France reports 74 drowning deaths

Laurent Nuñez, France's Interior Minister, said in an interview with Le Parisien published on Saturday that most drowning fatalities occurred in unauthorised and unsupervised bodies of water, particularly rivers, lakes and ponds, as well as in private swimming pools.

He explained that many of the incidents were linked to thermal shock and, in some cases, excessive physical activity, adding that authorities had also recorded a significant number of deaths caused by cardiac arrest.

Germany sets new temperature record

Meanwhile, the German Weather Service reported, based on preliminary data, that the country had set a new national temperature record after temperatures reached 41.5°C in the town of Möckern-Drewitz, in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.

The new record surpassed the 41.3°C recorded on Friday in Burbach, near Saarbrücken, the capital of Saarland. That mark was broken again on Saturday when the same weather station registered 41.4°C, before Möckern-Drewitz recorded 41.5°C, the highest temperature ever documented in Germany.