Home detention sought for sex misconduct defendant Epstein

NEW YORK – Financier Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyers argue he should be held under house arrest with electronic monitoring pending trial despite prosecutors’ claims he could flee to dodge sex trafficking charges. The lawyers argued for bail in court papers filed Thursday in Manhattan federal court. A bail hearing is set for Monday. Prosecutors said a trove of what seems to be nude pictures of underage girls was found in his mansion after his arrest on charges that he sexually exploited and abused dozens of underage girls from 2002 to 2005.

WASHINGTON – The number of people screened at airport checkpoints last Sunday set a record as people streamed home after a four-day holiday weekend. The Transportation Security Administration said Thursday that its officers screened 2,795,014 passengers and airline crew members, barely beating a record set just five weeks earlier, over the Memorial Day weekend. TSA screens about 2.2 million people on an average day. The top four days and eight of the busiest 10 in TSA history have occurred this year.

TOKYO – Japan’s space agency said data transmitted from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft indicated it successfully landed on a distant asteroid Thursday and completed its historic mission of collecting underground samples that scientists hope will provide clues to the origin of the solar system. Hayabusa2 had created itself a landing crater in April by dropping a copper impactor. Thursday’s mission was to land inside that crater and collect underground samples that scientists believe contain more valuable data.

VATICAN CITY – The tombs of two 19th-century German princesses were pried open at a tiny Holy See cemetery Thursday and turned out to be empty, dashing any expectations they held the remains of a teenager who vanished in 1983 after leaving her family’s Vatican City apartment. Emanuela Orlandi’s disappearance is one of Italy’s most enduring mysteries. The gravesite inspections only raised new questions: what happened to the remains of the two princesses who were buried in the sideby-side tombs in 1836 and 1840?