TIRANA, Albania — The heat wave that has stifled Europe this week has barreled eastward, fraying nerves at escalating street protests in Serbia and leaving a river in the Czech Republic clogged with dead fish as the effects of global warming accelerate.

In Albania, a routine summer fire at a municipal dump in the central town of Elbasan was out of control.

Drained of energy by temperatures that reached 106 degrees, firefighters struggled to control it. And with clouds of toxic smoke wafting from the dump, protesters gathered outside the Ministry of Tourism and Environment in Tirana.

As in Western European countries that were hammered this week by the heat wave, older people in Albania were suffering most. For some, the misery was good for business. Ermir Metushi, 48, a taxi driver in Tirana, said the heat wave was “hard to endure” but that it had increased his earnings, because “more and more people are giving in to the comfort of taxi air conditioning, even for short distances.” That and a summer influx of tourists, he said, “mean that I really can’t complain.”

— The New York Times