SPUNTIK TOP STORIES OF THE DAY

(UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 17th October, 2021) The number of people killed in the bombing at a Shia mosque in the Afghan city of Kandahar has risen to 63, a source in a local hospital told Sputnik on Saturday.

* The number of injured people stands at 83, according to the source.

* The Uzbek Foreign Ministry denounced on Saturday the bombing at a Shia mosque in the Afghan city of Kandahar, saying it hinders peace in Afghanistan.

TRIBUTE TO UK LAWMAKER STABBED TO DEATH

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Labour party leader, Keir Starmer, paid tribute on Saturday to Conservative lawmaker David Amess, who was stabbed to death in an attack that is being treated as a terrorist incident by police.

Johnson and Starmer laid flowers at the front of Belfairs Methodist church in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, where Amess was attacked on Friday while holding a meeting with his constituents.

NASA'S 1ST SPACE PROBE TOWARD JUPITER'S TROJAN ASTEROIDS

NASA launched a trailblazing asteroid explorer to Trojan asteroids circling the sun in Jupiter's path, in what is the first mission to study the primordial material that formed our solar system.

The probe, named Lucy, blasted off atop the Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Saturday morning to begin a 12-year mission that will see it zip past eight asteroids that either precede or trail Jupiter.

EPSTEIN ACCUSED OF LURING WOMEN FROM RUSSIA INTO SEXUAL SLAVERY

Late US financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein tried to lure dozens of women from Russia and other post-Soviet countries into sexual slavery, according to a lawsuit filed by an unnamed Russian woman against Epstein's estate executors and his former assistant Lesley Groff.

* Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and German Chancellor Angela Merkel held a meeting as the latter pays a farewell visit to Istanbul.

* Merkel suggested that Germany might engage the Taliban (banned in Russia) together with Turkey.

* Germany will make sure that Afghans receive humanitarian aid to prevent them from falling victim to human traffickers, the chancellor said.

* While discussing the fate of German citizens held in Turkish prisons, Erdogan said interference in justice was unacceptable.