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.

The Human Resources Minister said the reduction in the cost of recruitment would be discussed at the two-day Joint Working Group Meeting in Yogyakarta beginning Wednesday.

Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi met with Chinese counterpart Qin Gang in Jakarta, ahead of a round of negotiations on the code starting in March. 

Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles met with his Philippine counterpart, Carlito Galvez, in Manila, something they said they plan to do yearly in a bid to deepen the countries' security ties.

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.

The Australian government was careful not to name China when introducing laws to prevent foreign interference in 2018, but the move nonetheless sparked tension with Australia's largest trading partner that later developed into a diplomatic freeze.

China’s newly appointed Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Tuesday descended on Jakarta at the invitation of his Indonesian counterpart Retno L.P. Marsudi, the Foreign Ministry said.

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. 

"The United States is in no position to make demands of China," foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a regular daily briefing in Beijing, when asked about US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's comments.

The Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC) said it was responding to confirmed reports of a number of hostages, including foreign citizens, being held by armed criminals in the vicinity of Fogoma’iu village at the border of Southern Highlands, and Hela provinces.

The launches come just two days after North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) into the sea off Japan's west coast, prompting the United States to hold joint air exercises with South Korea and separately with Japan on Sunday. 

Timor Leste’s membership to ASEAN can help Indonesia advance its diplomatic agenda of peace and democracy, international relations experts have said.

The top diplomats of the two superpowers met at an undisclosed location on the sidelines of a global security conference in Munich, just hours after Wang scolded Washington as "hysterical" in a running dispute over the US downing of a suspected Chinese spy balloon.

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".

Indonesia had halted payments for its 20 percent share of development costs for the KFX jet in 2019, casting a cloud over the 8.1 trillion won ($6.16 billion) project, but it resumed payment late last year.

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.

US envoy Karen Decker tweeted that several of her posts earlier in the week went "awry" despite her "best intentions" when she suggested Afghan women could learn from examples such as pop culture icons Beyonce and Lizzo.

About 730,000 Rohingya, a persecuted mostly Muslim minority from Myanmar’s Rakhine state, fled to Bangladesh in 2017 to escape an army crackdown the UN said was carried out with genocidal intent. Including others who left in prior waves, nearly 1 million live in huts made of bamboo and plastic sheets.

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.

Lawmakers approved a new criminal code in December banning sex outside marriage and prohibiting cohabitation between unmarried couples.

Indonesian humanitarian missions had started providing medical assistance and operating field hospitals to Turkey and Syria, the Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, in the aftermath of deadly earthquakes last week.

UN member states are meeting in New York from Monday with the aim of launching a long-berthed high-seas treaty, a crucial step toward the goal of protecting 30 percent of the planet by 2030.