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The Champions League has seen Newcastle at its finest, complete with the surreal vision of Sean Longstaff upstaging Kylian Mbappe. There is a temptation to imagine Dan Burn is still somewhere in the Tyneside sky, soaring above Milan Skriniar to head in against Paris Saint-Germain. There is a similar temptation to say that Newcastle were brought down to earth by Borussia Dortmund. It may be more accurate to say Eddie Howe never left it. He met one of his most celebrated predecessors, Kevin Keegan, on Monday. The former Magpies boss was a dreamer. “You have to be,” said Howe, with Keegan’s example leading him to entertain the prospect of winning the Champions League. But Howe isn’t a dreamer, not really, anyway. A day, a defeat and a downpour later, he reflected: “We have to be at our best to win and if you dip below that it is tough to get results at this level.” And in this pool, the most competitive of all, Newcastle have to be at their best to claim victory in a match, let alone the entire competition. They were against Paris Saint-Germain; they were not against Dortmund. At a stroke – the right boot of Felix Nmecha, replacing Jude Bellingham this season, or of bad luck, as Callum Wilson and Anthony Gordon both struck the woodwork – they may have been rebranded: potential winners, the team who tore PSG apart, could instead exit early. They now have successive away games, with the evidence that Dortmund are well equipped to play against them ahead of a trip to Germany next. “We're up against elite teams,” Howe said. “You make half a mistake and get punished.” If there is a truth to that – and Nmecha’s winner was scarcely the consequence of a glaring error – the greater issue was that Newcastle did not reach their heights. “We probably weren’t at our best and in this competition we have to be.” Howe said. They have days when they overwhelm opponents: 4-1 against PSG, 6-1 against Tottenham. But their quality is most evident when allied with a blur of energy. And when there isn’t that synergy of physical and technical that makes them appear unstoppable, they are a fundamentally workmanlike side who betray their origins. Which, as they spent much of a 1-0 loss to Dortmund with six players on the pitch who Howe inherited, is a group who have overachieved: look beyond the £400m spend, the concept of Saudi Arabian sportswashing and the grandiose ambitions, and some of them were in a relegation battle two years ago. A Champions League loss represented progress in that context. But if there were symbolic substitutions of the locals Longstaff and Burn, stripped of the superhuman powers they somehow possessed against PSG, perhaps the reality is that they could have been beaten twice in three games. Nick Pope’s heroics brought a point in Milan; he was similarly good against Dortmund but in vain. They have drawn a blank twice in three matches. They had a lone, late shot on target in San Siro. While they hit the woodwork twice, they only actually had three on target against Dortmund, and just one in the last 80 minutes. “In the second half the ball just wouldn’t go in for us,” Howe said. It was a legitimate lament, yet there are days when a shortage of natural creativity, of game-changing flair, of a natural No 10 can threaten to be their undoing. Edin Terzic arrowed in on Newcastle’s strengths. “A team that was pressing high with a very intense approach,” the Dortmund manager noted. It is a strategy that can serve Newcastle well but running alone did not unlock the Bundesliga’s runners-up. Moving Kieran Trippier into midfield in the second half was an attempt to get United’s best creator into a more advanced role. He may be required there more often. Sandro Tonali was not hired as a fantasista but he was designed to bring an injection of class. But his season seems over: not officially yet, but a ban beckons. Elliot Anderson has joined the injury list. In the forward line, Newcastle, already without Harvey Barnes for months, seem to be losing Jacob Murphy for a similar time with a dislocated shoulder. For Alexander Isak, a recurrence of a groin strain means he will play again soonest, but be out for a while. They are starting to look short of players. “There are some tired bodies,” Howe said. And Newcastle can require a physical edge, especially in meetings of evenly-matched teams. “A lesson in how fine the margins are going to be,” Howe rued. Particularly in Group F: this pool, of pedigree and money, of former winners and clubs who aspire to join them in that select group, may be the most intriguing. It is a product of circumstances. Newcastle’s lack of a recent record in Europe meant they were fourth seeds. Now they are plunged into peril. “The table looks very, very tight,” Howe said; his side kicked off in first, finished the night in third and could be out of the competition before they host AC Milan in it. They will always have Paris, but now the danger is their Champions League campaign in effect ends in the French capital. Read More Newcastle given Champions League reality check as summer decision returns to haunt them Eddie Howe provides update on Alexander Isak and Jacob Murphy injuries after Borussia Dortmund defeat England’s Euro 2024 squad: Who’s on the plane, who’s in contention and who has work to do?

A British family was forced to flee in the middle of the night as the wildfires ravaging parts of Greece broke out in Corfu on Sunday evening and came within metres of their holiday home. Rebecca Bell, 50, of Sheffield, was among those who received an evacuation order via a text message overnight as dozens of blazes erupted on the western island, with more than 2,000 people moved to safety. “It did feel like the end of the world yesterday,” she told The Independent from the village of Sinies, describing the intensity of the heat, “banks of flames” cascading down the hillside, and a “yellow glow of fire” in the sky. The blaze broke out in the northern part of Corfu, which is popular with British tourists, on Sunday evening, with those in Sinies, Santa, Megoula, Porta and Palia Perithia told to evacuate to Kasiopi. Have you been affected by this story? Email tara.cobham@independent.co.uk Firefighters have struggled through the night to contain 82 wildfires across Greece, 64 of which started on Sunday, the hottest day of the summer so far, amid strong winds and successive heatwaves driven by the climate crisis. The most serious fire was on the island of Rhodes, where 19,000 people had been evacuated from several locations as wildfires burned for a sixth day, Greek authorities said, in what was "the largest evacuation from a wildfire in the country". Ms Bell, who works for a technology company, arrived at their rented villa in Sinies on Friday with her husband, Mat Pennell, their 18-year-old daughter, and the teenager’s friend for the family’s two-week summer holiday. They were all about to leave for dinner on Sunday evening when they received the evacuation order. But, unable to see flames, only smoke, and reassured by the villa owner, they decided to continue with their evening plans. It was when they got into the car after eating and attempted to return to the villa that was the most frightening moment, she said. “We saw banks of flames coming down the hillside and realised it was serious.” The roads to the village were shut and police cordons were in place, but the family were allowed to collect their passports from the villa. “We packed up in 10 minutes and threw everything into the car,” said Ms Bell. “I’ve never packed a bag that quickly in my life. “When we were up there by the villa it was hot, you could feel the heat. The fire was perhaps about 400 metres from our villa.” She spoke of giant fire and water trucks driving up the hill as they were coming back down. The family went to the evacuation point Kasiopi but said there was nothing happening there, so they sat in the car until about 2am when they realised they would not be making it back to the villa that night. “It felt weird driving around like, ‘What do we do now?’ It was bizarre, very disaster movie-esque,” said Ms Bell. They spoke with a local businessperson who let the family stay in his home for the night. “Because we had rented privately it was down to us to work out our next move, and we ended up with some kind strangers,” Ms Bell said. “My husband and I slept on the sofa in the man’s living room, which was super kind and amazing to be so welcoming to people in such a crazy situation.” She said they did not sleep a huge amount and heard helicopters presumably dropping water on the hillside at sunrise. The family managed to make it back to the villa on Monday morning, shortly before receiving a text message that advised people to return to their accommodation as “the situation is under control and the fire is receding”. Ms Bell said smoke can still be seen rising in the hills but the yellow glow of fire has been replaced by clear skies. “The fire looked pretty close to the villa, but nothing has burned,” she said, adding: “Safety first, but I am very glad the holiday plans didn’t go to rack and ruin.” Read More Greece fires – live: Corfu evacuations begin as tourists fleeing Rhodes inferno spend second night in airport ‘Like hell on earth’: Brits evacuated from Rhodes describe devastating Greek wildfires Greece wildfires: Everything you need to know How to tell if you have Covid or heatstroke Why do heatwaves in the UK feel hotter than abroad?

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Florida governor and 2024 candidate Ron DeSantis continued his long-running rivalry with California governor Gavin Newsrom on Wednesday, claiming on Fox News that Californians are fleeing the state for Florida. “For decades in this country, people have beaten a path to California. It’s a beautiful state, great topography, all kinds diversity in terms of the different communities you can live in, and yet they never lost population until their current governor took office,” Mr DeSantis said. “Now they’re hemorrhaging wealth, now they’re hemorrhaging people…I never saw California license plates [in Florida] until the last 4 years.” Indeed, states like California and New York lost population in 2022, while Florida saw the biggest gains in in-migration, adding nearly 319,000 people, according to data from the National Association of Realtors. Experts attribute the changes to factors like the pandemic and taxes. Mr DeSantis also claimed he witnessed shocking street crime during a recent visit to what he’s taken to calling the “once-great city” of San Francisco. “I saw people defecating on the side walk. I saw people in an open-air drug market using fentanyl,” Mr DeSantis said. In a campaign ad released on Tuesday, Mr DeSantis blamed vague “leftist policies,” including a supposed refusal to prosecute criminals, and “riff raff running around” for San Francisco’s “collapse.” The remark was a likely reference to the false notion that progressive prosecutors in San Francisco refused to go after crime because they sometimes sought prison diversion programmes. Analysis from Mission Local shows that prosecutors like the recalled Chesa Boudin filed about as many charges as any other prosecutor in the city since 2011, while city police data shows overall crime and larceny theft on a downward trend in the years before and during when Mr Boudin was in office. In fact, violent crime rates have largely been declining in San Francisco since peaking in the 1990s, with the beginning of 2022 marking the lowest level of reported violent crime since 1985, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. According to data compiled by the CDC, Florida has a higher homicide rate per capita than California and a higher rate of drug overdose mortality. Read More ‘Small, pathetic man’: Inside the bitter rivalry between Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom New study says high housing costs, low income push Californians into homelessness Trump faces questions about whether he'll drag down the Republican Party after his indictments