Filipino students performs during the parade at the 125th Philippine’s Independence Day at Dubai World Trade Centre on June 10, 2023. (Photo by Leslie Pableo for The National)

Four-year-old Eve Hill enjoys the wet weather in York, northeast England on August 2, 2023. (Photo by James Glossop/The Times)

Harvesting water lilies in Dhaka, Bangladesh in the last decade of August 2023. (Photo by Mostafijur Rahman Nasim/Solent News & Photo Agency)

A member of the Siberian Battalion of the Ukraine's Armed Forces International Legion smokes a disposable vape during military exercises, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, at an undisclosed location in Kyiv region, Ukraine on December 13, 2023. (Photo by Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)

American actress Elizabeth Banks in the first decade of December 2023 shows off her lacy ensemble. (Photo by Elizabethbanks/Instagram)

Pupils from St Teilo’s Catholic Primary School in Tenby, South Wales, perform a scene from their Nativity play in the second decade of December 2023. The three kings, played by Jack Rigby, Santos Basilnomo and Tommy Leggett, pretended to follow a star on South Beach, a stone’s throw from the school. (Photo by Joann Randles/Cover Images)

Flocks of seagulls swarm small fishing boats in the first decade of January 2024 like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Colonies of Heuglin’s gulls can be seen almost every morning on the Yamuna River in Delhi, India. (Photo by Raghav Rai Ralhan/Solent News)

A pregnant woman poses on June 19, 2018 in Vertou, western France. France had an estimated population of 68.4 million by January 1, 2024, representing a further year-on-year increase of 0.3 percent, limited by a marked drop in the birth rate, the INSEE national statistics bureau of France reported on January 16, 2024. In 2023, 678,000 babies were born in France, 6.6 percent fewer than the previous year, the lowest number of births in any year since 1946. Over the same period, there were 631,000 deaths, down 6.5 percent on 2022, a year marked by the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and episodes of extreme heat. (Photo by Loic Venance/AFP Photo)