Fire crews battling California's largest wildfire this year have corralled a third of the blaze aided in part by cooler weather, but a return of triple-digit temperatures could allow it to grow, fire officials said Sunday.

Cooler temperatures and increased humidity gave firefighters "a great opportunity to make some good advances" on the fire in the Sierra Nevada foothills, said Chris Vestal, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Firefighters battling California's largest wildfire of the year are preparing for treacherous conditions entering the weekend when expected thunderstorms may unleash fire-starting lightning and erratic winds that could erode progress made over the past week. Dry, hot conditions posed similar threats across the fire-stricken West.

Weather, fuels and terrain will pose challenges for the 6,000 firefighters battling the Park Fire, which has spread over 614 square miles (1,590 square kilometers) since allegedly being started by arson in a wilderness park in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of the Sacramento Valley city of Chico.

On a scorching July afternoon, a municipal water truck rolls up in a cloud of dust on Liborio Mangiapane's farm in southern Sicily. Some of the precious liquid gets transferred to a smaller cistern on a tractor that Mangiapane's son will use to fill troughs for 250 cattle and sheep, but by tomorrow, all 10,000 liters from the truck will be gone.

Crippling drought from a nearly rainless year, coupled with record-high temperatures, has burned out much of the region's hay and is pushing farmers to the limit. For Mangiapane, every day is a struggle to find water, with frantic phone calls, long trips to faraway wells and long waits for municipal tankers.

An overnight protest by climate activists at Leipzig/Halle Airport in eastern Germany forced a three-hour halt to cargo flights, officials said Thursday.

The protest by the Last Generation group followed demonstrations last week at Cologne-Bonn Airport and then at Frankfurt Airport, Germany's busiest, which significantly disrupted passenger flights.

South Korea on Thursday offered to send aid supplies to North Korea to help the country recover from heavy rains and floods that submerged thousands of homes and huge swaths of farmland.

It's unclear whether North Korea would accept South Korea's proposal for help. Animosity between the war-divided rivals is at its highest in years over the North's growing nuclear ambitions and the South's expansion of combined military exercises with the United States and Japan to counter the North's threats.

Balkan countries on Wednesday battled wildfires stoked by high temperatures, winds and a weeks-long drought with firefighters in Croatia saying the toughest day so far this season was behind them as North Macedonia's emergency chief suggest the country should seek assistance from NATO.

Croatia's Firefighters' Association described the past 24 hours as the most demanding this summer with more than 100 interventions that involved over 1,000 firefighters and 20 firefighting planes.

Hundreds of rescue workers searched through mud and debris Wednesday from multiple landslides that have killed at least 151 people in southern India, police said.

The multiple landslides occurred after torrential rains triggered torrents of mud and water that swept through tea estates and villages.

After days of water-quality concerns caused by heavy rains last week put the swimming portion of the Olympic triathlons in doubt, the women dove into the Seine River early Wednesday, followed by the men a few hours later.

The athletes began near the Pont Alexandre III, a bridge that spans the famed Paris waterway. The women's race began under a gray sky, with steady rain tapering off just as the athletes splashed into the water. Some dunked their swim goggles in the Seine before putting them on and heading into the river with the Eiffel Tower in the background.

Italian researchers have noted the first case of "virgin birth", or reproduction without fertilization, in an endangered shark species, a scientific journal reported this week.

The findings published in Scientific Reports concern the first case of the phenomenon in the common smooth-hound shark, Mustelus mustelus, a species threatened by illegal fishing that inhabits the Mediterranean and other warm waters.

Swimming has been off-limits in the long-polluted Seine River in Paris for more than a century. So with Olympic swimming events on tap for the river, the city poured in $1.5 billion (1.4 billion euros) to try to clean it up.

With the Paris Games underway, officials are keeping a close eye on water quality. Athletes could feel health effects from swimming in a river with higher-than-accepted levels of E. coli or other bacteria.