Magnitude-6.4 earthquake causes fires, damage to buildings as residents warned of aftershocks.

Egyptian authorities say the artefact was stolen, a claim Christie's auction house denies.

The strongest earthquake to hit Southern California in 20 years left scattered damage Thursday morning and was felt from Las Vegas to Orange County, the US Geological Survey reported. From a report: The quake, with an early magnitude of 6.4, was centered near Ridgecrest, a community west of the Mojave Desert and about 150 miles north of Los Angeles. Reports of scattered damage, including rock slides and fires, rolled in by midday. At least four large aftershocks, from 3.5 to 4.7 magnitude, and dozens smaller were recorded, officials said. In Los Angeles, the temblor was felt as a long, rolling quake, and buildings rocked back and forth for at least several seconds. Before Thursday, the largest quake in the area was in 1999 near Barstow, said seismologist Lucy Jones of the USGS. Diane Ruggiero, general manager of the Hampton Inn and Suites Ridgecrest in Ridgecrest, told CNN's Paul Vercammen that the hotel has significant damage.

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A tiny phone, tablet and laptop charger, the first to use gallium nitride rather than silicon chips, has seen sales four times greater than predicted [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled], prompting the Chinese company behind it to try to ramp up production. From a report: Anker, a Shenzhen-based company that specialises in computer and mobile phone accessories, unveiled a line of chargers using gallium nitride (GaN), which conducts electrons 1,000 times faster than silicon, in January. The use of GaN allowed Anker to virtually halve the size of its charger, while retaining full-speed charging. Another Chinese-owned company, RAVPower, has also started using GaN in its chargers. "Silicon limits have been pushed almost to the extreme," said Steven Yang, co-founder and chief executive of Anker. "But GaN is at [the next] phase." The introduction of the new semiconductor into the consumer market came after a series of military and other commercial applications, in everything from electric vehicles to radar systems. Raytheon, the US defence group, said in 2017 that it had spent $300m researching GaN since 1999. Like some of its peers, it uses the material in its active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars, which are able to detect stealth fighters at long range. "Once the power technology is out of the box it will be widely adopted around the world and that means everyone can produce power-switching modules," said Stephen Bryen, a former deputy undersecretary of defence and senior fellow at the American Center for Democracy. "And that is what is used in the radars -- that's the nexus between commercial and military use."

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Study says over decades, new trees could suck up nearly 750 billion metric tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide.

Rahul Gandhi quit as leader of India's National Congress Party after a heavy election defeat to PM Narendra Modi.

A controversial study suggests extreme climate change can be averted by planting a billion hectares of trees.

Analysts warn conditions in Iraqi prisons could lead to 'radicalisation' of vulnerable prisoners.

Security forces conduct 'shockingly high' number of extrajudicial killings, new report by UN rights chief says.

Four out of five people identified by the Metropolitan Police's facial recognition technology as possible suspects are innocent, according to an independent report. From a report: Researchers found that the controversial system is 81% inaccurate -- meaning that, in the vast majority of cases, it flagged up faces to police when they were not on a wanted list. The force maintains its technology only makes a mistake in one in 1,000 cases -- but it uses a different measurement to arrive at this conclusion. The report, exclusively revealed by Sky News and The Guardian, raises "significant concerns" about Scotland Yard's use of the technology, and calls for the facial recognition programme to be halted. Citing a range of technical, operational and legal issues, the report concludes that it is "highly possible" the Met's usage of the system would be found unlawful if challenged in court.

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Known as the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, the seaweed stretches from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico.

Away from the limelight and the huge fan-base, these cricketers are enjoying a sport they love.

AmiMoJo writes: Apple is apparently set to ditch the butterfly mechanism used in MacBooks since 2015, which has been the root of reliability issues and its low-travel design has also not been popular with many Mac users. A report published today says that Apple will roll out a new keyboard design based on scissor switches, offering durability and longer key travel, starting with the 2019 MacBook Air. The MacBook Pro is also getting the new scissor switch keyboard, but not until 2020. The new scissor switch keyboard is a whole new design than anything previously seen in a MacBook, purportedly featuring glass fiber to reinforce the keys.

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Jakarta was ranked the most-polluted city in Southeast Asia last year.

Rights groups have called for the evacuation of detention centres where they say migrants face inhumane conditions.