Queen Elizabeth II to be laid to rest, is TikTok the new Google?: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Queen Elizabeth II to be laid to rest

The queen's funeral is today after more than a week of national and global mourning. Plus, Hurricane Fiona moves through the Caribbean, Ukraine says it found Russian torture devices, money and tech reporter Bailey Schulz looks at whether TikTok could be used as the new Google and there's a shakeup in the college football coaches' poll.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Monday, the 19th of September, 2022. Today, Queen Elizabeth II's funeral. Plus Hurricane Fiona is on the move and more.

Here are some of the top headlines:

1. A strong earthquake has rattled Taiwan. The 6.8 magnitude quake was the largest of dozens that rocked the island since Saturday night. One worker inside a cement factory was killed, while hundreds of tourists were stranded on a mountainside and other people were trapped in buildings. A train was also knocked off its tracks.

2. Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, an envoy of Pope Francis was shot at this weekend as he delivered humanitarian aid in the Pope's name in Ukraine. The Vatican news service reported he was uninjured and continuing his mission.

3. And the Las Vegas Aces are WNBA's champions. They beat the Connecticut Sun yesterday 78-71 to win the series 3 games to 1. It's the Ace's first championship in franchise history.

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Queen Elizabeth II will be remembered at a funeral today in London's Westminster Abbey, and she'll later be laid to rest beneath St. George's Chapel. That's after long lines this past weekend and late last week as the British public paid their respects to the Monarch who served from 1952 until her death earlier this month. Joan Green waited 13 hours.

Joan Green:

70 years of her life and I think this is the least we can do. I'm trying to hold it together. It's the least we can do for her. It's the last thing we can do for her, to say thank you. Before we went in, everybody's chattering. And then all at once, it goes very quiet when you're standing on the stairs and you look around you and the architecture in that building is unbelievable. It went very, very quiet. People were very respectful and obviously alone with their own emotions and thoughts as I was. I don't regret any of it, even though we had to wait 13 hours today. It was worth it. So yes, I'm very pleased I came.

Taylor Wilson:

President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden arrived in London this weekend ahead of the funeral. Biden yesterday praised the Queen's notion of service.

Joe Biden:

Our hearts go out to the royal family, King Charles and all the family. It's a loss that leaves a giant hole. I think what she gave is a sense of, maybe above all, the notion of service. We all owe something. There's something within our capacity to do that can make things... Now and not just the world better, but your neighborhood better, your household, better, your workplace better. And that's what she communicated to me anyway.

Taylor Wilson:

On the eve of her funeral, much of Britain last night paused for a minute of silence. Some 2,000 people are expected to attend the funeral. And London's mayor's office said up to 2 million may line the city streets.

Some normality returned to Britain this past weekend amid national mourning, including a number of premier league soccer matches, but the country will be virtually shut down today. More than 10,000 police officers are on patrol in London, including reinforcements brought in from across the nation. Westminster Abbey, where the funeral is held, is the same church where Elizabeth was crowned queen and has been the setting for every coronation since 1066. The funeral is set to begin at 11:00 AM local, 6:00 AM Eastern time. You can follow a long live on usatoday.com

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Hurricane Fiona made landfall yesterday in Southwestern Puerto Rico. The category 1 storm hit the island just after 3:00 PM Eastern time with maximum sustained winds of 85 miles an hour according to the National Hurricane Center. Forecasters said Fiona could drop historical rainfall of up to 30 inches and widespread flooding. In one town, Utuado, the storm washed away a bridge that was just installed by the National Guard after Hurricane Maria hit in 2017. Almost the entire island of more than 3 million people is also without power. Fiona is now heading northwest toward the eastern part of the Dominican Republic. It was expected to graze that country's coast this morning before turning toward the east of Turks and Caicos tomorrow. After the Caribbean and the Bahamas, Fiona could next move toward Bermuda in the Atlantic. And forecasters said the hurricane could gain strength of up to 115 miles per hour early this week.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says more than 10 torture chambers have been found in the country's Kharkiv region since a counterattack pushed Russian forces back last week. The region's prosecutor's office said it's launched an investigation after finding tools of torture and documents that showed Russia established a police force that operated a jail where the alleged abuse took place. Russian forces have been accused of war crimes and atrocities at several points since their February invasion, especially in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha.

Meanwhile, schools in Russia's Belgorod region have been closed this week as they shift to remote learning. Ukraine's counteroffensive has recently bled across the border into that part of Russia and Russian officials say homes and other businesses have been destroyed. The US sent long range artillery to Ukraine on the condition that it not be used to bomb Russian cities and towns. But Ukraine troops have pushed close enough to the border to reach those towns with their own equipment.

♦

Is TikTok becoming the new Google? Producer PJ Elliott spoke with Money and Tech reporter Bailey Schulz who says a growing number of young people are using the short form video app the way others use Google to find out where to eat and more.

Bailey Schulz:

Yeah, so basically we are seeing more young internet users are going to TikTok when they want to search the internet. If they want to know what sort of restaurant to go to nearby or if they want maybe ideas for certain outfits, instead of typing something into Google, a lot of these users are instead scrolling through TikTok or search on TikTok to find answers. There's actually a Google commissioned study that found users in the US who are between 18 and 24, nearly 40% of those users used TikTok or Instagram to search online. So Google clarified saying that people aren't using these apps instead of Google. A lot of experts told us that they're going in and searching for certain things on TikTok. Google still has its place in search, but we are seeing this growth in people going to these social media apps to search online.

PJ Elliott:

Is there a reason why the younger people prefer it over Google?

Bailey Schulz:

I think there's a number of reasons why people are going to TikTok. We talked to some experts and they brought up that there's often less ads on TikTok, you get the answers very quickly when these are all very quick videos. So say you're looking for instructions on how to do something or the other, whether it's making a recipe in the kitchen or you want to figure out how to fix something in your car, you can quick search that on TikTok and you get a quick, really concise answer rather than scrolling through a giant blog post and scrolling past ads on a website.

PJ Elliott:

So we know about the disinformation on social media all over the place. Should people trust TikTok for information?

Bailey Schulz:

That is a good question. I think like with all searches on the internet, people should be very cognizant about where this information is coming from, who the sources are, whether or not these sources can be trusted. I had one expert tell me that while there is an advantage to search on TikTok where you get answers from, dozens of users from all across the world, all corners of society and so that can give you more diverse responses, but at the same time that can really become a hotbed for misinformation or disinformation. So try and look for verified sources if you can. Maybe double check things that you do find on apps like TikTok. But yeah, I think the biggest thing is to just be aware of where this information is coming from because unlike with Google where you can easily check and see, "Oh, this is coming from .edu website or .gov website," it's not quite so easy on site TikTok.

Taylor Wilson:

You can find Bailey's full story in today's episode description.

Taylor Wilson:

Georgia has topped the latest USA TODAY Sports' AFCA Coaches Poll. The defending national champion Bulldogs destroyed South Carolina on Saturday 48-7. They received 40 of 65 first place votes to overtake Alabama at the top of the rankings. Ohio State remained at number three, Michigan's up a spot to number four, and Clemson dropped to 1 to 5. Oklahoma, USC, Oklahoma State, Kentucky, and Arkansas round out the top 10. Meanwhile, Washington moved into the poll for the first time this season at No. 24. You can find full coverage of the college football season all fall from USA TODAY Sports.

You can find 5 Things every morning on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, your smart speaker, or wherever you get your audio. Thanks to PJ Elliott for his great work on the show. And I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Queen Elizabeth II funeral, Hurricane Fiona update: 5 Things podcast