Epstein girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell pictured at burger bar in first public sighting since financier’s deathThe “missing” former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein and the woman accused of recruiting young women for him – claims she has strongly denied – has been spotted eating at a fast food restaurant in Los Angeles.In the days since the death of the disgraced financier, accused of sex trafficking young girls, much attention has focused on the whereabouts of socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the late press baron Robert Maxwell, and Epstein’s longtime confidante. Reports suggested she was living in France or elsewhere in Europe, or even in Massachusetts.The matter now seems to have been at least party cleared up …

US murderer executed after choosing electric chairA man put to death in the US state of Tennessee on Thursday for murdering a woman and her daughter chose in his final hours to be electrocuted rather than executed by lethal injection, prison officials said. Stephen West, who was convicted in the two killings more than 30 years ago, waited until Wednesday to choose his method of execution — one day after Tennessee's Republican Governor Bill Lee refused his request for clemency. "After thorough consideration of Stephen West's request for clemency and a review of the case, the State of Tennessee's sentence will stand, and I will not …

Lawsuit challenges California's assault weapons banA gun-rights group sued Thursday to block California from enforcing its assault weapons ban, contending it violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms. The lawsuit was the latest among gun advocacy and lobbying groups to challenge California's firearms laws, which are among the strictest in the country, and comes after a recent series of deadly mass shootings nationwide involving military-style rifles. The lawsuit was filed in the same San Diego federal court district where a judge in April tossed out a nearly two-decade-old California ban on sales and purchases of ammunition magazines holding more than 10 bullets.

Planet 10 times Earth's mass may have smacked Jupiter long agoJupiter, the solar system’s largest planet, may have been smacked head-on by an embryonic planet 10 times Earth’s mass not long after being formed, a monumental crash with apparent lasting effects on the Jovian core, scientists said on Thursday. The violent collision, hypothesized by astronomers to explain data collected by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, may have occurred just several million years after the birth of the sun roughly 4.5 billion years ago following the dispersal of the primordial disk of dust and gas that gave rise to solar system. “We believe that impacts, and in particular giant impacts, might have been …

Chinese military personnel parade near Hong Kong border: AFPThousands of Chinese military personnel waving red flags paraded at a sports stadium in a city across the border from Hong Kong on Thursday, an AFP reporter witnessed. Armoured vehicles were also seen inside the stadium in Shenzhen, with the event taking place as concerns build that China may intervene to end 10 weeks of unrest in Hong Kong. State-run media reported this week that the elements of the People’s Armed Police (PAP), which is under the command of the Central Military Commission, were assembling in Shenzhen.

China's Tencent sorry for saying typhoon killed 'nearly everyone'Chinese internet giant Tencent has been forced to apologise after its video team reported that a typhoon had wiped out the entire population of a province in east China that is home to nearly 100 million people. Typhoon Lekima hit the Chinese provinces of Zhejiang, Shandong and Anhui over the weekend, forcing more than two million residents to flee. China’s official news agency Xinhua said late Tuesday that at least 49 people were killed with dozens still missing.