In your briefing today:

📣 A search for survivors has continued overnight after a powerful earthquake struck Japan. The death toll from the 7.1 magnitude quake stands at 13, with rescuers still searching the rubble of the Aeon Mall and the Nippon paper factory, both of which collapsed.

📣 FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s plan to create a $20 billion company to run the World Cup has been met by a storm of opposition, led by the European soccer body UEFA who said: “It’s not FIFA’s to sell”.

FIFA, which is working with J.P. Morgan, sees intended investors include Thrive Eternal, launched by Joshua Kushner, whose brother Jared Kushner is Donald Trump’s son-in-law. (CNN)

📣 Another member of Scotland’s emergent band of far-right thugs has been accused of being a vicious bully who abused his partners. Alan Miller was spotted rioting on Glasgow Green last weekend, and had previously attended a demo to “Save Our Women and Kids”. (Daily Record has the exclusive)

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📣 The death of a 35-year-old woman in Renfrewshire is being treated as murder. Stacy Mair, 35, was found dead alongside a 43-year-old man on Monday evening. (STV)

📣 Doctors say new walk-in GP clinics are an expensive failure, with 7,000 patients using the service between February and June. (Express)

📣 The company behind a row of tax-evading gift shops located in the Princes Street building which went on fire earlier this month did not secure necessary building warrants prior to re-fitting the former Debenhams department store. (The Herald has the exclusive)

📣 The Herald has ranked Scotland’s “most exciting” artists: Wendy McMurdo, “Scotland’s pre-eminent fine art photographer” who has a retrospective on at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, comes top. (Herald)

📣 Four thousand people have been evacuated from tourist sites on France’s Atlantic coast as the return of winds and extreme heat hampers firefighters’ battles to contain wildfires there. (Guardian)

📣 Andy Burnham is seeking cross-party consensus on reforming social care in England and Wales - inviting Conservative and Lib Dem leaders for talks, but not Reform UK’s Nigel Farage. (Guardian)

📣 There’s been a further surge in hostilities in the Gulf region: Jordan intercepted Iranian missiles overnight, after the US shot down another barrage launched against its forces. (AP)

📣 Zack Polanski has refused to apologise to Nigel Farage for re-posting a photo of a man wearing a t-shirt with an image of a guillotine and the slogan "we're only making plans for Nigel". Reform UK has reported the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, saying the image could be “incitement to murder”. (BBC)

📣 Hearts were outclassed again by Sturm Graz as they slumped to a home 2-0 defeat, taking their aggregate battering by the Austrians to 6-0 in this brief Champions League qualifying campaign. (BBC)

🏅 It was another medal-winning day for Scottish athletes at the Commonwealth Games.

🗣️ We looked yesterday at the wildfires that hit the Cairngorms and which are, mercifully, now under control - not least thanks to Scottish weather’s intervention, with rain and colder weather helping.

On the continent, things are far from under control. The Telegraph shows the scale of Europe’s wildfires crisis this summer in words, pictures and data: lives are being lost, property destroyed and landscapes scarred at record rates - and it’s still only July.

Now the weather is about to make things tougher.

Temperatures will soar across Europe this week, after a brief respite from the sort of heat in recent weeks that has even locals complaining. It’s exactly what the firefighters tackling blazes across the continent, but especially near Bordeaux, don’t want to hear.

Not only are conditions almost intolerable as they try to get the huge wildfire there under control - temperatures, even away from the flames, will come close to 40c today. The light winds and warmth will encourage their spread, once more, after a couple of days in which conditions conspired to help firefighters.

Despite the conditions, volunteers are now heading into the countryside around the city to scout and douse fires as they spring up. James C. Reynolds rides with them, and hears from one volunteer who calls it “a war against the fire”.

“Many of the helpers had eyes reddened and voices broken by the thick smoke in the air, or were patching up burns and blisters with plasters upon plasters while huge columns of smoke continued to billow just over a mile away,” reports Reynolds.

The war analogy has also been used by French President Emmanuel Macron, who has said France is facing its most difficult situation since the Second World War.

Cameron Henderson, another UK journalist riding with the firefighters, describes the scene vividly: he says “driving through the forest of Cap Ferret, a once-idyllic holiday retreat for millionaires, now feels ghoulish.

Further south in Spain, a huge fire near Madrid continues to cause concern, and the country is pock-marked with other wildfires, but there are reports of “light at the end of the tunnel” - despite the same heatwave also lifting temperatures in parts to 40c.

The optimism comes too late for many, of course: the Mail reports today on a British couple who saw their “Casa de los Suenos – House of Dreams” destroyed in hours by the wildfires. Pictured in the charred remains of their three-bedroom farmhouse, they still say they’re the lucky ones: 13 people, including seven Britons, died in the blaze that consumed their home.

📣 Thank you to the readers who hit reply to give their thoughts after reading yesterday’s coverage of the debate about having helicopters available to Scottish Fire and Rescue in order to douse wildfires.

One correspondent - who I’ll not name because I haven’t had the opportunity to ask if he’d mind me quoting him - is a retired aerospace professional who worked on a Canadian water bomber.

He points out helicopters aren’t really what you need for fires: they are “mere pinpricks on a major fire” because of their “tiny payloads [and] single shot buckets.”

Planes, then, are what you need - and, presumably, available quickly once a fire has broken out. And that would cost real money. As another reader, sceptical of the purpose of firefighting helicopters, points out: “Let’s see the screams when you put the Fire Suppression Surcharge on everyone's council tax.”

Thanks for sharing your expertise, all!

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