The lifting of a mandatory evacuation order for South Lake Tahoe's 22,000 residents is a confident milestone in the fight against the Caldor Fire, but it remains only 48% contained and still threatens areas south of the resort town.

Firefighters are confronting aggressive winds and flames in some southeast sections of the Caldor Fire, which could still reach Meyers, a community more than a mile high known as the gateway to Lake Tahoe, and other areas including the Kirkwood ski resort.

A car passed, the driver's window rolled down and the man spat an epithet at two little girls wearing their hijabs: "Terrorist!"

It was 2001, mere weeks after the twin towers at the World Trade Center fell, and 10-year-old Shahana Hanif and her younger sister were walking to the local mosque from their Brooklyn home.

French energy giant Total signed mega contracts with Iraq worth $27 billion to develop oil fields, natural gas and a crucial water project that officials said Monday will be key for the oil-rich country to maintain crude output.

The deals were inked Sunday with Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in attendance, according to an Oil Ministry statement.

The Middle East on Monday got its first completely automated cashier-less store, as retail giant Carrefour rolled out its vision for the future of the industry in a cavernous Dubai mall.

Like Amazon's breakthrough unmanned grocery stores that opened in 2018, the Carrefour mini-market looks like any ordinary convenience store, brimming with sodas and snacks, tucked between sprawling storefronts of this city-state.

South Korea's military on Tuesday was closely watching North Korea amid signs the country was preparing to hold a new military parade to showcase its growing nuclear and missile capabilities.

The South Korean and U.S. militaries were "thoroughly following and monitoring North Korean preparations for large-scale events such as a military parade in connection with the North's internal schedule," said Col. Kim Jun-rak, a spokesman for South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff. He didn't specify in the news conference what the allied militaries have seen or when they expect the parade to take place.

For the music lover, it was nearly three hours at gunpoint, wondering if he would become yet another body on the floor of the Bataclan concert hall in Paris.

For the grieving mother, the night of carnage robbed her of her son and tarnished her view of the vibrant neighborhood they both loved.

Israel launched airstrikes on what it said was a Hamas military site in the Gaza Strip early on Tuesday, after incendiary balloons were sent into Israeli territory, the army said.

Fighter jets struck a Hamas rocket manufacturing workshop as well as a Hamas military compound in Khan Yunis, a city in southern Gaza, according to the army statement.

A court in Belarus on Monday sentenced two leading opposition activists to lengthy prison terms, the latest move in the relentless crackdown Belarusian authorities have unleashed on dissent in the wake of last year's anti-government protests.

Maria Kolesnikova, a top member of the opposition Coordination Council, has been in custody since her arrest last September. A court in Minsk found her guilty of conspiring to seize power, creating an extremist organization and calling for actions damaging state security and sentenced her to 11 years in prison.

Pope Francis on Sunday asked for prayers for his visit later this month to "the heart of Europe," a four-day pilgrimage to Hungary and Slovakia, which will be his first travels since surgery earlier this summer.

Francis spoke of his trip that begins in Hungary on Sept. 12, then takes him to Slovakia, before returning to the Vatican on Sept. 15.

Rights activists said Monday they had filed a criminal complaint in Germany against five retailers including C&A, Lidl and Hugo Boss, accusing them of benefiting from forced labor among China's Uyghur population.

The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) said it had filed the case, which also targeted the two supermarket chains Aldi Nord and Aldi Sued, after carrying out an open source investigation.