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This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Charlotte Gallagher, and at 16 hours GMT on Thursday, the 12th of February, these are our main stories.

China's annual carbon emissions have fallen for the first

time, raising hope they may have peaked. And a Ukrainian skeleton Bob racer is disqualified from the

Winter Olympics for planning to compete wearing a helmet depicting athletes killed by Russia.

Also in this podcast, a woman abused by Jeffrey Epstein calls on the British royal family to do more.

They can contact me and the other victims they can contact.

The thing is, I just hope they're not just saying this.

I would like to see them actually taking action.

And has the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un chosen his teenage daughter as his

heir. China may still be the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, but levels have been

falling due to a push for clean energy. And now new data says 2025 was the first

full year to show a decline. The reported drop in emissions is small, but campaigners say it could be a

milestone. Our climate editor, Justin Rowlett, spoke to Oliver Conway about the figures.

The first year ever, China emissions have actually fallen back.

They've fallen back by 0.3%.

Now, that really, really doesn't sound much.

But what we're seeing it is against a background of level of falling emissions for almost

two years now, for 21 months.

In fact, they sort of peaked in kind of spring of 2024 and then have fallen back a bit more significantly since then.

So what people are saying is, look, it's couched around with caveats, but it appears we might be seeing the beginning of certainly peaking of emissions in China and possibly even the beginning of a decline in emissions in China.

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