Ship has been marooned and half-sunk off the coast of Tuscany for 20 months Thirty-two people lost their lives on January 13, 2012 The luxury liner is going to finally be lifted upright in the largest and most expensive maritime salvage operation in history On the night before the operation begins to finally raise the Costa Concordia, haunting underwater footage shows the doomed cruise ship lying on the seabed which […]

It’s no surprise that a dog loves playing catch — but an elephant? Our charming pictures show Bubbles, a rescued orphan elephant, picking up a ball with her trunk to tease Bella the labrador, who can just about reach her pal’s knee. She dives into a pool of water, but that doesn’t deter the pooch, who tries to get her paws on the ball by climbing onto Bubbles’ back. When […]

Japan has launched the first in a new generation of space rockets, hoping the design will make missions more affordable. The Epsilon rocket is about half the size of Japan’s previous generation of space vehicles, and uses artificial intelligence to perform safety checks. Japan’s space agency Jaxa says the Epsilon cost $37m (£23m) to develop, half the cost of its predecessor. Epsilon launched from south-western Japan in the early afternoon. […]

  STORY HIGHLIGHTS Rev. Joseph Anselmo Mwagambwa tells CNN he was sprayed with acid He was coming out of an Internet cafe in city of Zanzibar Last month, acid was thrown on two U.K. women, both 18, while visiting Stone Town An Arab businessman who built a mall near U.S. Embassy was hit with acid Zanzibar, Tanzania (CNN) — A Catholic priest was attacked with acid on the east African […]

Leaked report reveals the world is warming at half the rate claimed by IPCC in 2007 Scientists accept their computers ‘may have exaggerated’ A leaked copy of the world’s most authoritative climate study reveals scientific forecasts of imminent doom were drastically wrong. The Mail on Sunday has obtained the final draft of a report to be published later this month by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the […]

India’s main opposition party has named controversial politician Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate for elections due next year. Mr Modi, who has been chief minister of Gujarat state since 2001, has long been seen as a rising star of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In June, he was chosen to lead the party’s campaign for the election. Mr Modi is credited with making Gujarat one of […]

The sword rests briefly on his neck as a blindfolded man kneels under a clear blue sky. Moments later, the executioner raises his right arm, slashes downwards and the prisoner is dead. The whole barbaric episode is watched by a crowd of jeering men, many of them armed. And sitting on a low wall only a few feet from where the wretched captive died so violently is a line of […]

In 1519, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan launched the expedition that completed the first circumnavigation of the globe. And so humanity learned the full extent of its world. This week, we learned from Science magazine that NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft — currently the man-made object farthest from Earth — crossed a boundary of the solar system and entered interstellar space sometime last summer. Like Magellan’s voyage, Voyager’s achievement is a major […]

KENOSHA, Wis. — Twin water spouts put on a spectacular show over Lake Michigan, near the Wisconsin shore. The water spouts were sighted a couple of miles off shore about 1:30 p.m. Thursday after a funnel cloud was sighted in the Wisconsin town of Kenosha. Sgt. Bill Beth of the Kenosha County sheriff’s office says the two water spouts merged into one large one, then split. Beth says it was […]

We may think of the Victorians as prudish and prim but, in fact, they enjoyed salacious stories, tittle-tattle and tales of the weird and macabre every bit as much as we do today. Now some of the oddest stories from Victorian newspapers have been collected into a book by author JEREMY CLAY… Monkey business: Primate steals baby SNATCHED BY A MAD MONKEY It was not unusual for wealthy Victorians to […]