France braces for another day of sweltering heat as Europe heatwave spreads

The heat caused the first major power outage in the country, with around 68,000 homes left without power in the north-western Finistère region on Tuesday evening due to a problem with a transformer, authorities said. Power is not expected to be restored for everyone until the end of Wednesday at the earliest.Elsewhere in the Maine and Loire region, more than 150 firefighters were deployed to fight a major fire on Tuesday in the Breignon forest in Saint-Macaire-du-Bois. It was brought under control overnight, authorities said.Sights in the French capital Paris have also been impacted by the hot weather.The world's most visited museum, the Louvre, said it was bringing forward its closing time from Wednesday to Saturday from 18:00 to 16:00 local time. The Louvre said its historic building "remains fragile, external and is not sufficiently adapted to Climate Change", adding that the "build-up of heat is at its highest at the end of the day, and intensified by the volume of visitors".In France, among those who died in heatwave-related incidents was a 13-year-old girl who had gone for a dip with her family in the River Seine at Fontaine-La Port on Sunday evening, although she did not know how to swim.Several drownings have also been reported in Germany.