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By Antoinette Radford
BBC News
Climate campaigner Greta Thunberg was among those briefly detained by police at a protest in western Germany.
She was protesting with activists seeking to stop the abandoned village of Lützerath from being demolished for the expansion of a coal mine.
Police clarified that Ms Thunberg had not been arrested, and later said she had been released after an ID check.
The Swedish activist was detained after a group "rushed towards the ledge" of the Garzweiler 2 mine, police said.
Officers also confirmed all of those detained would not be charged.
Video from the scene showed three officers carrying Ms Thunberg from the protest as she smiled.
Police also told Reuters news agency that one man jumped into the mine, which is located some 9km (5.6 miles) from Lützerath.
Reuters
Activists argue burning coal undermines Germany's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The government has pledged to bring forward the phase-out of coal in North Rhine-Westphalia, the state in which the mine lies, to 2030. The national target is 2038.
Lignite is the dirtiest form of coal, and the area around Lützerath yields 25 million tonnes of it each year.
The village, owned by energy company RWE after residents abandoned it, is expected to be the final one demolished for the lignite mine. RWE has said the coal under the village is needed as early as this winter.
The government argues it needs to expand the mine to keep up with German energy demand as it deals with the interruption of gas from Russia.
Organisers of the protest said around 35,000 demonstrators attended on Saturday while police said the number was closer to 15,000.
Russia's war in Ukraine is likely to "go on for some time" and now is the moment to ramp up military aid, the US secretary of state has said.
Antony Blinken said "ferocious" fighting continues along Ukraine's eastern front - but Western partners are determined to "make sure the Ukrainians have what they need to regain what they have lost and to deal with the Russian aggression".
Appearing at a news conference in Washington DC alongside James Cleverly, the UK foreign secretary, Mr Blinken also warned Russia will continue "using energy to try and punish countries supporting Ukraine".
"I anticipate that this will unfortunately go on for some time," Mr Blinken said.
"But we're determined together… to make sure the Ukrainians have what they need to regain what they have lost and to deal with the Russian aggression. That hasn't changed."
Mr Cleverly has travelled to Washington for talks on the war, and spoke alongside Mr Blinken in an attempt to encourage Western leaders to step up support.
Pointing to the UK's shipment of 14 tanks to Ukraine, Mr Cleverly said it is important to provide the "right equipment at the right time" so Kyiv can engage in the necessary type of fighting.
Mr Blinken welcomed the UK's decision to supply Ukraine with the British Army Challenger 2 main battle tanks.
Image:James Cleverly with Antony Blinken during a news conference in Washington on Tuesday. Pic: AP
The US secretary of state indicated that the US would be making announcements in the coming days, with defence secretary Lloyd Austin due to host talks with key allies in Ramstein in Germany later this week.
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"We have continuously provided what Ukraine needs and we are doing it in a way that makes sure we are responsive to what is actually happening on the battlefield as well as projecting where it might go," he said.
"We are determined to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs to succeed on the battlefield."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for some 300 modern Western battle tanks to enable his forces to take the offensive against the Russia aggressor.
In practice this is likely to mean US Abrams tanks and German Leopard 2s - or a combination of the two - which are potentially available in far greater numbers than the Challenger 2.
The facts on the ground will drive negotiations over the supply of weapons to Ukraine - and those facts have the potential shift
The key phrase from the news conference between Britain’s foreign secretary and America’s secretary of state?
"Watch this space" - Secretary Blinken’s words when pressed on whether or when America will follow the British initiative to send tanks to Ukraine.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly did not come to Washington to lecture an ally over what weapons should be supplied to Ukraine. After all, America has led the way in arming Ukraine to defend itself over the past 11 months.
But the foreign secretary is hoping that the UK decision to provide its Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine will gently incentivise others to follow.
The "space" to watch is the meeting in Germany of the so-called Ukraine contact group of Western nations this week.
Defence ministers and their military chiefs will be discussing what next for Ukraine.
America's top general Mark Milley will be there. He's spent the past day meeting his Ukrainian counterpart on the Polish-Ukraine border.
We're told General Milley wanted a first-hand battlefield assessment from Ukraine’s General Valery Zaluzhny. You can bet Zaluzhny told Milley "we need your tanks".
Back here in Washington, beyond our questions and the carefully non-committal answers, the subtext from Cleverly and Blinken was a recognition that this war has some time to run, that winter turning to spring will bring a new Russian offensive and that Putin has time on his side.
That, say the British, is why now is the moment to up not just the quantity but the type of weapons to Ukraine.
In war, facts on the ground drive the negotiations which usually follow.
And those facts have the potential to shift significantly one way or the other as warmer war-fighting weather arrives.
Mr Cleverly, who is in Washington to urge the Americans to go "further and faster" in their support for Ukraine, praised US efforts to date pointing out that it was the biggest single supplier of assistance - both military and economic - to Ukraine.
He said the US and UK have worked "hand in glove" - along with other allies - since the start of the conflict to ensure Ukraine had the support it needed.
"Never in living memory has Russia been more isolated and the Atlantic alliance more united," he said.
"If Putin believed that the world would succumb to Ukraine fatigue and lose the will to resist his ambitions then that was once again another colossal misjudgment on his part."
Mr Blinken also reaffirmed the US administration's call for a negotiated settlement to the dispute between the UK and the EU over the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Following the talks with Mr Cleverly, Mr Blinken said he had underlined President Joe Biden's unequivocal support for the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.
"The United States believes there must be a negotiated settlement to the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol that is acceptable to all sides," he said. "We are heartened that in recent days the United Kingdom and the European Union have made substantive progress toward a negotiated solution."
Meanwhile, China said it welcomes a visit by Mr Blinken to the country amid reports he will travel there in early February.
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By Antoinette Radford
BBC News
Climate campaigner Greta Thunberg has been detained by police at a protest outside a western German village.
She had been protesting with activists seeking to stop the abandoned village of Lützerath from being demolished for the expansion of a coal mine.
Police told the BBC Ms Thunberg was not arrested and would be released after they checked her ID.
The Swedish activist was detained after a group "rushed towards the ledge" of the Garzweiler 2 mine, police said.
They also confirmed all of those detained in the group would be released without charge once their identities had been checked.
Video from the scene showed three officers carrying Ms Thunberg from the protest as she smiles.
Police also told Reuters news agency that one man jumped into the mine, which is located some 9km (5.6 miles) from Lützerath.
Reuters
Activists argue burning coal undermines Germany's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The government has pledged to bring forward the phase-out of coal in North Rhine-Westphalia, the state in which the mine lies, to 2030. The national target is 2038.
Lignite is the dirtiest form of coal, and the area around Lützerath yields 25 million tonnes of it each year.
The village, owned by energy company RWE after residents abandoned it, is expected to be the final one demolished for the lignite mine. RWE has said the coal under the village is needed as early as this winter.
The government argues it needs to expand the mine to keep up with German energy demand as it deals with the interruption of gas from Russia.
Organisers of the protest said around 35,000 demonstrators attended on Saturday while police said the number was closer to 15,000.
China's population has fallen for the first time in 60 years, with the national birth rate hitting a record low - 6.77 births per 1,000 people.
The population in 2022 - 1.4118 billion - fell by 850,000 from 2021.
China's birth rate has been declining for years, prompting a slew of policies to try to slow the trend.
But seven years after scrapping the one-child policy, it has entered what one official described as an "era of negative population growth".
The birth rate in 2022 was also down from 7.52 in 2021, according to China's National Bureau of Statistics, which released the figures on Tuesday.
In comparison, in 2021, the United States recorded 11.06 births per 1,000 people, and the United Kingdom, 10.08 births. The birth rate for the same year in India, which is poised to overtake China as the world's most populous country, was 16.42.
Deaths also outnumbered births for the first time last year in China. The country logged its highest death rate since 1976 - 7.37 deaths per 1,000 people, up from 7.18 the previous year.
Earlier government data had heralded a demographic crisis, which would in the long run shrink China's labour force and increase the burden on healthcare and other social security costs.
Results from a once-a-decade census announced in 2021 showed China's population growing at its slowest pace in decades. Populations are also shrinking and ageing in other East Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea.
"This trend is going to continue and perhaps worsen after Covid," says Yue Su, principal economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit. Ms Su is among experts who expect China's population to shrink further through 2023.
"The high youth unemployment rate and weaknesses in income expectations could delay marriage and childbirth plans further, dragging down the number of newborns," she added.
And the death rate in 2023 is likely to be higher than it was pre-pandemic due to Covid infections, she said. China has seen a surge of cases since it abandoned its zero-Covid policy last month.
China's population trends over the years have been largely shaped by the controversial one-child policy, which was introduced in 1979 to slow population growth. Families that violated the rules were fined and, in some cases, even lost jobs. In a culture that historically favours boys over girls, the policy had also led to forced abortions and a reportedly skewed gender ratio from the 1980s.
The policy was scrapped in 2016 and married couples were allowed to have two children. In recent years, the Chinese government also offered tax breaks and better maternal healthcare, among other incentives, to reverse, or at least slow, the falling birth rate.
But these policies did not lead to a sustained increase in the births. Some experts say this is because policies that encouraged childbirth were not accompanied by efforts to ease the burden of childcare, such as more help for working mothers or access to education.
In October 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping made boosting birth rates a priority. Mr Xi said in a once-in-five-year Communist Party Congress in Beijing that his government would "pursue a proactive national strategy" in response to the country's ageing population.
Apart from dishing out incentives to have children, China should also improve gender equality in households and workplaces, said Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, director of the National University of Singapore's Centre for Family and Population Research.
Scandinavian countries have shown that such moves can improve fertility rates, she added.
According to Paul Cheung, Singapore's former chief statistician, China has "plenty of manpower" and "a lot of lead time" to manage the demographic challenge.
"They are not in a doomsday scenario right away," he said.
Observers also say merely raising birth rates will not resolve the problems behind China's slowing growth.
"Boosting fertility is not going to improve productivity or increase domestic consumption in the medium term," said Stuart Gietel-Basten, a public policy professor at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
"How China will respond to these structural issues would be more crucial."
You may also be interested in:
This video can not be played
To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
China's population has fallen for the first time in 60 years, with the national birth rate hitting a record low - 6.77 births per 1,000 people.
The population in 2022 - 1.4118 billion - fell by 850,000 from 2021.
China's birth rate has been declining for years, prompting a slew of policies to try to slow the trend.
But seven years after scrapping the one-child policy, it has entered what one official described as an "era of negative population growth".
The birth rate in 2022 was also down from 7.52 in 2021, according to China's National Bureau of Statistics, which released the figures on Tuesday.
In comparison, in 2021, the United States recorded 11.06 births per 1,000 people, and the United Kingdom, 10.08 births. The birth rate for the same year in India, which is poised to overtake China as the world's most populous country, was 16.42.
Deaths also outnumbered births for the first time last year in China. The country logged its highest death rate since 1976 - 7.37 deaths per 1,000 people, up from 7.18 the previous year.
Earlier government data had heralded a demographic crisis, which would in the long run shrink China's labour force and increase the burden on healthcare and other social security costs.
Results from a once-a-decade census announced in 2021 showed China's population growing at its slowest pace in decades. Populations are also shrinking and ageing in other East Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea.
"This trend is going to continue and perhaps worsen after Covid," says Yue Su, principal economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit. Ms Su is among experts who expect China's population to shrink further through 2023.
"The high youth unemployment rate and weaknesses in income expectations could delay marriage and childbirth plans further, dragging down the number of newborns," she added.
And the death rate in 2023 is likely to be higher than it was pre-pandemic due to Covid infections, she said. China has seen a surge of cases since it abandoned its zero-Covid policy last month.
China's population trends over the years have been largely shaped by the controversial one-child policy, which was introduced in 1979 to slow population growth. Families that violated the rules were fined and, in some cases, even lost jobs. In a culture that historically favours boys over girls, the policy had also led to forced abortions and a reportedly skewed gender ratio from the 1980s.
The policy was scrapped in 2016 and married couples were allowed to have two children. In recent years, the Chinese government also offered tax breaks and better maternal healthcare, among other incentives, to reverse, or at least slow, the falling birth rate.
But these policies did not lead to a sustained increase in the births. Some experts say this is because policies that encouraged childbirth were not accompanied by efforts to ease the burden of childcare, such as more help for working mothers or access to education.
In October 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping made boosting birth rates a priority. Mr Xi said in a once-in-five-year Communist Party Congress in Beijing that his government would "pursue a proactive national strategy" in response to the country's ageing population.
Apart from dishing out incentives to have children, China should also improve gender equality in households and workplaces, said Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, director of the National University of Singapore's Centre for Family and Population Research.
Scandinavian countries have shown that such moves can improve fertility rates, she added.
According to Paul Cheung, Singapore's former chief statistician, China has "plenty of manpower" and "a lot of lead time" to manage the demographic challenge.
"They are not in a doomsday scenario right away," he said.
Observers also say merely raising birth rates will not resolve the problems behind China's slowing growth.
"Boosting fertility is not going to improve productivity or increase domestic consumption in the medium term," said Stuart Gietel-Basten, a public policy professor at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
"How China will respond to these structural issues would be more crucial."
You may also be interested in:
This video can not be played
To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
China's population has fallen for the first time in 60 years, with the national birth rate hitting a record low - 6.77 births per 1,000 people.
The population in 2022 - 1.4118 billion - fell by 850,000 from 2021.
China's birth rate has been declining for years, prompting a slew of policies to try to slow the trend.
But seven years after scrapping the one-child policy, it has entered what one official described as an "era of negative population growth".
The birth rate in 2022 was also down from 7.52 in 2021, according to China's National Bureau of Statistics, which released the figures on Tuesday.
In comparison, in 2021, the United States recorded 11.06 births per 1,000 people, and the United Kingdom, 10.08 births. The birth rate for the same year in India, which is poised to overtake China as the world's most populous country, was 16.42.
Deaths also outnumbered births for the first time last year in China. The country logged its highest death rate since 1976 - 7.37 deaths per 1,000 people, up from 7.18 the previous year.
Earlier government data had heralded a demographic crisis, which would in the long run shrink China's labour force and increase the burden on healthcare and other social security costs.
Results from a once-a-decade census announced in 2021 showed China's population growing at its slowest pace in decades. Populations are also shrinking and ageing in other East Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea.
"This trend is going to continue and perhaps worsen after Covid," says Yue Su, principal economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit. Ms Su is among experts who expect China's population to shrink further through 2023.
"The high youth unemployment rate and weaknesses in income expectations could delay marriage and childbirth plans further, dragging down the number of newborns," she added.
And the death rate in 2023 is likely be higher than it was pre-pandemic due to Covid infections, she said. China has seen a surge of cases since it abandoned its zero-Covid policy last month.
China's population trends over the years have been largely shaped by the controversial one-child policy, which was introduced in 1979 to slow population growth.
Families that violated the rules were fined and in some cases, even lost jobs. In a culture that historically favours boys over girls, the policy had also led to forced abortions and a reportedly skewed gender ratio from the 1980s.
The policy was scrapped in 2016 and married couples were allowed to have two children. In recent years, the Chinese government also offered tax breaks and better maternal healthcare, among other incentives, to reverse, or at least slow, the falling birth rate.
But these policies did not lead to a sustained increase in the births. Some experts say this is because policies that encouraged childbirth were not accompanied by efforts to ease the burden of childcare, such as more help for working mothers or access to education.
In October 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping made boosting birth rates a priority. Mr Xi said in a once-in-five-year Communist Party Congress in Beijing that his government would "pursue a proactive national strategy" in response to the country's ageing population.
Apart from dishing out incentives to have children, China should also improve gender equality in households and workplaces, said Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, director of the National University of Singapore's Centre for Family and Population Research.
Scandinavian countries have shown that such moves can improve fertility rates, she added.
According to Paul Cheung, Singapore's former chief statistician, China has "plenty of manpower" and "a lot of lead time" to manage the demographic challenge.
"They are not in a doomsday scenario right away," he said.
Observers also say merely raising birth rates will not resolve the problems behind China's slowing growth.
"Boosting fertility is not going to improve productivity or increase domestic consumption in the medium term," said Stuart Gietel-Basten, a public policy professor at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
"How China will respond to these structural issues would be more crucial."
You may also be interested in:
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The co-pilot of Nepal's fatal plane crash had lost her husband who was a pilot in another Yeti Airlines accident 16 years ago.
Anju Khatiwada, 44, was the co-pilot on Sunday's fatal flight from Kathmandu which crashed into a gorge in clear weather near Pokhara airport killing at least 70 people.
Ms Khatiwada's career in aviation was prompted by the death of her husband Dipak Pokhrel, who died on a Yeti Airlines flight in 2006 which came down minutes before landing.
No survivors have been found so far among the 72 people who were on board Sunday's flight, which was Nepal's deadliest plane accident in three decades.
Ms Khatiwada got her pilot training with the insurance money she got following Mr Pokhrel's death in a Yeti Airlines crash in the western town of Jumla, airline spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula said.
Her remains have not been identified but she is feared dead, he added.
Mr Bartuala said Ms Khatiwada had more than 6,400 hours of flying time and had previously flown the popular 27-minute tourist route from Kathmandu to Pokhara.
More on Nepal
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It is still not clear what caused the crash of the ATR-72 aircraft, which was reported to have rolled from side to side before crashing in a gorge near Pokhara airport and catching fire.
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0:18
Plane flips moments before Nepal crash
Rescuers have been combing through debris scattered down a 300-metre-deep gorge in search of passengers who are unaccounted for.
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On Monday, searchers found the cockpit voice recorderand flight data recorder from the flight, both in good condition, a discovery that is likely to help investigators determine what caused the crash.
An official said small children were among the passengers on the flight.
Image:Body of a victim is carried into a vehicle in Pokhara
Ajay KC, a police official in Pokhara who is part of the rescue efforts, said: "There were small children among the passengers. Some might have been burnt and died, and may not be found out. We will continue to look for them."
Image:British national Ruan Calum Crighton was one of the victims of the Nepal plane crash. Pic: DL NEWS
The flight was carrying 68 passengers, including 15 foreign nationals, as well as four crew members, Nepal's Civil Aviation Authority said.
The body of the plane's captain, Kamal KC, has been recovered and identified.
Image:Family members mourn the death of a victim
Television channels showed weeping relatives waiting for the bodies of their loved ones outside a hospital where post-mortems are being conducted in Pokhara.
