A woman dies every two minutes due to pregnancy or childbirth complications, despite maternal mortality rates dropping by a third in 20 years, the United Nations said Thursday.

President Vladimir Putin's announcement that he was halting cooperation under the New START treaty should be understood as another attempt to put pressure on Western countries supplying Ukraine with weapons and money as it fights the Russian invasion, they added.

The United States has said China is "considering providing lethal support" for Russia's war in Ukraine. Beijing quickly rebuffed the claim this week but experts say it may have some merit and, if China did give support, could be a "game changer" in the year-old conflict.

Flanked by four Russian tricolour flags either side, Putin told Russia's political and military elite that Russia would "carefully and consistently resolve the tasks facing us" in Ukraine.

At 4:00 am (0900 GMT) Sunday -- unbeknown to the world's media, the Washington political establishment or American voters -- the 80-year-old Democrat boarded an Air Force Boeing 757, known as a C-32.

Beijing will "work with the international community to promote dialogue and consultation, address the concerns of all parties and seek common security", Qin Gang said in a speech on global security in the Chinese capital.

But behind the scenes, officials at the White House and other agencies were planning intensively for Biden to make an unannounced trip to Kyiv to show solidarity with Ukraine days before the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion.

Russia's Kommersant newspaper earlier reported that Wang had arrived. China's foreign ministry declined immediate comment as did Russia's foreign ministry. 

This week more than 60 nations including the United States and China called for regulating AI in defence to ensure it "does not undermine international security, stability and accountability".

Spain's parliament approved Thursday a law granting paid medical leave to women suffering severe period pain, becoming the first European country to advance such legislation.

TikTok, whose parent company ByteDance is Chinese, is already facing calls for a ban in the US over its links with Beijing, and is now under fierce scrutiny in the European Union.

Macron has not hidden his hope that Beijing, which remains an important ally of Moscow and has not condemned the invasion of Ukraine launched nearly a year ago, will pressure Russia to return to the negotiating table.

Moscow considers the destruction of Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines last September "an act of international terrorism" and will not allow it to be swept under the rug, the embassy said in a statement. 

The self-published article claimed that the US Navy helped Norway plant explosives on the pipelines running under the Baltic Sea between Russia and Germany.

Antonio Strangio, 32, wanted for the production and trafficking of drugs, was arrested at Bali airport on February 2 after being on the run since 2016, police said.

The companies are due to present reports this week on the measures they have taken to comply with the updated EU code of practice on disinformation which is linked to the online content rules known as the Digital Services Act (DSA) that came into force last November.

Three Indonesian residents have been injured and dozens of others displaced in the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that rocked central Turkey early on Monday, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Since late 2021, Europe has been gripped by its worst-ever outbreak of bird flu, with North and South America also experiencing severe outbreaks.

Former British prime minister Boris Johnson, speaking to the BBC for a documentary early this week, said the Russian leader had threatened him with a missile strike that would "only take a minute." The Kremlin said Johnson was lying.

The treaty came into force in 2011 and was extended in 2021 for five more years. It caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the United States and Russia can deploy, and the deployment of land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers to deliver them.

Sunak had ordered independent adviser to investigate questions over the tax affairs of Zahawi, who was briefly finance minister during a period of political turmoil in Britain last year.

In an interview published on Wednesday, the pope had said being homosexual was "not a crime ... but it’s a sin".

"Nothing has been decided at this time regarding my visit to Ukraine," he told parliament.

Erdogan's furious comments further distanced the prospects of Sweden and Finland joining the Western defence alliance before Turkey's presidential and parliamentary polls in May.

Speculation has been growing in Russian media about Putin's plans for 2024, when a new election is due under Russia's constitutional rules. 

A US-led meeting of some 50 Ukraine allies came through with billions of dollars' worth of military hardware, including ample armored vehicles and munitions needed to push back Russian forces.

The since-deleted headline was posted Thursday on Twitter with a link to an article by BBC World, the UK broadcaster's global newsroom.

The penalty follows a 390 million euro fine for Meta-owned media platforms Instagram and Facebook two weeks ago after they were found to have flouted the same EU rules.

In a post on Telegram discussing NATO support for the Ukrainian military, Medvedev said: "Nuclear powers have never lost major conflicts on which their fate depends."

Germany will allow German-made tanks to be sent to Ukraine to help its defense against Russia if the United States agrees to send its own tanks, a report says.