Did Jared Kushner get scammed over his Albanian resort?

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Welcome back to the Europeans.

It's hot and I hate everything, but we are here to distract you from what feels like heat wave number 17 or something this year.

This is Katie in the hellish fan oven that is Paris.

Dominic is sitting on a beach in Wales this week, so I'm joined by producer Wojciech in Warsaw.

Wojciech, how much should I hate you right now? What's the temperature?

where you are.

So it's weirdly manageable.

I mean, we don't really have even a summer here.

It's been like 15 or 18 degrees Celsius and lots of rain, which, you know, is not perfect for the kids, but it's definitely better than the heatwave that the rest of Europe is experiencing.

Yeah, it's definitely a summer of extremes on this continent.

I mean, yeah, this podcast is coming to you a week after 12 people lost their lives in a forest fire in southern Spain.

Horrific, horrific tragedy.

And actually, I was reading that the real death toll is very likely going to be much higher due to the smoke.

Like, we don't even know how high.

So, yeah, our hearts go out to everyone affected.

And...

I've just been feeling this grip of anxiety around my heart for a few summers now.

I didn't used to feel this way about summer.

And maybe part of that is that I used to just be carefree and young and now I'm not.

But mostly I think this is just what it feels like to live on the fastest warming continent on earth right now.

It's a very weird and quite horrible feeling.

Yeah, I think this is hitting really hard this year, especially that I think the new areas were covered by this extreme heat.

Like usually it was obviously, you know, the Iberian Peninsula, then Italy, Greece, and now it's like really going north.

And I can also see that a lot of people are feeling this on their own skin, which, you know, is something everyone was warning us about.

And it is here now.

Have you been just trying to keep your mind off things by watching the World Cup?

Well, yeah, kind of.

I mean, you know, my older son wants to be a footballer, so it's a mandatory watch for all of us.

Whether I'm excited about watching the 17th football game this week or not.

But yeah, you know, it's getting into final stages.

We're recording this on Monday, so it's pre-semifinals.

Yes.

And it is getting a bit exciting, I have to say.

My sister-in-law set up a family sweepstake, like a gambling game.

And yeah, I'm going to do quite well out of it because my kids got Spain and Argentina, two of the semifinalists.

And the other two countries are the two that I have a vague sense of loyalty to, which is England and France.

So whatever happens, I'm going to win like either a little bit of national pride or 20 British pounds.

In the British balance, you have a lot of stakes in this game.

I'm really jealous because I have no stakes.

I'm excited.

Poland didn't even qualify luckily, so I could watch it with a peace of mind.