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Sir Keir Starmer has "no plans" to meet with the Taliban during the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, Downing Street said.The militant group confirmed on Sunday that it will be sending delegates to the UN-led conference for the first time since their takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, which took place as the US, UK, and their allies retreated from the country. Asked what the prime minister thought of that, and whether he would come face to face with its leaders, a Number 10 spokeswoman said: "No plans to meet with them."She said that attendance was "a matter for the organisers", adding: "More broadly the summit I think is bringing together 96 different delegations from across the world and the objective is obviously to strengthen global climate action and engagement on that issue."It is ob...

The fight against climate change is "bigger than one election", US envoy John Podesta has said. Mr Podesta was speaking at the UN COP29 climate talks after his party lost the White House to Republican and climate sceptic Donald Trump. The re-election of Mr Trump, who is expected to again pull the United States out of global climate treaties and efforts, sent concern through the almost 200 countries gathering in Azerbaijan for the climate summit.But a defiant Mr Podesta said: "This is not the end of our fight for a cleaner, safer planet."Facts are still facts. Science is still science. The fight is bigger than one election, one political cycle in one country." Mr Trump's campaign team indicated the president-elect would withdraw the US - the world's second biggest polluter - out of the land...

A malnourished emperor penguin has been found in Australia for the first time - more than 2,200 miles north of the Antarctic coast.The adult male was discovered on 1 November on a tourist beach in the town of Denmark in southwest Australia. The emperor is the largest penguin species and has never been reported in the country before, according to Belinda Cannell from the University of Western Australia.She said she had no clue why he had taken such a long journey, although some emperors have been spotted in New Zealand before. Image: The penguin was well underweight when it was found. Pic: AP The one-metre tall bird weighed 23kg when he was found, but healthy males can weigh more than 45kg. He is being cared for by seabird r...

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been able to identify structural vulnerabilities invisible to the naked eye in St Peter's Basilica, the Vatican City, for the first time. The AI technology was used to create a digital twin of the famous Catholic church - which consists of an ultra-precise 3D computer model that simulates an object in the physical world. Image: Pic: Iconem/Microsoft The project, called La Basilica di San Pietro, was developed by Microsoft and the Vatican, in collaboration with Iconem, a French startup specialising in digital preservation.Over a period of three weeks, drones, cameras and lasers were used to take more than 400,000 detailed images to create an exact digital replica of the exterior and interior...

A clampdown has been enforced to curb a social media trend in China - where thousands of students rent bikes late at night to buy soup dumplings.Police in Henan province closed bike lanes connecting Zhengzhou and Kaifeng in a bid to reduce the number of students making the 37-mile journey. Pictures showed that the crowd of students - which was called the Night Riding Army by some taking part - had blocked a highway in central China on Friday night.Local outlets estimated that up to 200,000 young people had rented bikes - which cost as little as £1.51 for a month - to travel to Kaifeng for its famous guantangbao, a type of soup dumpling.Liu Lulu, a student at Henan University, told state media outlet China Daily: "People sang together and cheered for each other while climbing uphill togethe...