi-Fi we’re connecting to, but there are some tips that are worth keeping in mind,’ Gualdi reveals.

Her first tip is to ensure you’re logging into the correct Wi-Fi. She says: ‘At airports, it is very common to find Wi-Fi networks with similar names. Travellers should make sure that they are connecting to the official one, by asking airport staff for the precise name.’

She continues: ‘This will enable individuals to avoid “evil twin attack”, which is when a hacker creates a Wi-Fi connection with a similar name to the official one, in order to attract people to connect to the network and therefore act illegally.’

Adrianus Warmenhoven, a cybersecurity expert at NordVPN, elaborates on this, saying: ‘If a traveler connects to such a hotspot, all their personal information (including credit card details, private emails and various credentials) will be sent to a hacker.’ 

Another tip is to ‘prevent a device from automatically connecting to a hotspot’. Gualdi says: ‘This can be done by disabling features such as “auto connect” for public hotspots.’ She adds that as ‘an extra precaution, the [Wi-Fi] network can be removed from Wi-Fi settings after use, so that the device does not automatically reconnect to it in the future’. 

Gualdi says that it’s more secure to connect to hotspots that require a password if they’re available. She says: ‘It is also best to avoid “open” or “unsecured” networks.’

Another way to protect yourself, she notes, is to ‘use a VPN which hides the IP address and encrypts all the data that is sent or received over the internet’.

On top of that, she recommends installing antivirus software on your device for boosted protection.

And though it’s likely not an option for travellers in overseas airports, Gualdi says that if you can, connect to mobile data instead of using a free network.

WHICH WEBSITES ARE SAFEST TO VISIT – AND WHICH SHOULD YOU AVOID?

While connected to airport Wi-Fi, Gualdi recommends you visit websites that have ‘“https” and the padlock icon at the beginning of the URLs’ as this ‘means that the connection is secure and safe for the user and that the information you send is encrypted and cannot be intercepted’.

What kind of browsing is best avoided while using airport Wi-Fi? She says: ‘In general, it’s advisable to not manage sensitive information while browsing on a public free network, like doing banking transactions.

‘Working with a public network could also expose credentials and important data if workers are using work platforms, sending important emails or documents.’

Generally, she says it’s best to ‘avoid transmitting information that you do not wish to be disclosed to an undesired or unauthorised party’.

Again, Gualdi notes that using a VPN ‘can be very helpful’ if you want to protect yourself while working on your device in the airport.

She adds that it’s ‘important to avoid accessing a website if a browser displays a warning message’. 

HOW CULPABLE IS THE AIRPORT FOR THE ATTACK?

Gualdi says that while the culpability of the airport in the instance of a cyber attack is difficult to determine, ‘airports should enhance and offer the best cybersecurity for the travellers’. 

An incorrect flight plan inputted in to an ageing system may be to blame for the air traffic control meltdown, an expert has claimed.

The widespread disruption which started on Monday is understood to have been caused by a single rogue flight plan and continues to affect dozens of services two days on.

Controllers need basic information on each flight to populate their display, such as the flight number, aircraft type, destination and route.

If these details are not spaced and formatted in a certain way, and the computer does not recognise the data, it can cause a system collapse – a failure described this morning as ‘staggering’ by former British Airways boss Willie Walsh.

Many affected travellers are being told to wait as long as 10 days for flights home, with some forced to sleep on airport floors or take long routes by land after their flights were cancelled.

Airlines have been criticised for failing to book hotel rooms for many people who were delayed overnight.

Michele Robson, who has worked in air traffic control for more than 20 years, told the Sky News Daily podcast: ‘When there have been failures in the past, it’s normally something to do with a bad information that’s been input in the incorrect format.

‘It’s a very old system, it’s been running for many years and generally we’ve been very lucky and we don’t often have failures, or if we do, we get it back during that backup time, which is what it’s there for.

‘There have been other instances where something has been incorrectly formatted and the flight plan computer behaves in a way they’re not expecting and effectively causes it to a fail, so that could be enough to potentially crash the system in effect if it was formatted incorrectly.

‘You have to space things in a certain way using a certain number of dots, as an example. They do it in a very unique way that’s never been done before, otherwise it would happen every day.

‘So it has to be something pretty unusual that they’ve input for it to happen, but it’s an old system and perhaps something was input yesterday that it’s never seen before and that’s what caused it to have this reaction where it’s failed.’

Ms Robson, who now runs the Turning Left For Less site, told MailOnline: ‘It could be something like a small operator – not a name like British Airways – doing something unusual. 

‘That can be something like where an aircraft is crossing boundaries between UK and French air space several times. Also, if it is a small operator, they may not be as used to filing plans. It’s unlikely to be one dot in the wrong place.

‘I describe it as the Swiss Cheese model, lots of things added together causing the system to accept that message. For some reason, because it’s never been seen before, it accepted it, and caused the system to fail. 

‘I’ve been through failures and had to go to a manual system and I think people assume it’s like in a film where there are people running around and shouting on the phone, but these people are used to working in a high pressured job.

‘They have emergency training at least once a year, so they know exactly what to do, and take it in their stride. 

Martin Rolfe, chief executive of National Air Traffic Services told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme, was asked this morning why the problematic flight data was not rejected by Nats ‘like a piece of spam’.

He replied: ‘Our systems are safety-critical systems, they are dealing with the lives of passengers and the travelling public.

‘So even things like just throwing data away needs to be very carefully considered.

‘If you throw away a critical piece of data you may end up in the next 30 seconds, a minute or an hour with something that then is not right on the screens in front of the controller. So it is nothing like throwing away spam.’

Quizzed on the age of the system and how frequently it needs to be updated, Mr Rolfe added: ‘We have a full programme and we invest £100m a year in new systems and we are constantly evaluating which systems need to be replaced and when. 

‘This is an obviously complex system with safety at the heart of it and the piece of the system we are discussing was replaced quite recently, about five years ago.’

When the failure was first flagged on Monday morning, the system went into its back-up mode – which stores up to four hours of data – rather than risk air-traffic controllers being presented with false information.

As bosses quickly realised the problem wouldn’t be fixed within that four-hour period, they decided to switch to a manual system, where all flight plans have to be entered individually.

This time-consuming process meant that controllers were unable to handle even a percentage of the usual number of aircraft moving in and out of UK airports.

The system was fully restored by 2.30pm on Monday, Mr Rolfe said, but the knock-on effect continues to be felt by passengers, who have been condemned to sleeping on airport floors while desperately waiting for their rescheduled flights.

Aviation analytics company Cirium said 64 flights due to serve UK airports today were cancelled as of 9am – after some 1,585 flights were axed on Monday and a further 345 on Tuesday.

Former British Airways boss Willie Walsh said it was ‘staggering’ that the system was allowed to collapse by a piece of incorrect data. 

Mr Willie, director-general of global airline body the International Air Transport Association (Iata), told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I find it staggering, I really do.

‘This system should be designed to reject data that’s incorrect, not to collapse the system.

‘If that is true, it demonstrates a considerable weakness that must have been there for some time and I’m amazed if that is the cause of this.

‘Clearly we’ll wait for the full evaluation of the problem but that explanation doesn’t stand up from what I know of the system.’

It comes as it emerged that Martin Rolfe, chief executive of National Air Traffic Services, saw his pay double last year to more than £1.3m, after receiving pensions benefits, a £281,000 annual bonus, and a backdated £555,000 long-term incentive plan.

Mr Rolfe declined to answer on whether NATS – or he himself following his personal windfall – should pay as a result of the disruption.

‘At this point, my focus has been entirely on making sure we have recovered the system, which we did on Monday, we were running as normal by 2.30pm,’ he said.

‘We have been supporting and working very closely with the airline CEOs many of whom I’ve spoken to directly to make sure we absolutely get everyone to their destinations as quick as we possibly can, but most importantly, as safely as we possibly can.’ 

Mr Walsh estimated that the chaos will cost airlines around £100million.

He said: ‘It’s very unfair because the air traffic control system which was at the heart of this failure doesn’t pay a single penny.’

The impact continued today with at least a further 42 flights to or from Heathrow cancelled.

Many affected travellers are being told to wait several days for flights home.

Some have been forced to sleep on airport floors or take long routes by land after their flights were cancelled.

Airlines were criticised for failing to book hotel rooms for many people who were delayed overnight.

Rory Boland, editor of consumer magazine Which? Travel, said: ‘We’re seeing worrying reports of passengers being left stranded without support, and airlines failing to properly communicate with their passengers or fulfil their legal obligations such as offering timely rerouting or providing overnight accommodation.

‘In particular, travellers should be aware that their airline has a responsibility to reroute them as soon as possible, even if that means buying them a ticket with a rival carrier – a rule that some airlines appear to be ignoring.

‘Passengers should also be given food and refreshments and overnight accommodation if required.’

EasyJet is operating five repatriation flights to Gatwick, with the first two setting off today.

The airline said: ‘During this traditionally very busy week for travel, options for returning to the UK are more limited on some routes and so easyJet will be operating five repatriation flights to London Gatwick over the coming days from Palma and Faro on August 30, and Tenerife and Enfidha on August 31, and from Rhodes on September 1.

‘We are also operating larger aircraft on key routes including Faro, Ibiza, Dalaman and Tenerife to provide some additional 700 seats this week.’

There is speculation the ATC failure was caused by a French airline submitting a flight plan to Nats in the wrong format.

Downing Street did not rule out that possibility, while Nats declined to comment on whether that was what happened.

The problem resulted in flights to and from UK airports being restricted for several hours on Monday afternoon while flight plans were checked manually.

This caused the cancellation of around 1,500 flights on Monday, with a further 300 axed on Tuesday due to aircraft and crews being out of position.

Mr Rolfe said Nats is working closely with the Civil Aviation Authority to provide a preliminary report into what happened to Transport Secretary Mark Harper.

The conclusions of the inquiry will be made public, he added.

By Mail on Sunday Reporter

Published: 05:07 EDT, 21 August 2023 | Updated: 05:07 EDT, 21 August 2023

Europe’s summer of wild weather continued overnight as a German airport was flooded by ferocious rain and northern Italy was lashed by a thunderstorm… while a 40C heat dome moved in over Italy, Spain and southern France.

The weather on the continent in recent months has been characterised by a north-south divide, with southern Europe suffering from extreme heat as northern and central Europe is battered by powerful storms and deadly flooding.

German authorities said on Thursday that heavy rain led to dozens of flight cancellations at Frankfurt airport, the country’s busiest and a major European hub.

The storm swept over southwest Germany late Wednesday, dumping huge quantities of water and reportedly unleashing over 25,000 bolts of lightning in about an hour. 

The airport said large quantities of water accumulated on the tarmac Wednesday evening and ground handling was suspended for more than two hours, German news agency dpa reported.

Footage from the airport showed the runway was under a deep level of water, while other clips from inside a nearby building showed the water pouring in through broken windows and gaps in the door.

The water level was at least two feet high when shown up against the glass. 

Frankfurt Airport said it was forced to axe 90 flights while 23 more were rerouted to land at other airports. Some passengers slept on camp beds while many spent the night at the airport hotel.

‘Today, the situation will probably stabilise again,’ a spokesman told AFP.

‘There are still passengers here who need to be booked onto new flights.’

The fire service in Germany’s financial capital said they launched over 500 operations from late Wednesday to early Thursday related to the storm.

There were more than 350 instances of water flooding into buildings and 17 fallen trees, they said, adding off-duty personnel were called in to help.

In another video clip, water could be seen rushing down the stairs and an escalator and into the city’s subway system. 

The storm also affected other areas, with Gelsenkirchen, in the region North Rhine-Westphalia, hard hit.

Streets, cellars and lower-lying residential areas were rapidly flooded, while trees toppled over, hitting vehicles, the fire service said.

Emergency service workers rescued people from vehicles at several highway underpasses.

In one area, parked vehicles became submerged and some streets were only passable with inflatable boats.

Experts say that climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of floods.

Elsewhere in Italy, a violent storm hit the province of Turin on Wednesday night, with fire crews being called to downed trees and widespread flooding.

Nighttime footage showed the sky being lit up by flashes of lighting as rain poured down onto streets below in sheets.

This came days after a mountain mudslide sent water, soil and debris pouring into a town in the same region on Sunday.

Witness video showed a huge wave of dirt, water and debris toppling a gate and residents running away as the muck rushed down a city street. Other videos showed thick mud coursing through the river banks that pass through town.

Authorities said all residents of Bardonecchia had been accounted for. 

As parts of Germany and Italy experience flooding, southern Europe is bracing itself for yet another heatwave after all-time temperature records tumbled earlier this year.

From Thursday, a powerful heatwave is forecast to expand across western Europe, as well as towards central parts of the continent.

The weather formation forecast for the region is known as a heat dome, which sees hot air expanding up into the atmosphere before being pushed down by high pressure, causing the air to warm as it is compressed towards ground level.

The phenomenon has been likened to having a lid on a cooking pot.

Last week, a heatwave saw temperatures reach towards 47C, with Valencia smashing its all time highest temperature on record.

In Turkey, meanwhile, the country recorded 50C+ for the first time.

In the coming days, temperatures in parts of southern France and southern Italy are forecast to reach the low-40C mark, while ground temperatures could reach as high as 50C in south-Spain, according to weather tracking platform Ventusky.

High temperatures in Europe have brought wildfires with them. 

On Tuesday a blaze ravaged homes and holiday campsites in a British tourist hotspot in France, forcing the evacuation of 3,000 people. 

The blazing wildfires ripped through 500 hectares of land and saw thousands of terrified tourists flee for their lives from their holiday homes and campsites in the popular holiday region of Pyrenees-Orientales, southern France.

Britons have told how panicked families who had quickly packed their belongings and fled campsites in the commune of Saint-Andre in their cars became trapped in traffic jams after they realised they were in fact heading towards the quickly expanding flames of the wildfire. 

Zak Dhabalia, 55, a retired British hedge fund manager who lives in the nearby village of Sorede and saw the flames come perilously close to his home, said it was an ‘extraordinary and terrifying experience for us all’.

Dhabalia, who lives with his French wife Sylvie Dhabalia, told MailOnline it was ‘terrifying’ to see how quickly the wildfire spread across the vineyards towards the campsites which were gutted by the flames, adding that he could hear gas canisters exploding at the site.

Harrowing photographs showed the extent of the damage caused by the wildfires, with the gutted remains of homes seen in Saint-Andre. Cars were incinerated and a campsite was destroyed by the blaze. 

Bordering on Spain, the Pyrenees-Orientales region has been affected worse than any other French region by a devastating drought. 

Last week, firefighters battled another wildfire near the southwestern city of Bordeaux that forced around 8,000 people to flee their homes and holiday villas.

Authorities in Spain’s northern Basque Country region said France had stopped freight trucks from crossing the border at Irun due to the fire.

Elsewhere in Europe, Greece, Italy, Algeria and Tunisia combined lost more than 1,350 square kilometers (520 square miles) to blazes that affected 120,000 people in late July, according to European Union estimates.

Last week, a series of wildfires ripped through Portugal and neighbouring Spain as temperatures soared to over 44C, forcing the evacuation of thousands of holidaymakers from villages and campsites. 

The popular holiday island of Rhodes – known for its sparkling beeches and ancient Greek sites – was also ravaged by wildfires for 11 days last month. 

After thousands of people were evacuated during the height of travel season, Rhodes is weighing how the crisis will affect its vital tourism sector, which fuels most of its economy and some 20 per cent of Greece’s.

It’s the same for other Mediterranean destinations such as Italy and Spain, where the tourism sector is also being hit by heat waves and wildfires.

Climate scientists say heat waves are more intense, more frequent and longer because of climate change — and coupled with droughts have made wildfires harder to fight.

They say climate change will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

‘Climate change kills,’ Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said last month during a visit to the Extremadura region, the site of three major blazes. ‘It kills people, it kills our ecosystems and biodiversity.’ 

Wildfires raging through Europe this summer have so far burned the second-largest area on record, even though the region is only halfway through its typical fire season, according to data from the European Union’s Joint Research Centre. 

Southern European countries such as Portugal and Greece experience fires most summers, but hotter temperatures are pushing severe wildfire risk north, with Germany, Slovenia and the Czech Republic among those hit this season. 

In stark contrast to the wildfires seen in France, Spain, Greece, Croatia and southern Italy in recent weeks, northern Italy and Scandinavia have been hit by devastating floods and storms.

In the Italian town of Bardonecchia, near Turin in the Val di Susa valley, a ‘tsunami of mud’ crashed through the streets on Sunday, sending people fleeing for their lives. 

Dramatic video shows the churning river of mud forming a huge wave as it burst its banks and slammed into a street following heavy rain.

Horrified residents and tourists were sent running for their lives as the ‘mud tsunami’ smashed through a gate and sent debris flying towards them on Sunday evening.

Further video shows a thick wall of mud thundering down the river banks that pass through the Alpine town, blanketing cars with debris.

Rescuers desperately searched for five people believed to have been missing following the mudslide but authorities later said all residents had been accounted for and there were no victims. 

Italy has been faced with a series of deadly floods and storms in recent months, with 13 people killed in May after a devastating flood tore through homes in the popular holiday region of Emilia-Romagna. 

Desperate families, including young children and the elderly, had to clamber on to their roofs in the tourist hotspot as they waited anxiously for rescuers to reach them in helicopters.  

In the city of Cesena locals were forced to swim through the submerged streets, past sunken cars and floating furniture, to reach higher ground.

Last month, severe storms also battered the north of Italy, killing two woman and a 16-year-old girl scout. 

The overnight storm on July 25 saw roofs torn off and hundreds of trees uprooted in Milan. Roads were blocked and cars were smashed by the debris.

Two women were killed in the northern Monza and Brescia provinces after being crushed by falling trees, while a teenager was seriously injured when he was hit by a falling branch in the Veneto region.

In the area around nearby Brescia, a 16-year-old girl on a scout camp was killed when a tree fell on her tent, according to Italian news agencies. Firefighters evacuated the other members of the camp, taking them to a sports hall nearby, ANSA said. 

Tourist attractions also bore the brunt of the bad weather, as the Sforza Castle was shut after some tiles were brought down and rain was heavy enough to penetrate the glass-vaulted Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan’s famed shopping arcade. 

Elsewhere in Europe, a 135mph tornado toppled a construction crane in Switzerland last month, killing one person, while ripping roofs off buildings. Storms also lashed France and Germany with torrential rain flooding streets in Berlin. 

And last week, heavy rains triggered landslides and flooding across southern Norway and Sweden, forcing communities to evacuate.

The Norwegian dam at the Braskereidfoss hydroelectric power plant, on the Glåma, Norway’s longest and most voluminous river, burst on Wednesday after days of rain. 

It caused devastating floods, with footage showing wooden cabins floating down overflowing rivers. One clip shows a mobile home crashing into a bridge on Norway’s Hemsilar river.

People were seen standing on the bridge as they watched caravans being swept away, crashing into the bridge and being crushed under the weight.

Julianne Moore and her husband Bart Freundlich share a kiss while arriving at airport in the Hamptons

By Amy Lamare For Dailymail.Com

Published: 14:42 EDT, 12 August 2023 | Updated: 15:02 EDT, 12 August 2023

British doctor is murdered in Cape Town after taking a wrong turn at airport and getting caught up in violent strike by cab drivers

• Tourist was with two family members when he drove into township of Nyanga
• Do you have more information? Email elena.salvoni@mailonline.co.uk

By Elena Salvoni

Published: 07:46 EDT, 9 August 2023 | Updated: 08:22 EDT, 9 August 2023