A privately owned high-speed passenger train service has been launched between Florida’s two biggest tourist hubs

Oleg Orlov, co-chair of the human rights group Memorial, went on trial in Moscow Thursday over criticism of Russia's Ukraine campaign, which could see him...

VATICAN CITY Pope Francis on Sunday offered prayers and solidarity to the family of a Vatican schoolgirl who

The United States has given Ukraine small arms ammunition that was seized while being transferred from Iranian forces to Tehran-backed rebels in...

A researcher has figured out that the Earth’s first continent was formed 3bn years ago, in a new paper that sheds fresh light on the early stages of the planet’s life. Jane Greaves, an astronomy professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Cardiff University in Wales, was examining continent formation on distant stars and planets. It is thought that exoplanets with continents that formed in a similar way to Earth’s are more likely to be habitable, and perhaps even contain alien life. In the process, she calculated when several distant planets’ continents were born, as well as those a little closer to home. Continents on Earth sit on top of the planet’s hot, viscous mantle. Heat from the inner core stops the mantle from solidifying. The reason the core is hot is because it contains radioactive elements that came from neutron star collisions billions of years ago such as forms of Uranium, Thorium and Potassium. By analysing how many materials like this are present on Earth and on other planets, we are also able to estimate when the continents formed. On Earth, that was about 9.5 billion years since the beginning of the universe. Meanwhile, in Greaves' sample, the first continents appeared 2bn years before Earth’s on the exoplanets of younger, so-called thin disk stars. Older, thick disk stars analysed in her work produced rocky planets with continents that appeared even earlier: about 4 to 5bn years before Earth’s. “The outlook seems very promising for finding rocky exoplanets with continents, given that nearby Sun-like stars have already produced a few candidate hosts,” she wrote. The study, “When were the First Exocontinents?” is published in Research Notes of the American Astronomical SocietySign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

By Lucia Mutikani WASHINGTON U.S. employment increased more than expected in May, but a moderation in wages could

Three people were killed and one is in critical condition after a nightclub shooting early Sunday morning in Kansas City, Missouri, police say.

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin on Sunday refused to say whether he would rule out the possibility of accepting a position on a third-party presidential ticket which most analysts say would serve only to help Donald Trump win a second term in the White House. Mr Manchin, a centrist Democrat whose state overwhelmingly voted for Mr Trump in the 2020 election, is considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators and would face a strong GOP challenge if he runs for another term in the upper chamber next year. He has also refused to say whether he harbours presidential ambitions at the same time that No Labels, a centrist group backed by GOP donor Harlan Crow, among others, is making efforts to gain ballot access for a third-party ballot line in next year’s general election. The group has suggested they would only run a ticket in next year’s election if the two major parties run “extreme” candidates who leave the broader US electorate wanting a third, more moderate choice. Mr Manchin has been floated as a candidate by some people close to that effort. The Mountain State Democrat has often made a point of taking disagreements with President Joe Biden and the current administration public as a way of highlighting his independence from the Democratic Party at a time when his home state has become increasingly hostile to Democrats. While he has previously said he’d win “any” race he enters next year, he has not yet formally announced a re-election bid, either. He declined to do so once more during a 4 June appearance on Face the Nation, the weekly public affairs show on CBS, moments after he declined to endorse Mr Biden for reelection. Mr Manchin told Brennan he was “not involved in the political process right now”. “Everyone thinks about politics first. I don’t. It’s not about the politics. It’s not about my re-election or anyone else. We have an awful lot of work to do,” he said. “We still have permitting to get done, we have geopolitical unrest around the world. We have to support Ukraine. We have to make sure that we get our financial house in order and get inflation down ... but if you throw politics in, I will guarantee you, you won’t get any decisions on any of that”. Asked whether he was still considering a presidential run, he replied: “Everything’s open. Everything’s on the table and nothing off the table”. He also declined to take himself out of the running for the hypothetical No Labels ticket during an appearance that same day on Fox News Sunday. Asked about the possibility of a third-party or independent bid by host Shannon Bream, Mr Manchin said he was “not ruling anything in, not ruling anything out”. “You better have Plan B. because if Plan A shows that we’re going to the far reaches of both sides, the far left and the far right, and that people don’t want to go to the far left and the far right, they want to be governed from the middle. I think there is, that you better have that Plan B available and ready to go,” he said. Read More Maybe, just maybe, ‘Sleepy Joe’ Biden is good at this bipartisan negotiation stuff Senate passes debt limit bill after marathon 11 amendment votes to avoid default Bernie Sanders was right about the debt limit all along. We know who got us into this mess Ivanka and Jared split over attending Trump 2024 launch – follow live Why was Donald Trump impeached twice during his first term? Four big lies Trump told during his 2024 presidential announcement

An animal rights group says a Virginia farm that raised chickens for Tyson Foods mistreated the animals

A California woman who was seen on body-camera video being punched by a deputy as she held her newborn baby has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Los Angeles County and several unnamed sheriff's deputies stemming from the 2022 incident.

The comic book series 'Top G Origins' is a collaborative creation by DNG Comics and Andrew Tate

Former President Donald Trump's defense team asked the judge overseeing the classified documents case in Florida to postpone the trial, according to a filing late Monday night, saying there is "no reason for any expedited trial."