Taylor Swift waited around five seconds for a hidden platform on the floor to open and drop her to the backstage area

Officials in northern Italy are warning residents to get to higher ground amid fears that rain-swollen rivers could again burst their banks

Russian General Sergei Surovikin has been reportedly arrested for allegedly having knowledge about Yevgeny Prigozhin’s attempted coup over the weekend. The defence ministry is yet to officially comment on the alleged arrest of “General Armageddon”, who has not been seen in public since last Saturday, when the Wagner chief launched an armed rebellion against Vladimir Putin. “Apparently, he [Surovikin] chose Prigozhin’s side during the uprising” and they have gotten ahold of him, a source was quoted by Moscow Times as saying. Meanwhile, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko said he persuaded Mr Putin not to “wipe out” Wagner mercenary chief, in response to what the Kremlin cast as a mutiny. While describing his Saturday conversation with Mr Putin, the Belarusian president used the Russian criminal slang phrase for killing someone, equivalent to the English phrase to “wipe out”. “I also understood: a brutal decision had been made (and it was the undertone of Putin‘s address) to wipe out” the mutineers, he said, according to Belarusian state media. It comes as twin girls and a child are among 12 people killed in a Russian strike on a restaurant in the city of Kramatorsk using a supersonic Iskander missile, authorities in Ukraine have said. Read More All we know about Kramatorsk pizza restaurant missile strike that killed twin sisters Twin sisters, aged 14, among at least 11 dead in Russian missile strike on pizza restaurant in Ukraine Joe Biden says Putin is ‘clearly losing the war in Iraq’

US customs officers in Texas discovered several pounds of a white substance hiding in a commercial ice cream maker, authorities say -- and it wasn't salt or sugar.

Despite facing online backlash, Johnny Depp received support from Maiwenn Le Besco, who stood by his side as they walked the red carpet hand-in-hand

French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday called on the West to offer Ukraine "tangible and credible" security guarantees as...

More than 1,000 people defied a ban and on Saturday gathered in central Paris for a memorial rally, with dozens of marches planned throughout France...

Panama has launched a security operation along its shared border with Colombia to combat organized crime groups and migrant smugglers involved in record-setting migration through the perilous Darien Gap this year

Up to 9in (23cm) of rain and life-threatening flash flooding could hit parts of eastern North Carolina.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he will raise the plight of a detained democracy blogger with Chinese leaders during his visit to China

Global goods trade is recovering from a recent slump amid stronger demand for autos and electronics, the World

Scientists have seen one of the mysterious “dark spots” on Neptune from Earth for the first ever time. Researchers spotted the feature using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, or VLT. Using that telescope, astronomers were able to examine a large dark spot – which was joined by a smaller, bright spot, they said, of a kind that has never seen before. Scientists still do not know why those spots form on Neptune’s blue atmosphere. But they hope that the new observations could help answer questions about their origin. “Since the first discovery of a dark spot, I’ve always wondered what these short-lived and elusive dark features are,” said Patrick Irwin, professor at the University of Oxford and lead investigator of the study. It has already helped rule out one possibility: that the dark spots are caused when the clouds on the planet clear. The observations instead suggest that the spot is formed when air particles make a layer below the main one go darker, caused by ice and haze mixing in the atmosphere. Understanding the spots has been difficult because they leave the planet’s surface as mysteriously as they arise. They have also been difficult for researchers to actually examine, given the difficulty of spotting them through telescopes. Previously, scientists were forced to send spacecraft to see the spots, and the first was observed in 1989, when Nasa’s Voyager 2 flew past. It disappeared a few years later. In recent years, scientists have been able to examine them with the Hubble Space Telescope, which has seen more spots on the atmosphere. When it did so, astronomers were able to point ground-based telescopes towards them, allowing for more detailed research. “This is an astounding increase in humanity’s ability to observe the cosmos,” said Michael Wong, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley and a co-author on the paper. “At first, we could only detect these spots by sending a spacecraft there, like Voyager. “Then we gained the ability to make them out remotely with Hubble. Finally, technology has advanced to enable this from the ground.” The new observations allowed scientists to examine the spot using the VLT’s Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, which let them split the light from Neptune and the spot into its component colours. That in turn means that astronomers can understand the height at which the spot sits, and how the atmosphere is composed. As well as helping examine the dark spots, scientists also saw a surprise result: another, entirely new kind of bright spot. “In the process we discovered a rare deep bright cloud type that had never been identified before, even from space,” said Wong. The work is described in a new paper, ‘Cloud structure of dark spots and storms in Neptune’s atmosphere’, published in Nature Astronomy. Read More Mysterious dark spot on Neptune detected from Earth for the first time We just received the first ever pictures taken near the Moon’s uncharted south pole Chandrayaan-3 mission rover exits Moon lander to explore lunar south pole Mysterious dark spot on Neptune detected from Earth for the first time We just received the first ever pictures taken near the Moon’s uncharted south pole Chandrayaan-3 mission rover exits Moon lander to explore lunar south pole