The Sun has published a picture of a topless woman on Page Three today and mocked media outlets that said the long-running feature had been dropped, the BBC reports.

On Tuesday, the Sun's sister paper the Times said the tabloid would no longer feature Page Three girls - but one appears in the Sun's latest edition.

The supposed ending of Page Three was widely reported, despite the Sun neither confirming or denying it.

On the page, the Sun "apologises" on behalf of all those who ran the story.

The Sun announces Page Three's return with a trail on the front page that reads: "We've had a mammary lapse."

It heads the image of the woman, who is seen winking into the camera, "Clarifications and corrections".

A caption under the photograph reads: "Further to recent reports in all other media outlets, we would like to clarify that this is Page 3 and this is a picture of Nicole, 22, from Bournemouth.

"We would like to apologise on behalf of the print and broadcast journalists who have spent the last two days talking and writing about us."

Page Three has been a feature of the Sun for 44 years but has been criticised for being sexist and outdated.

The Sun does not always have Page Three pictures - they purposefully do not appear in the paper's weekend editions and, in recent years, there are many weekdays where the paper does not feature a topless image on the page.

The absence of a Page Three girl on Monday and Tuesday coincided with the report in Tuesday's Times, which is a fellow News UK title, that the Sun had decided to quietly drop the feature.

The Times said it understood that News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch had signed off the decision.

In its latest edition, the Times puts the record straight, saying its sister paper had "made a clean breast of it and admitted there's still some nudes to report".