Kristen Burckhartt felt overwhelmed. She needed time to reflect, to let it sink in that she had just briefly soaked her feet in the water where Jesus is said to have been baptized, in the Jordan River.

"It's very profound," said the 53-year-old visitor from Indiana. "I have not ever walked where Jesus walked, for one thing."

A sudden rainstorm in western China triggered a landslide that diverted a river and caused flash flooding in populated areas, killing at least 16 people and leaving 18 others missing, Chinese state media said Thursday.

Rescuers, who earlier reported 36 people missing, had found 18 of them by early afternoon, state broadcaster CCTV said in an online update. The Wednesday night disaster affected more than 6,000 people in six villages in Qinghai province, CCTV said.

While vacationers might enjoy the Mediterranean Sea's summer warmth, climate scientists are warning of dire consequences for its marine life as it burns up in a series of severe heat waves.

From Barcelona to Tel Aviv, scientists say they are witnessing exceptional temperature hikes ranging from 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) to 5 degrees Celsius (9 Fahrenheit) above the norm for this time of year. Water temperatures have regularly exceeded 30 C (86 F) on some days.

The federal government on Tuesday is expected to announce water cuts to states that rely on the Colorado River as drought and climate change leave less water flowing through the river and deplete the reservoirs that store it.

The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people across seven states in the American West as well as Mexico and helps feed an agricultural industry valued at $15 billion a year. Cities and farms across the region are anxiously awaiting official hydrology projections — estimates of future water levels in the river — that will determine the extent and scope of cuts to their water supply.

Germany's main industry lobby group warned Tuesday that factories may have to throttle production or halt it completely because plunging water levels on the Rhine River are making it harder to transport cargo.

Water levels on the Rhine at Emmerich, near the Dutch border, dropped by a further four centimeters (1.6 inches) in 24 hours, hitting zero on the depth gauge.

German officials expressed mounting anger Monday at the slow flow of information from Poland about a polluted border river as experts raced to discover what killed tens of thousands of fish.

German Environment Minister Steffi Lemke demanded a transparent and full investigation into the cause for the massive fish die-off in the Oder River after having met her Polish counterpart in Szczecin on Sunday evening.

EDUCITY & Beirut Expo have announced that Middle East Clean Energy, the premiere renewable and sustainable energy trade fair and conference in Lebanon and the wider Levant, will be held in Beirut on September 7-9, 2022.

Middle East Clean Energy 2022 is organized in response to an unprecedented rise in demand for modern equipment and technologies that leverage renewable energy in Lebanon and the region. In 2021 alone in Lebanon, despite its crisis, customers spent $800 million on clean energy solutions. 

Poland has deployed soldiers to help clean up the Oder River, which runs along the border with Germany, after 10 tons of dead fish surfaced from the waterway in what one official described as an "ecological catastrophe."

An association of fishers in Zielona Gora, a city in Western Poland, said Friday that it was suspending fishing in the river due to still-unconfirmed reports in the German media saying the river could be contaminated with mercury.

Blazes that have torched tens of thousands of hectares of forest in France, Spain and Portugal have made 2022 a record year for wildfire activity in southwestern Europe, the EU's satellite monitoring service said Friday. 

Amid a prolonged heatwave that saw temperature records tumble, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) said that France had in the last three months reached the highest levels of carbon pollution from wildfires since records began in 2003.

Forced to start picking grapes much earlier than normal because of torrid temperatures, winemakers across France are worrying that grape quality will suffer from the climate-induced stress.

The exceptionally dry conditions spread from the rugged hills of Herault along the Mediterranean, where picking is already underway, to the normally verdant Alsace in the northeast.