The Mediterranean of our ancestors is no more.

Scientists say climate change, caused mainly by burning oil, coal and gas, is making the Mediterranean Sea hotter, bringing hundreds of new and invasive fish species that decimate indigenous populations.

As wildfires rage in France and Spain and a renewed heat wave is bearing down on Western Europe, a prolonged drought half a continent away is setting record low water levels on one of Europe's largest rivers, disrupting tourism and industry and confronting residents with the realities of climate change.

The Danube River, which runs through 10 countries from southwestern Germany to the Black Sea, has receded to never-before-seen lows along much of its course, exposing rocks, sand bars and old shipwrecks that have rarely been seen before.

Russian attacks across Ukraine overnight into Thursday killed at least eight people and wounded dozens of others, officials said, with the heaviest casualties and aftermath reported in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk and western Lviv regions.

The attacks were the latest in a series of large-scale Russian strikes on Ukrainian cities that Russia has intensified over the summer, now occurring on a nearly weekly basis.

French authorities gave the go-ahead Thursday for 84,000 evacuees forced out by a monster wildfire to go back to their homes in southwest France, the strongest sign yet that firefighters are turning a corner in their battle against the flames that have burned an area four times the size of Paris.

The authorized returns announced Thursday covered nine localities that had been evacuated. In all, more than 220,000 people were forced to flee their homes since last week.

Strikes launched by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia against Iran-allied fighters in Iraq have put Iraq's government in a delicate position — and not for the first time.

Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Iraq has walked a tightrope between Washington and Tehran, seeking to avoid becoming a battleground for rival powers. The balancing act has only grown more fraught since the U.S. and Israel went to war with Iran in February.

A Lebanese judge issued an order Wednesday that could lead to the arrest of prominent banker Antoun Sehnaoui if he returns to Lebanon over allegations of collaboration with Israel and violating laws prohibiting contact with Israelis, state media reported.

The order came days after Sehnaoui dined in Washington with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman has met with U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment publicly about the private meeting.

The defense minister conveyed Wednesday the view of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto leader, that Iran has lost leverage in Syria and Lebanon but is still managing to provide support to the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq, according to one of the people familiar with Prince Khalid's talks with Trump and Vance.

The stop-start fighting between the United States and Iran appears to have entered a new phase as Saudi Arabia has publicly joined military escalations against Tehran-backed proxies. At the same time, an already untenable diplomatic effort to end the war has faltered once again as mistrust deepens between the longtime adversaries.

Despite several days of relative calm, both sides carried out military strikes in the last 24 hours that once again risk a return to all-out war — and further expansion in the region — while little is clear about what strategy, if any, American or Iranian officials have for a path forward.

Jordan's air defenses shot down five missiles launched from Iran Thursday morning, the country's state-run Petra news agency said, hours after the U.S. military announced it had completed "a heavy wave of strikes against Iran" in response to an earlier Iranian missile attack on a U.S. base in Jordan.

No casualties were reported from Jordan's interception of the missiles, the news agency quoted the spokesman for the country's armed forces as saying.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the U.S. military will be hitting Iran "hard" after a missile attack against U.S. bases in Jordan, Fox News reported.

"We'll be hitting them hard. They're going to get a beating," Fox's correspondent quoted Trump as saying, adding that the U.S. president used swear words to emphasize his point: "We are going to beat the 'effing s' out of them."