China warns of further spread in latest COVID-19 flare-up

BEIJING (Reuters) -China's latest COVID-19 outbreak is increasingly likely to spread further, a health official said on Sunday, as authorities urged all regions to step up monitoring and called for a reduction in travel across provinces. China has largely contained the virus but it is determined to stamp out any sporadic local outbreaks, particularly in the run-up to the 2022 Winter Olympics in February. More than 100 locally transmitted cases have been confirmed over the last week across 11 provincial areas, with most linked to 13 different tour groups.

Gabby Petito Case: Brian Laundrie Will Not Have Funeral Service Amid Inconclusive Autopsy Results

Brian Laundrie's family has decided not to hold a funeral service for him as they await further details about his death. The family's attorney, Steve Bertolino, said in a statement that Brian's parents will forgo holding a traditional service for him and will instead have his remains cremated, media outlets reported on Sunday, Oct. 24. Brian, the 23-year-old former fiancé of late influencer Gabby Petito, was confirmed dead on Thursday, Oct. 21.

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  Brian Laundrie's parents won't have a funeral for their son, the family attorney reportedly said

  INSIDER
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  Brian Laundrie - update: Parents will not hold funeral for their son, lawyer confirms

  The Independent

Colombia's most wanted drug lord captured in jungle raid

Colombian security forces have captured the country's most wanted drug trafficker, a rural warlord who stayed on the run for more than a decade by corrupting state officials and aligning himself with combatants on the left and right. President Iván Duque likened the arrest Saturday of Dairo Antonio Úsuga to the capture three decades ago of Pablo Escobar. Colombia's military presented Úsuga to the media in handcuffs and wearing rubber boots preferred by rural farmers.

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  Colombia's most-wanted drug lord told armed forces: 'You beat me' when caught -government

  Reuters
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  Colombia captures most wanted drug lord in 'biggest blow to cocaine trade since fall of Escobar'

  The Telegraph

These 5 items are facing shortages or higher prices. Here’s where you can buy them now

The shortages are due to a variety of issues, such as shipping delays, transportation issues, labor shortages and more. “Many industries are affected, from cars to construction to consumer packaged goods,” says Trae Bodge, smart shopping expert at TrueTrae.com. Here are some of items that may face shortages or higher prices, and we share where to get them.

3 Abandoned Kids, 1 Skeleton Found in Texas House of Horrors

Houston cops carrying out a welfare check on an apartment found a nightmare: three siblings abandoned and living with the skeletal remains of a fourth. “A very horrific situation out here, very tragic,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said at a Sunday press conference. The surviving children were ages 15, 10, and 7, and they had been living in “deplorable conditions” for “quite a long time,” Gonzalez said.

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  Skeletal remains, 3 abandoned kids found in apartment, sheriff says

  KTRK – Houston
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  3 kids found abounded amongst skeletal remains in Houston, sheriff says

  KXXV

‘Predator’ jailed for spiking woman’s drink before recording sex assault at hotel

A 'predator' has been jailed after he spiked a woman's drink with cocaine, sexually assaulted her in a hotel and emptied her bank account. Sean Howarth, 31, was sentenced to seven years and two months in prison at Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester on Friday. Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said Howarth met his 19-year-old victim when she was with friends in a nightclub in Manchester city centre in February 2019 and spiked her drink with cocaine.

Italian flight attendants strip clothing to protest job conditions

Italian flight attendants are stripping their clothes away to protest layoffs and decreases in pay amid the launch of Italy's new airline. Roughly 50 former flight attendants from Alitalia gathered around the square outside of the Campidoglio in Rome to protest job losses and pay cuts, CNN reported. The protesters gathered in their Alitalia uniforms and then proceeded to strip down to their underwear, chanting "We are Alitalia."

'Needle Spiking' of Women in Britain Stirs Alarm Over New Kind of Assault

Lizzie Wilson was standing in a crowded nightclub Monday night with three friends when she felt a sharp pinch in her back, as if she had been pricked by a needle. Wilson, 18, said she had heard about young women being injected with syringes at crowded clubs and immediately feared she was another victim. “Nobody should ever go through that,” said Wilson, a student in her first year of college in Nottingham in central England.

Which is more expensive: Charging an electric vehicle or fueling a car with gas?

And you're not really saving much in terms of charging costs ... you may be paying more. EV charging: Finding an electric vehicle charging station shouldn't be a scavenger hunt Costs to drive an EV compared with a gasoline car are detailed in a report Anderson Economic released Thursday called "Comparison: Real World Cost of Fueling EVs and ICE Vehicles."

Afghanistan hurtling towards collapse, Sweden and Pakistan say

Afghanistan plunged into crisis after the hardline Islamist Taliban movement drove out the Western-backed government in August triggering the abrupt end of billions of dollars in assistance to its aid-dependent economy. "The country is on the brink of collapse and that collapse is coming faster than we thought," Swedish development minister Per Olsson Fridh told Reuters in Dubai. He said economic freefall could provide an environment for terrorist groups to thrive, but that Sweden would not channel money through the Taliban, instead boosting its humanitarian contributions through Afghan civil society groups.

Bicyclist kicks attacking 500-pound brown bear as it mauls him, Alaska cops say

A bicyclist spotted a brown bear on an Alaska trail. Then it started running toward him, officials said. The biker was about 30 feet from the brown bear Tuesday when it started to charge, Alaska Wildlife Troopers in Cantwell said.

Remove a Confederate Statue? A Tennessee City Did This Instead.

Sawyers and like-minded residents did not get the statue removed, but they have come up with a provocative response to it: a new bronze statue in Franklin's public square depicting a life-size soldier from the U.S. Colored Troops, largely Black regiments that were recruited for the U.S. Army during the Civil War. The new monument, which was unveiled Saturday before a crowd of hundreds, and five recently added markers tell the story of the market house where enslaved people were auctioned and the role that local Black men played in fighting for their freedom.

Race-blind redistricting? Democrats incredulous at GOP maps

A decade ago, North Carolina Republicans redrew their legislative districts to help their party in a way that a federal court ruled illegally deprived Black voters of their right to political representation. A state court later struck down Republican-drawn maps as based on pure partisanship. Several publicly released congressional maps dilute Democratic votes by splitting the state's biggest city, Charlotte — also its largest African American population center — into three or four U.S. House districts and giving the GOP at least a 10-4 advantage in a state that Donald Trump narrowly won last year.

The story of Carol and Karen: Two experimental Facebook accounts show how the company helped divide America

They were created by a Facebook researcher to explore how the social media platform deepened political divides in the U.S. by recommending content rife with misinformation and extremism. The experiment shows that Facebook, which had 2.9 billion monthly active users as of June 30, knew before the 2020 presidential election that its automated recommendations amplified misinformation and polarization in the U.S., yet the company largely failed to curtail its role in deepening the political divide.

How intensive modding ushered in China’s computer revolution

In my previous essay on TechCrunch, I examined the profound challenges which confronted the computer engineers trying to fit tens of thousands of Chinese characters in a memory system designed to handle a much smaller alphanumeric symbolic system. Now, I turn to the question of Chinese character output—monitors, printers, and related peripherals—where still more challenges confronted engineers seeking to render Western-manufactured personal computers and computer peripherals compatible with Chinese character text. While we call them “peripherals,” suggesting a sort of supporting role, they are in fact at the very center of computing in Chinese, from the extreme limitations that Chinese computing faced in the 1970s and 80s to the immense strides and successes it has experienced from the 1990s onward.

It’s no stimulus check, but 17 million Americans are missing out on free money

The promise of free money is typically pretty alluring. After all, the stimulus checks Congress handed out during the early months of the pandemic were enormously popular, and nearly 3 million people have signed a petition calling for more. A 401(k) match from your employer is the closest thing many people get to free cash.

Seattle mayoral candidate called racist after new ad causes backlash

Over three dozen Black leaders in Seattle, Washington are calling for mayoral candidate Lorena Gonzalez to pull a “morally disgusting” ad that portrays her opponent and frontrunner Bruce Harrell as a rape apologist. The commercial, which was posted on Gonzalez's Twitter on Friday, features a sexual assault survivor who said that she was “horrified” to hear that Harrell defended Ed Murray, the former mayor for the state who resigned in 2017 after five victims came forth with child sex abuse allegations. She then said the candidate, who is half Black and half Japanese, has repeatedly sided with abusers and that “as a survivor, I could never vote for him.

Erdogan orders removal of 10 ambassadors, including US envoy

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that he had ordered 10 foreign ambassadors who called for the release of a jailed philanthropist to be declared persona non grata. The envoys, including the U.S., French and German representatives in Ankara, issued a statement earlier this week calling for a resolution to the case of Osman Kavala, a businessman and philanthropist held in prison since 2017 despite not having been convicted of a crime. Describing the statement as an “impudence,” Erdogan said he had ordered the ambassadors be declared undesirable.

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  Erdogan's critics say expulsion call is diversion from economic woe

  Reuters
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  Finland's leader: Turkey decision on envoys 'regrettable'

  Associated Press

Body of missing Texas man found in Grand Teton after four-day search, rangers say

The body of a man who went missing in Grand Teton National Park was found Sunday, park rangers said. A search for Jared Hembree, a 26-year-old from Texas, began Thursday when law enforcement officials received a call of concern “after an interaction with him outside the park,” park officials said. After a four-day search, officials found his body in the eastern part of the national park, park rangers said.

North Korea may be making plans for a future without Kim Jong Un

Rumors have swirled around North Korean leader Kim Jong Un since he took power in 2011. Long absences from public view have prompted speculation about his health and who would succeed him. Political moves in North Korea suggests preparation for such a change, but experts said who comes next is unknowable.