Turkey is interested in participating in a new security initiative for Lebanon when the 7,500-member U.N. peacekeeping mission in the south of the country expires at the end of the year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a joint press statement with his Lebanese counterpart on Thursday.

Last year, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to terminate the peacekeeping mission known as UNIFIL, bowing to demands from the United States and its close ally, Israel. The U.N. is now considering options to help end the decades-old conflict between Lebanon's Hezbollah and Israel.

Houthi rebels in Yemen said they attacked Saudi oil facilities. The Saudis blamed militias in Iraq and joined the United States in bombing them. Iran fired missiles at Jordan. Drones set ships ablaze in Egypt.

But it's not actually as complicated as it sounds, and it's all related to the broader war between the United States and Iran, currently focused on the Strait of Hormuz.

Keepers at Prague Zoo used tons of ice on Thursday to give its animals some much-needed relief as yet another heat wave hit Europe.

Polar bears Aleut and Gregor wasted no time and were rolling in the beds of ice cubes after entering their outside enclosure.

The blue-and-white Israeli flags flutter from hilltops and line the roads of the occupied West Bank, signaling the growing presence of Israeli settlements and the outposts they're building on Palestinian land.

For shepherds in the Jordan Valley, as well as in Masafer Yatta, a cluster of villages in the southern West Bank, the flags and expanding settlements have become inescapable features of the landscape, reminders of how daily life has narrowed.

Most Americans say the war in Iran has not been worth fighting, and President Donald Trump's approval rating on Iran has fallen slightly since last month, according to a new AP-NORC poll.

The results are a stark repudiation of Trump's approach to the conflict, which has dragged on far longer than he originally predicted.

FIFA lodged disciplinary charges against two Argentina players Wednesday for striking Spain opponents moments after the World Cup final and charged Argentina's soccer federation for players showing a political banner about the Falkland Islands after beating England in the semifinals.

A list of disciplinary cases opened by FIFA against Argentina also include "discriminatory chants and gestures" by fans, alleged assault by an assistant coach after the final and "throwing of objects by spectators in relation to several matches" at the World Cup.

From his vineyards in Bordeaux wine country, Edouard le Grix de la Salle can sometimes smell the burning forests far away. The smoke brings a whiff of hardship for the region's economic fortunes.

Wildfires that have burned an area four times the size of Paris and driven 220,000 people from homes and some of the region's tourist attractions promise to sting France's already squeezed economy.

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.