Deaths surged by nearly a third in France during the hottest week of a record heat wave last month, the country's public health authority said Friday, reporting at least 2,000 more deaths than in the previous week when temperatures were already climbing and filling emergency wards with heat victims.

The new and still incomplete figures from Public Health France doubled its first preliminary estimate of at least 1,000 additional deaths that it gave last Sunday. That earlier estimate covered just three of the hottest days of extreme, deadly heat.

In the village of Kfaroue in southern Lebanon, Hussein Hamza makes his daily rounds to feed and check on his furry and feathered charges.

The number of animals in his care has multiplied since the outbreak of the latest Israeli war, as hundreds of thousands of southern Lebanon residents fled and were unable to take their pets or farm animals. In other cases, the owners were killed in Israeli airstrikes. Some animals came to him wounded.

Mourners filed through Damascus on Friday, a day after an explosive device set off in a cafe in the Syrian capital killed nine people.

The funeral procession in the normally bustling Midan neighborhood carried the coffins of three of the blast victims. Another 20 were wounded in the explosion at a popular cafe near the capital's main judicial complex, which was often frequented by lawyers.

Iran prepared Friday for the dayslong funeral of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with banners across Tehran urging the public to rise up in support of the Islamic Republic after the devastating war that killed the 86-year-old cleric.

The country's theocracy plans to see millions flood the streets of the capital beginning Saturday in scenes reminiscent to the burial of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989.

President Donald Trump has berated and belittled many of his European counterparts expected to attend next week's NATO summit in Turkey. But host Recep Tayyip Erdogan has drawn on his close ties with the U.S. president to secure his presence at the Ankara event — an appearance that may even come with a significant gift related to Turkish defense.

Trump has frequently lavished praise on the Turkish president, calling him a "hell of a leader" and a good friend. "I would not have gone for most people," Trump said last week. "But he called me up. He said: 'Please, I have it in Turkey. You got to be there. The United States has to be in there.' And so I'm going out of respect to President Erdogan."

Although Spain arrived at this year's World Cup as a championship favorite and then went unbeaten through group play, those first three matches weren't overly impressive.

When the knockout rounds finally arrived Thursday, this star-studded team turned on its full talent and served notice that Spain can be just as good as everybody thought — and it's probably getting better.

Knockout matches continue Wednesday at the World Cup in the round of 32 with 2010 champion Spain advancing with a 3-0 victory over Austria in Inglewood, California, just outside Los Angeles. Portugal, led by Cristiano Ronaldo in his sixth World Cup tournament, edged 2018 finalist Croatia 2-1 in Toronto, while Switzerland beat Algeria 2-0 in Vancouver, British Columbia in the late game.

Despite severe fuel shortages across Russia, President Vladimir Putin appears unbothered by Ukraine's increasing attacks on his country's oil refineries.

He has shrugged off the setback for one of the world's leading oil producing nations as "not critical," dismissed ceasefire proposals and insisted the war will continue until his goals are met.

Months after the killing of Iran's supreme leader at the start of its war with the United States and Israel, mourners will hold a dayslong funeral and burial for the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The mourning period will see Khamenei's body carried through cities in both Iran and neighboring Iraq. Iran's theocracy likely will encourage the public, government employees and paramilitary forces to fill the streets in his honor.

China and the European Union will hold ministerial-level trade talks once or twice a year, China's Commerce Ministry said Thursday, as the two sides work to increase and rebalance trade.

The EU faces growing pressure to reduce its trade deficit with China, which widened to about 360 billion euros ($410 billion) last year, nearly 1 billion euros a day. Chinese cars and batteries are among items increasingly exported to Europe.