As fearful Lake Tahoe residents packed up belongings and fled a raging wildfire burning toward the California-Nevada border, some encountered an unexpected obstacle: price gouging.

A rideshare company quoted a fee of more than $1,500 to be transported from the smoke-choked ski resort at Heavenly Valley to the safety of Reno-Tahoe International Airport, about eight times the going rate. A Nevada hotel-casino outside the evacuation order zone advertised a two-night stay for $1,090.72, almost four times the midweek rate offered a day earlier.

The cleanup — and mourning — continued Friday as the Northeast U.S. recovered from record-breaking rainfall from the remnants of Hurricane Ida.

At least 48 people in five states died as storm water cascaded into people's homes and engulfed automobiles, overwhelming urban drainage systems never meant to handle so much rain in such a short time.

China's government banned effeminate men on TV and told broadcasters Thursday to promote "revolutionary culture," broadening a campaign to tighten control over business and society and enforce official morality.

President Xi Jinping has called for a "national rejuvenation," with tighter Communist Party control of business, education, culture and religion. Companies and the public are under increasing pressure to align with its vision for a more powerful China and healthier society.

A small group of Afghan women protested near the presidential palace in Kabul on Friday, demanding equal rights from the Taliban as Afghanistan's new rulers work on forming a government and seeking international recognition.

The Taliban captured most of the country in a matter of days last month and celebrated the departure of the last U.S. forces after 20 years of war. Now they face the urgent challenge of governing a war-ravaged country that is heavily reliant on international aid.

ABBA is releasing its first new music in four decades, along with a concert performance that will see the "Dancing Queen" quartet going entirely digital.

The forthcoming album "Voyage," to be released Nov. 5, is a follow-up to 1981's "The Visitors," which until now had been the swan song of the Swedish supergroup. And a virtual version of the band will begin a series of concerts in London on May 27.

Global stock markets were mixed Friday as investors waited to see whether U.S. hiring in August was weak enough to persuade the Federal Reserve to postpone the winding down of economic stimulus.

Tokyo advanced after Wall Street hit its second record this week. Shanghai and Hong Kong declined.

E-commerce giant Alibaba Group said Friday it will spend $15.5 billion to support President Xi Jinping's campaign to spread China's prosperity more evenly, adding to pledges by tech companies that are under pressure to pay for the ruling Communist Party's political initiatives.

Alibaba said it will invest in 10 projects for job creation, "care for vulnerable groups" and technology innovation. Its 100 billion yuan ($15.5 billion) pledge includes 20 billion yuan ($12.5 billion) for a fund to "cut income inequality" in the company's home province of Zhejiang, south of Shanghai.

The U.N. weather agency says the world — and especially urban areas — experienced a brief, sharp drop in emissions of air pollutants last year amid lockdown measures and related travel restrictions put in place over the coronavirus pandemic.

The World Meteorological Organization, releasing its first ever Air Quality and Climate Bulletin on Friday, cautioned that the reductions in pollution were patchy — and many parts of the world showed levels that outpaced air quality guidelines. Some types of pollutants continued to emerge at regular or even higher levels.

German automaker Daimler on Friday dismissed a "cease and desist" demand from two environmental groups to commit to ending the sale of combustion engine vehicles by 2030.

Lawyers for Greenpeace and the group Deutsche Umwelthilfe have threatened to sue Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen unless they sign a legal pledge not to put new gas-fueled vehicles onto the market from the end of this decade.

The European Union and drugmaker AstraZeneca said Friday that they reached a deal to end a damaging legal battle over the slow pace of deliveries of the company's COVID-19 vaccines.

The European Commission, which is the EU's executive branch, said AstraZeneca made a "firm commitment" to deliver a total of 300 million doses by March next year, as agreed under the advance purchasing agreement the two sides signed a year ago. About 100 million doses have already been supplied.