By Jessica Janes for Mailonline

Published: 5:08 PM EDT, March 22, 2024 | Updated: 5:37 PM EDT, March 22, 2024

By Jowena Riley

Published: 10:19 EDT, March 22, 2024 | Updated: 10:57 AM EDT, March 22, 2024

Women worldwide are now having fewer children on average than previous generations.

The trend, which leads to greater access to education and contraception, more women taking up jobs and changing attitudes toward childbearing, is expected to shrink the populations of dozens of countries by 2100.

Dr. Jennifer Sciubba, author of 8 Billion and Counting: How Sex, Death, and Migration Shape Our World, told MailOnline that people are choosing to have smaller families and the change “is permanent.”

“So it’s wise to focus on working within this new reality, rather than trying to change it,” she said.

Sex education and contraception

An increase in education and access to contraception is one of the reasons behind the decline in the global fertility rate.

Education about pregnancy and contraception has increased, with sex education classes starting in the US in the 1970s and becoming compulsory in Britain in the 1990s.

“There’s an old saying that ‘education is the best contraception’ and I think that’s relevant” to explaining the fall in birth rates, said Professor Allan Pacey, an andrologist at the University of Sheffield and former chairman of the British Fertility Society.

Elina Pradhan, a senior health specialist at the World Bank, suggests that better-educated women may choose to have fewer children because they fear they will earn less if they take time off before and after giving birth.

In Britain, three in 10 mothers and one in 20 fathers report having to reduce their working hours because of childcare, ONS data shows.

They can also become more exposed to different ideas about family sizes through school and the connections they make during their education, which encourages them to think more critically about the number of children they want, she said.

And better-educated women may know more about prenatal care and child health and may have greater access to health care, Ms. Pradhan added.

Professor Jonathan Portes, an economist at King’s College London, said women’s greater control over their own fertility means that “households, and women in particular, both want and are able to have fewer children.”

More women are entering the workplace

There are more women in the workplace now than there were fifty years ago – 72 percent compared to 52 percent – ​​which has contributed to the halving of the global fertility rate over the same period.

Professor Portes also noted that the decline in birth rates may also be due to the structure of labor and housing markets, expensive childcare and gender roles, which make it difficult for many women to combine career ambitions with having a family.

The British government has implemented “the most anti-family policies of any government in living memory” by cutting back on services that support families, along with benefit cuts that “deliberately penalize low-income families and children,” he added.

As more women enter the workplace, the age at which they start a family has shifted. Data from the ONS shows that the most common age at which a woman born in 1949 gave birth was 22. But women born in 1975 were most likely to have children at age 31.

In another sign that late motherhood is on the rise, half of women born in 1990, the most recent cohort to reach age 30, remained childless at age 30 – the highest rate ever recorded.

Women repeatedly point to work-related reasons for delaying having children, with research showing that most women want to move up the career ladder before becoming pregnant.

However, this move could lead to women having fewer children than they had planned. In the 1990s, just 6,700 IVF cycles took place each year in Britain – a technique to help people with fertility problems have a child. But this shot up to more than 69,000 in 2019, suggesting more and more women are struggling to conceive naturally.

Decreasing sperm count

Reproduction experts have also raised alarms that biological factors, such as declining sperm counts and changes in sexual development, could threaten human survival.

Dr. Shanna Swan, an epidemiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, wrote a landmark study in 2017 that found that worldwide sperm counts have fallen by more than half over the past four decades.

She warned that ‘chemicals everywhere’, such as phthalates in toiletries, food packaging and children’s toys, are to blame. The chemicals cause hormonal imbalance, which can cause “reproductive devastation,” she said.

Factors such as tobacco and marijuana smoking and rising obesity rates may also play a role, Dr. Swan said.

Studies have also shown that air pollution lowers fertility rates, suggesting that air pollution causes inflammation that can damage egg and sperm production.

However, Professor Pacey, an expert on sperm quality and fertility, said: ‘I really don’t think changes in sperm quality are responsible for the decline in birth rates.

‘Actually, I don’t believe the current evidence that sperm quality has deteriorated.’

He said: ‘I think a much bigger problem for falling birth rates is the fact that: (a) people are choosing to have fewer children; and (b) they wait until they are older to get them.”

Fear of bringing children into the world

Choosing not to have children is cited by some scientists as the best thing a person can do for the planet, compared to reducing energy use, travel and making food choices based on their carbon footprint.

Scientists at Oregon State University calculated that each child adds approximately 9,441 tons of carbon dioxide to a woman’s “carbon legacy.” Each ton is equivalent to driving around the entire circumference of the world.

Experts say the data discourages climate-conscious people from having children, while others opt out of having children because of fears about the world they will grow up in.

Dr. Britt Wray, a human and planetary health fellow at Stanford University, said the decline in fertility rates was due to “fear of a deteriorating future due to climate change.”

She was one of the authors behind a Lancet survey of 10,000 volunteers, which found that four in 10 young people are afraid of giving birth because of climate concerns.

Professor David Coleman, emeritus professor of demography at the University of Oxford, told MailOnline that people’s decision not to have children is “understandable” due to adverse conditions such as climate change.

A GARDENER revealed the method they avoided, which always leaves plants a week away from death.

Instead, they lived by a “three strikes” rule that saved time and energy.

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The Redditor u/jelliknacht shared their gardening tips and tricks with beginners.

For those who worried about failure, they explained that failure was inevitable yet valuable.

“Every failure is a lesson,” they said.

Their advice to use large self-watering pots was hoped to reduce rookie mistakes.

“When you see pictures in magazines and on the Internet of piles of leaves coming out of small pots, that’s what they are lies” they explained.

“Or at least rarities. Suppose the underground part of your plant is about the same size as the above-ground part.”

Jelliknight added that gardening is a numbers game and you always have to be careful if you want to bear fruit.

Rather than experience disappointment when store-bought seedlings die, they planted as many seeds as possible to increase the odds of success.

“Start with seeds. It’s the cheapest way to garden. And you will do so for many years to come,” they said.

“Those seedlings from garden centers have been pampered, shaded, hardened, fertilized, watered several times a day and watched with an expert eye; they are not at all prepared for the harsh realities of life in a noob’s garden.

“Four dollars for one seedling that will permanently die or two dollars for 100 seeds is not a difficult choice.”

One season the gardener planted more than 60 tomato seeds, but was rewarded with only two seedlings.

“Another year I got about two dozen seedlings, I only got fruit from about four plants. Assume you’re going to fail and be pleasantly surprised if you don’t,” they said.

To make their plants successful, they also avoided planting them in containers as this can be restrictive compared to planting in the ground.

“Growing in containers sucks. It just is. In the soil you have water stored, nutrients just hanging around, good insects and worms, in a container you have exactly what you put in it,” they explained.

“Everything is always about a week away from death and the few tomatoes I have taken from containers never taste as good as those from the ground.”

Other tips, such as growing smaller fruit, figuring out what grows best locally, and only growing what you can eat, increased their success rate and reduced waste.

Even when the going gets tough, Jelliknight wasn’t above giving up.

“I have a three-strikes rule. If I try to grow something three times and fail, I give up and try something else,” they revealed.

“There are some things my neighbors can grow, but I just can’t. There’s no point in going uphill trying to find something that will grow in your plot.”

The Israeli military said Thursday it is supporting new initiatives to get humanitarian aid into Gaza by land, air and sea, just hours after the army’s chief spokesman said it was trying to “flood” the enclave with much-needed aid.

Israel has approved three new aid efforts in the past week: a ship carrying food approaching the Gaza coast; airborne landings abroad; and an initial convoy of six trucks heading directly from Israel into northern Gaza, where aid groups say hunger is worst, for the first time since October 7.

The public signals from Israeli officials follow increasingly urgent calls from the United States and other allies for Israel to do more to ease the humanitarian crisis caused by its invasion. The United Nations has warned that parts of Gaza are on the brink of famine.

Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli political analyst and columnist at Haaretz, said Israel is coming under pressure from all sides and that images from Gaza of emaciated, starving children may have been “a tipping point” for policymakers. “There is a limit to how much opprobrium Israel is willing to accept and stand behind and say we are right,” she said.

Aid agencies and U.N. officials say the new efforts are too small and inefficient to meet the enormous needs of Gaza’s citizens. They have argued that it would be better for Israel to relax truck entry restrictions at established border crossings into the enclave, and do more to speed up the delivery of goods into Gaza.

Airdrops are ineffective and largely symbolic, these groups say, and can deliver only a fraction of the food that a truck convoy can transport. Setting up the infrastructure for maritime aid deliveries will be expensive and take time: US officials have said it could take weeks before a floating pier for maritime aid is operational.

“Air and sea are not a substitute for land and no one is saying otherwise,” Sigrid Kaag, the UN humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, said last week.

But land deliveries also face challenges that critics say Israel must try to address.

The Israeli bombardment of Gaza has damaged the roads used by aid trucks. Civil order has collapsed. Desperate Gazans have looted food and taken it from trucks. Convoys have come under fire.

In addition, humanitarian organizations have said strict Israeli inspections have created bottlenecks for aid trucks at the two open border crossings into the enclave, both of which are in the south, far from the north where food shortages are most severe.

Israel has insisted throughout the war that it is committed to allowing as much aid as possible into Gaza. and it has blamed the delays on UN personnel and logistics.

“The problem is not scanning and delivering aid to Gaza, it is how much the UN can raise and deliver inside Gaza,” said Col. Elad Goren, an official at the Israeli agency that oversees policy for the Palestinian territories. known as COGAT. , told reporters Thursday.

The new relief efforts are not immune to some of the same logistical challenges. Israel has said it will continue to carry out strict inspections on supplies entering Gaza, arguing that Hamas could divert goods for use. Food dropped by air or sea must still be distributed on the ground.

But Israel appears increasingly willing to express support for the initiatives. On Wednesday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited northern Gaza and reviewed preparations for a new maritime humanitarian route, calling aid “a central issue,” according to a Defense Ministry statement. Then, chief military spokesman Vice Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters that Israel plans to “flood” northern Gaza with aid and scale up entry points. This is reported by the Associated Press.

The Israeli army reported on Thursday videos and photos of airdrops and trucks entering northern Gaza, saying it “continues to expand its efforts to enable humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip” by air, land and sea.

Ms. Scheindlin, the political analyst, said it was striking how “humanitarian aid suddenly became important.”

One reason is “certainly” the US call for Israel to do more to protect civilians, she said. There is also a recent interim ruling from the International Court of Justice hanging over Israel. The court ordered Israel to take steps to prevent its forces from committing genocide in Gaza and to increase the amount of humanitarian aid reaching the territory’s citizens.

“There is a realization that the international community is watching,” she said.

Adam Sella reporting contributed.

King Harald V of Norway will receive a permanent pacemaker implant this morning, the palace has revealed.

The 87-year-old is being treated at Rikshospitalet hospital and is expected to stay there for “a few days.”

The implant will ensure that Harald’s heart beats regularly and will replace the temporary pacemaker he received last weekend.

Harald, Europe’s oldest monarch, was hospitalized due to an infection during a private trip to the holiday island of Langkawi in Malaysia.

After medical treatment in Langkawi, Harald returned to Oslo last week to be fitted with the permanent medical device.

In a brief statement, the palace said: “His Majesty the King will have a permanent pacemaker implanted this morning.

‘The procedure will take place at Rikshospitalet hospital. After this, His Majesty will remain in hospital for a few more days.”

Despite Harald’s health problems, the royal family has maintained an active approach with public involvement, and yesterday Queen Sonja and Princess Ingrid-Alexander attended a cross-country skiing event in Holmenkollen.

It comes after King Harald of Norway thanked well-wishers for support as he revealed he is undergoing ‘expert’ treatment for his ‘challenging’ health condition.

The 87-year-old, along with his wife, Queen Sonja, 86, issued a joint statement via Instagram last week when he received medical care in Oslo.

The monarch has received support from close family, including Crown Princess Mette-Marit, 50, and her daughter Princess Ingrid Alexandra, 20, who visited the monarch at the Rikshospital.

“We feel a great need to thank you for all the care, help and support during the King’s illness during our holiday in Malaysia,” the couple said in their statement.

The royal couple thanked not only the Norwegian public for their ‘support’, but also the Malaysian authorities and staff who assisted them during their stay.

The statement read: ‘We feel a great need to thank you for all the care, help and support during the King’s illness during our holiday in Malaysia.

“We have felt the heat from the Norwegian people at this moment. The great effort has moved and strengthened us. We thank everyone for the concern you have shown us within the family.

‘Back home in Norway, we would also like to thank the Malaysian authorities and the staff at Sultanah Maliha Hospital in Langkawi.

‘Together with the Norwegian health staff, they have done everything they can to ensure that the king recovers well from his illness and is ready for his return home.

“We are very grateful to the Norwegian government, the armed forces and others who helped make our journey home so safe and smooth. Kongen is now being treated expertly at the Rikshospitalet.’

They concluded: ‘We thank everyone who provided us with care, practical assistance and medical assistance in a challenging situation.’

King Harald, Norway’s ceremonial head of state since 1991, is Europe’s oldest living monarch. He has been hospitalized several times in recent years with infections and has undergone heart surgery.

He suffered a respiratory infection in January, days after dismissing speculation that he could step down, following the lead of Denmark’s distant cousin Queen Margrethe II.

Two days before Harald’s 87th birthday last week, the palace announced that the king would take a private trip abroad, without specifying the destination or dates, according to Norwegian news agency NTB.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said he was “sad” when he heard of the king’s hospitalization and wished him a “speedy recovery,” according to NTB.

Despite Harald’s precarious physical condition, the royal family is confident he wants to continue ruling as Norway’s reigning monarch.

Last month, the royal family confirmed he has no plans to step down following speculation he could follow in the footsteps of his former Danish counterpart, Queen Margrethe.

The monarch, the great-nephew of King Charles III, emphasized that the promise he made to the Norwegian parliament when he came to the throne in 1991 is “valid for life.”

King Harald told Faktisk.no: “I stand by what I have said all along. I made an oath to the Storting, and it is valid for life.’

It comes after Queen Margrethe of Denmark, 83, abdicated after 52 years on the throne, making way for her son Frederik to take over on January 14.

Afterwards, a royal expert had suggested that the Danish monarch had broken an “invisible pact” between heads of state in the Scandinavian countries that no one would step down from the throne.

Roger Lundberg told STV that after Denmark’s transition, there is a chance that King Harald of Norway and King Carl Gustaf of Sweden, 79, will follow suit and step down to let their eldest children take over the throne.

However, this was firmly rejected by King Harald.

The Norwegian king was 53 when he came to the throne in 1991, after the death of his father, King Olav. Previously, he served as Crown Prince Regent due to his father’s illness, which escalated in the spring of 1990.

King Harald has faced some health issues himself in recent years and spent time in hospital last May treating an infection, but he clearly has no intention of abdicating.

His Scandinavian neighbor, Queen Margrethe of Denmark, made the shocking announcement during her New Year’s Eve speech that she would give up the throne.

The Danish royal family has suffered several scandals in the past two years, including the queen’s surprise decision to strip her grandchildren of their princely titles.

There were also rumors of an ‘affair’ after the then Crown Prince Frederik was spotted in Madrid with Mexican socialite Genoveva Casanova.

But Denmark isn’t the only monarchy in the Nordic countries to have had a bumpy few years, with the Norwegian royal family experiencing its own ‘Megxit’.

King Harald and Queen Sonja’s only daughter, Princess Martha Louise, who was fourth in line to the throne, stepped down as working royals in 2019.

In 2022, it was announced that the mother of three would no longer represent the royal household in any form following her engagement to an American shamanic healer who had been criticized for his controversial views.

King Harald said Martha would not be allowed to use her royal title in future commercial partnerships with her partner Durek Verrett, 47.

Shortly after the mother of three announced her engagement to Verrett, a Norwegian publisher dropped his book “Spirit Hacking” due to pseudoscientific claims, including “children can get cancer if they are unhappy.”

Among his other claims, Verrett says he once rose from the dead, recovering from a month-long coma, by “burning” his soul, and has also spoken about needing a kidney transplant from his sister as a child undergo.

After Martha Louise’s decision to abdicate, King Harald emphasized that his daughter remained a princess at his request. He said, ‘She is our daughter, and she will remain so. So she is Princess Märtha Louise.’

The princess was previously married to Ari Behn, whom she married in 2002 and had three children together: Maud Angelica, 19, Leah Isadora, 17, and Emma Tallulah, 14. They split in 2016 and Ari made a date on Christmas Day end his life. 2019.

Crown Prince Haakon, Martha-Louise’s older brother, is Norway’s heir apparent – and the future king has already gotten a taste of what it will be like to ascend the throne after taking his father’s place several times in recent years .

Jaipur: Petrol pump owners in Rajasthan vow to adhere to a 48-hour protest titled ‘No Buy, No Sell’ starting at dawn on Sunday. The aim is to attract the attention of the government. f

Jaipur: Petrol pump owners in Rajasthan vow to adhere to a 48-hour protest titled ‘No Buy, No Sell’ that will start at dawn on Sunday. The aim is to draw the government’s attention to the escalating fuel prices that are causing problems in the state.

Speaking to news agency ANI, Treasurer of Rajasthan Petrol Dealers Association Sandeep Bageria said, “Rajasthan Petrol Dealers Association has announced a strike of “No Buy, No Sale” from 6 am for the next 48 hours. The aim is to draw the government’s attention to the high fuel prices in the state.”

‘Petrol pump operators face losses’

Sandeep Bageria has said that petrol pump operators in the state are continuously facing losses due to higher GST in Rajasthan.

“Due to higher VAT in Rajasthan, petrol pump operators are constantly facing losses. We have long been demanding that the government reduce VAT, but no hearing has taken place. Petrol is sold much cheaper in neighboring states than in Rajasthan. Another requirement is that dealer commissions have not increased in the past seven years. As a result, most of the petrol pumps in Rajasthan are on the verge of closure,” he told news agency ANI.

“33 percent of dealers in our trade association are on the verge of closing,” Bageria added.
Highlighting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise to reduce petrol prices, Bageria said, “Prime Minister Modi had promised that the BJP government would reduce petrol prices, but nothing like that happened. “Rajasthan has the highest VAT on petrol, so there is a need to reduce petrol prices in the state, which are comparable to prices in other states.”

“During COVID, the government has increased VAT on petrol prices, which have not been revised,” he added.

(With input from agencies)