A ceasefire sounds straightforward: Fighting stops. Negotiations ensue. Ordinary citizens get a break from fighting — and some time to rebuild.

That's not what's happening in the volatile Mideast, where ongoing fighting still resembles a war long after ceasefire agreements were announced and President Donald Trump declared victory.

A powerful storm struck Romania 's capital overnight into Wednesday, killing one person and causing flooding in 20 counties following an intense heatwave.

The torrential storm hit 60 localities, and emergency services pumped water from more than 350 houses and 100 streets, according to the General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations, or IGSU.

The European Union rolled out two measures to protect its steel industry and limit e-commerce small parcels on Wednesday as the 27-nation bloc grapples with its staggering trade imbalance with China.

"Today's change is about restoring fairness for European businesses and better protecting our consumers," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in an online post praising a new 3 euro ($3.42) customs duty on small packages. "The surge in low-value online imports has put our retailers at an unfair disadvantage. Too many of these products also fail to meet EU safety standards, putting consumers at risk."

The World Cup is in the lose-and-go-home stage of the tournament and the pressure keeps rising with every minute of every match.

The biggest pressure cooker of them all: the penalty kick shootout. Exhausted players and goalkeepers face off in a tense one-on-one confrontation that carries the hopes and dreams of entire nations.

The first Parliament in Syria's post-Assad era took shape Wednesday with the release of a list of 70 legislators picked up by interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa.

The inauguration of the new Parliament shows the country is moving ahead with drafting laws as the nation works on recovering from decades of iron-fist rule under the Assad family and a deadly war that has killed about half a million people.

Tourists from Chattanooga check into beach resorts in Cancun. Canadian auto parts feed factories in the American Midwest – and vice versa. Happy Hour revelers raise glasses of Mexican tequila and mezcal at bars in Seattle.

It adds up. The United States trades $1.9 trillion a year -- $5 billion a day – worth of goods and services with its neighbors, Canada and Mexico. They have supplanted China as America's top two trading partners.

Global shares were mixed on Wednesday as uncertainty persisted over conflict in the Middle East and access to the crucial Strait of Hormuz despite an initial deal to end the U.S.-Iran war.

France's CAC 40 declined 0.3% in early trading to 8,379.92, while the German DAX added 0.3% to 25,069.53. Britain's FTSE 100 dipped 0.1% to 10,484.53.

A ship ran aground in the Strait of Hormuz after not running Iran's approved route through the water, Iranian state television reported Wednesday. The report identified the affected vessel as a foreign container ship, but offered no other immediate details.

The Iranian state TV report appeared aimed at underlining the claims Tehran has made since the U.S.-Iran war to control over the strait, which has long been considered by the world as an international waterway and saw a fifth of all oil and natural gas pass through it in peacetime.

Three pre-dawn firebomb attacks apparently targeting the residences of members of Greece's governing conservative New Democracy party have left five people hospitalized, authorities said Wednesday.

The attacks between 4 a.m. and 4:45 a.m. outside apartment buildings in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki used crude explosive devices made with camping gas canisters. All the injuries were sustained from the last of the three attacks, where cars and motorcycles were set ablaze, police said.

Ice. Urgently and in large quantities.

At a Paris-region hospital, emergency medics needed it to plunge patients into cold-water baths to speedily bring down their temperatures so they wouldn't join the growing tally of dead from a record-smashing heat wave. But lacking an ice-making machine, where to get it?