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.

Italy set an international record of 36 games unbeaten on Sunday as Germany and Spain returned to the top of their World Cup qualifying groups.

Though European champions Italy were held 0-0 at Switzerland, Germany and Spain were joined by England and Poland in routing low-ranked opponents.

Chinese singer and actor Lu Han, a former member of popular K-pop boy band EXO, said Sunday he would cut ties with Swiss luxury watch brand Audemars Piguet after its CEO referred to Taiwan as a country in an interview.

China, which claims Taiwan as its territory, objects to any reference to the self-governing island as a country. Under the one-country policy, other countries have diplomatic relations with either China or Taiwan, but not both.

The North Platte River in southern Wyoming has been so low in places lately that a toddler could easily wade across and thick mats of olive-green algae grow in the lazy current.

Just over two years ago, workers stacked sandbags to protect homes and fishing cabins from raging brown floodwaters, the highest on record.

Tens of thousands of people who fled South Lake Tahoe in the teeth of a wildfire were returning home as crews finally managed to stall the advance of flames scant miles from the resort.

But authorities warned that residents of the scenic forest area on the California-Nevada state line weren't out of the woods yet, with risks ranging from smoky, foul air to belligerent bears.

Allison Smith wasn't thinking about where she'd go next. She'd kept the boxes from when she moved into her 2-bedroom apartment at the Chateau Creole complex a year ago and was planning to fill them with her clothes and other belongings, load them into a U-Haul along with her bed and sofa, and drive it to the closest storage unit she'd found — two hours away. Then she'd think about where to live.

"I haven't even thought that far," said Smith, as she and her boyfriend packed.

At least four planes chartered to evacuate several hundred people seeking to escape the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan have been unable to leave the country for days, officials said Sunday, with conflicting accounts emerging about why the flights weren't able to take off as pressure ramps up on the United States to help those left behind to flee.

An Afghan official at the airport in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif said that the would-be passengers were Afghans, many of whom did not have passports or visas, and thus were unable to leave the country. He said they had left the airport while the situation was sorted out.

Mutinous soldiers in the West African nation of Guinea detained President Alpha Conde on Sunday after hours of heavy gunfire rang out near the presidential palace in the capital, then announced on state television that the government had been dissolved in an apparent coup d'état.

The country's borders were closed and its constitution was declared invalid in the announcement read aloud on state television by army Col. Mamadi Doumbouya, who told Guineans: "The duty of a soldier is to save the country."