A ferocious wildfire approached Lake Tahoe just hours after roads were clogged with fleeing cars when the entire California resort city of South Lake Tahoe was ordered to evacuate and communities just across the state line in Nevada were warned to get ready to leave.

The popular vacation haven normally filled with tens of thousands of summer tourists was emptied out Monday as the massive Caldor Fire expanded to the north and south. Vehicles loaded with bikes and camping gear and hauling boats were in gridlock traffic, stalled in hazy, brown air that smelled like a campfire. Police and other emergency vehicles whizzed by.

Louisiana communities battered by Hurricane Ida faced a new danger as they began the massive task of clearing debris and repairing damage from the storm: the possibility of weeks without power in the stifling, late-summer heat.

Ida ravaged the region's power grid, leaving the entire city of New Orleans and hundreds of thousands of other Louisiana residents in the dark with no clear timeline on when power would return. Some areas outside New Orleans also suffered major flooding and structure damage.

Visitors to Venice could be forgiven for not realizing that beyond the majesty of St. Mark's Square and the romance of gondola rides lies a city that helped provide a baseline of what the world knows today about containing pandemics.

It was here that the term "quarantine" was coined, after merchant ships arriving in the 15th-century Venetian Republic were moored for 40 days ("quaranta giorni" in Italian) to see if their crews were afflicted with the plague. It was here that the first isolated pestilence hospital was built on a solitary island in the lagoon, a precursor to today's COVID-19 isolation wards. And it was in Venice that 16th-century doctors donned beak-nosed masks filled with aromatic herbs to cleanse the air they breathed when treating the sick — an attempt at self-protection that today is the favored choice for Venetian Carnival costumes.

Kanye West donned a full face mask to host three livestreamed listening parties for his 10th studio album. Beyond that, he didn't say a word, or even tweet. After years of alienating longtime fans with forays into conservative politics and sometimes exhausting media spectacle, pop's King of All Controversy mostly let the music speak for him when unveiling "Donda."

In the tradition of Marvin Gaye's "Here, My Dear" or Phil Collins' "Face Value," it's a prickly, personal divorce album full of introspection, conflicting emotions and bursts of musical innovation. It's also a nearly-overbooked showcase for of-the-moment talent, some half West's age: Shenseea, Fivio Foreign, Baby Keem, The Weeknd, Lil Yachty, Roddy Ricch. There's drill music alongside church organs — so many organs!

As the final five U.S. military transport aircraft lifted off out of Afghanistan, they left behind up to 200 Americans and thousands of desperate Afghans who couldn't get out and now must rely on the Taliban to allow their departure.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. will continue to try to get Americans and Afghans out of the country, and will work with Afghanistan's neighbors to secure their departure either over land or by charter flight once the Kabul airport reopens.

With the final stream of U.S. cargo planes soaring over the peaks of the Hindu Kush, President Joe Biden fulfilled a campaign promise to end America's longest war, one it could not win.

But as the war ended with a chaotic, bloody evacuation that left stranded hundreds of U.S. citizens and thousands of Afghans who had aided the American war effort, the president kept notably out of sight. He left it to a senior military commander and his secretary of state to tell Americans about the final moments of a conflict that ended in resounding American defeat.

Afghan athlete Hossain Rasouli finally got his chance Tuesday to participate in the Paralympics.

Rasouli and teammate Zakia Khudadadi got to Tokyo on Saturday after being evacuated from Kabul. They arrived a week late, and since then the two-person team have been sequestered in the Paralympic Village for privacy and safety reasons.

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry met in Tokyo on Tuesday with Japan's top diplomat to push efforts to fight climate change ahead of a United Nations conference in November.

Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi highlighted what he said was the importance of getting other major carbon emitters, especially China, to cooperate.

Human rights lawyers representing hundreds of victims of Yemen's civil war are calling on the International Criminal Court to open an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition during the devastating conflict.

British lawyer Toby Cadman filed the request Monday, highlighting three separate incidents — an August 2018 airstrike that destroyed a school bus and killed dozens; a missile attack in October 2016 that killed at least 110 people; and allegations of torture and murder of civilians being held in prisons in the south of Yemen.

An oil slick believed to have originated from a power plant inside one of Syria's oil refineries could reach Cyprus' northeastern tip in the next 24 hours, the Mediterranean island nation's Fisheries and Marine Research Department said Monday.

The Department said the most recent computer model indicates the oil spill could affect Apostolos Andreas Cape in the breakaway north of ethnically divided Cyprus by late Tuesday.