NEW YORK: Earth’s population will peak in the mid-2080s at around 10.3 billion people, then drop slightly to a level much lower than anticipated a decade ago, the United Nations said.
The current population of 8.2 billion people will rise to that maximum over the next 60 years, then dip to 10.2 billion by the end of the century, says a report released Thursday entitled “World Population Prospects 2024.”
It said the size of the world’s population in 2100 will be six percent lower, or 700 million people fewer, than what was anticipated in June 2013.
“The demographic landscape has evolved greatly in recent years,” said Li Junhua, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs.
He said the unexpected population peak stems from several factors that include lower levels of fertility in some of the world’s largest countries, especially China.
He said this lower maximum will also come earlier than previously calculated and this is a hopeful sign as the world fights global warming: fewer humans accounting for less aggregate consumption would mean less pressure on the environment.
“However, slower population growth will not eliminate the need to reduce the average impact attributable to the activities of each individual person,” this official said.
More than a quarter, or 28 percent, of the world’s population now lives in one of 63 countries or areas where the population has already peaked, including China, Russia, Japan and Germany, the report said.
Nearly 50 other countries should join that group over the next 30 years, including Brazil, Iran and Turkiye.
But population growth will continue in more than 120 countries beyond 2054. These include India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and the United States, said the UN.
A rise in global life expectancy — interrupted by the Covid pandemic — has resumed, with an average of 73.3 years of longevity in 2024. It will average 77.4 years in 2054.
So the world’s population will get more and more gray. By the late 2070s, the number of people 65 or older is projected to be 2.2 billion, surpassing those under 18, the study predicts.
UN says world population to peak at 10.3 billion in 2080s
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UN says world population to peak at 10.3 billion in 2080s
- A quarter of world’s population now lives in one of 63 countries where the population has already peaked
- Nearly 50 other countries should join that group over the next 30 years, including Brazil, Iran and Turkiye
Boeing’s Starliner astronauts could return on SpaceX capsule in February 2025, NASA says
- The astronauts’ test mission, initially expected to last about eight days on the station, has been drawn out by issues on Starliner’s propulsion system
- The latest test data have stirred disagreements and debate within NASA about whether to accept the risk of a Starliner return to Earth
The US space agency has been discussing potential plans with SpaceX to leave two seats empty on an upcoming Crew Dragon launch for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who became the first crew to fly Boeing’s Starliner capsule.
The astronauts’ test mission, initially expected to last about eight days on the station, has been drawn out by issues on Starliner’s propulsion system that have increasingly called into question the spacecraft’s ability to safely return them to Earth as planned.
A Boeing spokesperson said if NASA decides to change Starliner’s mission, the company “will take the actions necessary to configure Starliner for an uncrewed return.”
Thruster failures during Starliner’s initial approach to the ISS in June and several leaks of helium — used to pressurize those thrusters — have set Boeing off on a testing campaign to understand the cause and propose fixes to NASA, which has the final say. Recent results have unearthed new information, causing greater alarm about a safe return.
The latest test data have stirred disagreements and debate within NASA about whether to accept the risk of a Starliner return to Earth, or make the call to use Crew Dragon instead.
Using a SpaceX craft to return astronauts that Boeing had planned to bring back on Starliner would be a major blow to an aerospace giant that has struggled for years to compete with SpaceX and its more experienced Crew Dragon.
Starliner has been docked to the ISS for 63 of the maximum 90 days it can stay, and it is parked at the same port that Crew Dragon will have to use to deliver the upcoming astronaut crew.
Early Tuesday morning, NASA, using a SpaceX rocket and a Northrop Grumman capsule, delivered a routine shipment of food and supplies to the station, including extra clothes for Wilmore and Williams.
Starliner’s high-stakes mission is a final test required before NASA can certify the spacecraft for routine astronaut flights to and from the ISS. Crew Dragon received NASA approval for astronaut flights in 2020.
Starliner development has been set back by management issues and numerous engineering problems. It has cost Boeing $1.6 billion since 2016, including $125 million from Starliner’s current test mission, securities filings show.
CONCERNS AT NASA
A meeting this week of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which oversees Starliner, ended with some officials disagreeing with a plan to accept Boeing’s testing data and use Starliner to bring the astronauts home, officials said during a news conference.
“We didn’t poll in a way that led to a conclusion,” Commercial Crew Program chief Steve Stich said.
“We heard from a lot of folks that had concerns, and the decision was not clear,” Ken Bowersox, NASA’s space operations chief, added.
A Boeing executive was not at the Wednesday press conference.
While no decision has been made on using Starliner or Crew Dragon, NASA has been buying Boeing more time to do more testing and gather more data to build a better case to trust Starliner. Sometime next week is when NASA expects to decide, officials said.
The agency on Tuesday delayed by more than a month SpaceX’s upcoming Crew Dragon mission, a routine flight called Crew-9, that is expected to send three NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut to the ISS.
NASA’s ISS program chief said the agency has not yet decided which astronauts they would pull off the mission for Wilmore and Williams if needed.
Boeing’s testing so far has shown that four of Starliner’s jets had failed in June because they overheated and automatically turned off, while other thrusters re-fired during tests appeared weaker than normal because of some restriction to their propellant.
Ground tests in late July at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico have helped reveal that the thrusters’ overheating causes a teflon seal to warp, choking propellant tubes for the thrusters and thereby weakening their thrust.
“That, I would say, upped the level of discomfort, and not having a total understanding of the physics of what’s happening,” Stich said, describing why NASA now appears more willing to discuss a Crew Dragon contingency after previously downplaying such a prospect to reporters.
‘Feeling terrorized’: Muslims in famously left-leaning Liverpool shocked by UK riots
- Muslims report feeling shock after riots, other ethnic minorities say they are worried too
- Muslim population in England and Wales stood at 3.9 million, or 6.5% of the total, as of 2021
LIVERPOOL, England: For Liverpool’s biggest mosque, it’s been a week of firsts.
Most entrances have been blocked, men in high-vis jackets have been taking turns to patrol and a handful of worshippers have been sleeping inside at night — all necessary precautions, say officials at the Al-Rahma Mosque, during the UK’s worst riots in years.
The increased vigilance comes as some Muslims and ethnic minorities in Liverpool say they feel unsafe amid widespread violent, racist protests targeting mosques, immigration centers and hotels that haven’t spared the famously left-leaning city in the north of England.
Both mosque officials and other Muslims in Liverpool described feeling shocked, after two mosques further north in England were targeted by violent mobs and hundreds of anti-immigration protesters and counterprotesters clashed in central
Liverpool. Shops were looted and some police were injured.
A second mosque in Liverpool, the Abdullah Quilliam, which describes itself as Britain’s first, has temporarily closed due to the violence, which was fueled by a false narrative spread online that the killer of three girls in nearby Southport last week was an Islamist migrant.
“I was born here, I was raised here. So seeing this, it just doesn’t feel like home,” said Abdulwase Sufian, a 20-year-old student who helps at the Al-Rahma, referring to himself as a “Scouser,” the colloquial term for someone from Liverpool.
“Seeing what’s happened, it’s gotten me scared, not just for myself, but for the future,” he said, the yellow dome and pink-and-yellow minarets of the Al-Rahma behind him as dozens of men finished afternoon prayers and left.
Sufian added that the separate female entrance for the mosque, which serves a wide range of Muslims from ethnic Yemeni to Pakistani, had been closed to discourage women from visiting in the evenings, out of safety concerns.
He himself hasn’t stepped outside his immediate neighborhood out of fears for his safety, Sufian said, a sentiment echoed by others in the community.
FEELING TERRIFIED
Saba Ahmed, a community worker and another Liverpudlian Muslim, said she had felt “terrified” in recent days, and her 15-year-old son was preferring to spend his summer holidays indoors on his PlayStation.
Still, many of Ahmed’s white English friends had been supportive, she said, with some neighbors offering to do the grocery shopping for her so she could remain safe at home.
“That’s our people in Liverpool, that’s our fellow neighbors here,” she said.
Others have been less fortunate.
Farmanullah Nasiri, a taxi driver, described being assaulted after picking up two passengers from Aigburth Road, Liverpool, in the early hours of Tuesday.
One of them, a woman, punched him on the face and broke his dashcam as she left his silver Ford Focus, after starting an argument over the fare and after abusing him once she learnt he was an ethnic Afghan, Nasiri said.
Nasiri, 28, says he did not file a police complaint.
A video shot at 0120 GMT on his iPhone showed a broken dashcam and blood above his right eye. Reuters was not able to verify his account of how it happened.
“This is kind of a racism ... Been here for more than 10 years in Liverpool. Everybody’s friendly. There’s no issue like this before. This is the first time,” Nasiri said.
Tell MAMA, a group which monitors anti-Muslim incidents, has received over 500 calls and online reports of anti-Muslim behavior from across the UK in the past week, a five-fold increase from the week before, its director Iman Atta told Reuters, describing Muslim communities as “terrorized.”
Anti-Muslim hate has been growing in the UK even before the start of the riots, and particularly after the start of the conflict in Gaza last year, the group says.
Over one in four in a survey of 550 British Muslims last month said they had faced an anti-Muslim hate incident in the last year, Tell MAMA said.
‘NOT JUST MUSLIMS’
Amid all the tension, Muslim community leaders are advising calm, at a time when many young men in the community might feel tempted to respond.
Footage from Sky News earlier this week showed a large group of mostly Asian men with Palestinian flags gathering in an area of Birmingham following rumors of a far-right protest at the site, which did not materialize. Police said a man was assaulted and a pub window was smashed, and have charged one man for possession of an offensive weapon.
The rival, counter protests have included both White and non-White people describing themselves as anti-racist, anti-fascist or pro-Palestinian. Sometimes extreme left-wing anarchists have also taken part.
Community leaders are discouraging such gatherings.
“We don’t want these counter protests or these large groups of young people turning up because that’s the spark that we don’t need ... so we need to be very careful,” said Sajjad Amin, trustee of the UKIM Khizra Mosque in Manchester, 30 miles (50 km) from Liverpool.
Some Muslim leaders recounted tensions being defused.
Adam Kelwick, an imam at the temporarily-closed Abdullah Quilliam mosque, said it had been “prepared for the worst” when anti-immigration demonstrators gathered outside last week, but protesters calmed down after offers of food and dialogue.
“All it took was a few burgers and some chips and some genuine intention from our side,” he said, speaking from near the chained up gates of the Victorian-era mosque.
The Muslim population in England and Wales stood at 3.9 million people, or 6.5 percent of the total, as of 2021.
The heightened tension has unnerved both that community and others. On Tuesday evening rumors of a far-right gathering prompted shops on Lawrence Road to down their shutters early.
Local resident Santhosh Thomas, an ethnic Indian, helped chain up two large metal road signs to the fence of a nearby church, to discourage their use as weapons.
He said his brown skin made him a target, regardless of his religion. “It’s not just Muslims ... everyone is scared,” Thomas said, as a police van arrived on Lawrence Road.
New Zealand and Australia trade barbs over accent and language in row over Maori words
- Prime minister: Not a snub of the Indigenous language by New Zealand’s government
- It instead reflects the ‘incredibly simple’ language required when speaking to Australians
WELLINGTON: The removal of basic Maori phrases meaning “hello” and “New Zealand” from a Maori lunar new year invitation to an Australian official was not a snub of the Indigenous language by New Zealand’s government, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said Wednesday, seemingly joking that it instead reflected the “incredibly simple” language required when speaking to Australians.
Luxon’s defense in Parliament of the lawmaker who ordered the removal of the Maori words from an invitation sent to Australia’s arts minister was an attempt to rebuff criticism that his government is anti-Maori, as it seeks to reverse policies favoring Indigenous people and language.
The prime minister appeared to indulge in a favorite pastime of New Zealanders, who enjoy a friendly rivalry with their closest neighbor: calling Australians stupid.
“In my dealings with Australians, it always pays to be incredibly simple and clear and use English,” Luxon said, referring to the invitation sent to Tony Burke.
Ripostes between lawmakers across the Tasman have precedent. In the most famous example, a New Zealand leader, Rob Muldoon, quipped in the 1980s that New Zealanders who migrate to Australia “raise the IQ of both countries.”
On Thursday, a smiling Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded to Luxon with a favorite Australian joke — that no one can understand the New Zealand accent.
He said that at times interpreters were needed, perhaps diplomatically adding that he had sometimes “missed” things said by Luxon’s predecessors too.
“Look, we’re great friends and we’re great mates,” the Australian leader said. “Sometimes though we do speak a different language and that’s when we both think we’re speaking English.”
The exchange offered a diversion in an otherwise tense session of New Zealand’s Parliament, which has been roiled by accusations of bullying, racism and insults in recent weeks, with lawmakers in tears and the prime minister urging “all political leaders to watch their rhetoric.”
During Question Time, Luxon was asked by opposition leader Chris Hipkins about a series of inflammatory remarks he said lawmakers had recently made.
Among them was the report that New Zealand’s arts, culture and heritage minister, Paul Goldsmith — who signed off on the new year invitation — had directed officials to remove some Maori phrases from the materials, according to documents divulged by 1News.
They included “tena koe” — a formal way to say hello, learned by New Zealand children in their first year of elementary school — and “Aotearoa,” a commonplace Maori name for New Zealand.
“I just didn’t think it needed a lot of te reo in it,” Goldsmith told 1News, using a phrase meaning the Maori language, an official one of New Zealand. The language was once close to dying out, but activists provoked a revival over several decades, and common Maori words or phrases are now in everyday use among all New Zealanders.
The same movement prompted a revival of Matariki, the Maori lunar new year, which was established as a nationwide public holiday in 2020.
Since assuming office after the 2023 election, Luxon’s coalition government has prompted fraught public debates about race. One was over a return to English names for government agencies, many of which had assumed Maori titles in recent years.
Another was over ending initiatives that offer priority to Maori, who lag behind other New Zealanders in most health, economic and justice statistics.
Protesters gathered outside Parliament in the capital, Wellington, this week to oppose the government’s plans to repeal a clause requiring recognition of children’s Maori heritage from the law governing the child protection system.
A spokesperson for Burke, the Australian recipient of the controversial invitation, said on Thursday that he had known the meaning of the word Aotearoa since 1982, when it was referenced in the lyrics of a popular song by the New Zealand band Split Enz.
Bangladesh awaits installation of interim government after weeks of strife
- Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus expected to be sworn in as chief adviser along with a team of advisers later on Thursday
- Sheikh Hasina’s dramatic exit on Monday triggered jubilation and violence across Bangladesh
DHAKA: Bangladesh is set to get a new, interim government headed by Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus on Thursday, after weeks of tumultuous student protests forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee to India.
Yunus, 84, Bangladesh’s only Nobel laureate and a harsh critic of Hasina, was recommended for the job by the student protesters who led the campaign against Hasina.
He was expected to be sworn in as chief adviser along with a team of advisers later on Thursday in an interim government which the army chief said may include 15 members, although discussions on the names continued till late on Wednesday.
Hasina’s Awami League party was not involved in all-party discussions led by army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman, who announced Hasina’s resignation on Monday.
Her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy said in a Facebook post late on Wednesday that the party had not given up yet and was ready to hold talks with opponents and the administration.
“I had said my family will no longer be involved in politics but the way our party leaders and workers are being attacked, we cannot give up,” Joy said.
Yunus is known as the ‘banker to the poor’ and was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for founding a bank that pioneered fighting poverty with small loans to needy borrowers.
He is due to arrive in the capital Dhaka from Paris on Thursday, where he had been receiving medical treatment.
“I’m looking forward to going back home and see what’s happening there and how we can organize ourselves to get out of the trouble that we’re in,” Yunus said before he boarded a flight on Wednesday evening.
Hasina’s dramatic exit on Monday from the country she ruled for four terms — and was reelected to a fifth in January — triggered jubilation and violence across Bangladesh, as crowds stormed and ransacked her official residence unopposed.
She fled to neighboring India where she is taking shelter at an air base near the capital New Delhi.
Student protests against quotas for government jobs spiralled in July, killing about 300 people and injuring thousands, as demonstrations were met with a violent crackdown that was criticized internationally although the government denied using excessive force.
The protests were fueled by tough economic conditions and political repression as well.
After years of strong growth as the garment industry expanded, the $450 billion economy struggled with costly imports, inflation and unemployment and the government had sought a bailout from the International Monetary Fund.
Yunus and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Hasina’s main political opponent, called for calm and an end to violence on Wednesday.
“No destruction, revenge or vengeance,” said Hasina’s arch rival and BNP leader Khaleda Zia, 78, in a video address from her hospital bed to hundreds of her supporters at a rally in Dhaka on Wednesday.
Zia, who was released from house arrest on Tuesday, and her exiled son Tarique Rahman, addressed the rally and called for national elections to be held within three months.
On Wednesday, a court overturned Yunus’ conviction in a labor case in which he was handed a six-month jail sentence in January. Yunus had called his prosecution political, part of a campaign by Hasina to quash dissent.
“Let us make the best use of our new victory,” Yunus said.
Trump praised Minnesota Gov. Walz in 2020 for response to unrest over Floyd’s murder, audio shows
- “What they did in Minneapolis was incredible. They went in and dominated, and it happened immediately,” Trump told Walz and other governors and officials in a phone call on June 1, 2020
- Protests erupted in Minneapolis and around the world after Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a white former officer who knelt on the Black man’s neck on May 25, 2020
MINNEAPOLIS: While former President Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance have been hammering Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz over his response to the violence that erupted after George Floyd’s murder, Trump told the governor at the time that he fully agreed with how Walz handled it.
“What they did in Minneapolis was incredible. They went in and dominated, and it happened immediately,” Trump told Walz and other governors and officials in a phone call on June 1, 2020. The Associated Press on Wednesday obtained an audio recording of the call, which has taken on new significance now that Walz has been tapped as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate against Trump and Vance.
Other administration officials on the call included Defense Secretary Mark Esper; Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Attorney General William Barr.
ABC News reported on the call earlier Wednesday, a day after Harris introduced Walz as her vice presidential pick. CNN posted a transcript of the call back in 2020.
Protests erupted in Minneapolis and around the world after Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a white former officer who knelt on the Black man’s neck for nearly 9 1/2 minutes, on May 25, 2020. A bystander video captured Floyd’s fading cries of “I can’t breathe.” His death forced a reckoning with police brutality and racism. Some of the protests turned violent.
Walz mobilized the Minnesota National Guard three days later to help restore order to Minneapolis after rioting that included the burning of a police station and numerous businesses. Trump offered federal help to Walz later that day, but the governor did not take him up on it.
During a May 2024 fundraiser in St. Paul, Trump repeated a claim he had been making lately that he was responsible for deploying the National Guard. “The entire city was burning down. ... If you didn’t have me as president, you wouldn’t have Minneapolis today,” Trump told a Republican audience. Trump made similar claims at a rally in St. Cloud last month.
It was actually Walz who gave the mobilization order in response to requests from the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Although Walz came under criticism at the time for not moving faster. There was finger-pointing between Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Walz on who bore responsibility for the delays.
Trump, in the June 1, 2020, call, described Walz as “an excellent guy” and later said: “I don’t blame you. I blame the mayor.” The president didn’t criticize the governor at the time.
“Tim, you called up big numbers and the big numbers knocked them out so fast, it was like bowling pins,” Trump said.
But Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt put a different spin on the call in a statement to the AP on Wednesday.
“Governor Walz allowed Minneapolis to burn for days, despite President Trump’s offer to deploy soldiers and cries for help from the liberal Mayor of Minneapolis,” Leavitt said. “In this daily briefing phone call with Governors on June 1, days after the riots began, President Trump acknowledged Governor Walz for FINALLY taking action to deploy the National Guard to end the violence in the city.”
Walz did thank Trump on the call, as well as Esper and Milley, “for your strategic guidance, very helpful. ... Yeah, our city is grieving and in pain.”
