"My mother's death is the first thing that pains me," said Aisha, now 26, weeping quietly. By her account, that night marked the end of a secure childhood in a loving family - and the beginning of a hellish ordeal at the hands of both the Islamist militants and the Nigerian military, who have been locked in a 13-year war over control of the country's northeast.

Those unidentified remains were permanently interred at Ardennes American Cemetery and Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery, both of which are in Belgium. But in 2017, the DPPA began exhuming unknown remains believed to be associated with unaccounted-for airmen from Operation TIDAL WAVE losses, the agency said.

Later in the morning, neighbors who heard Aisha's sobs came to help her bury the tiny body in the local cemetery.

One neighbor, Musa, confirmed Aisha's account of that episode, saying he saw the girl before she died, and saw Aisha grieving afterward.

Chelmsford City Council confirmed 23 members of staff were absent and cancelled three days' worth of food waste collections, while North Somerset Council said they had been unable to pick up 1,000 recycling bins on New Year's Eve as crews remain 'stretched due to staff sickness'.

SHANGHAI, Feb 23 (Reuters) - The cost of raising a child in China stands at nearly seven times its per capita GDP, far more than the United States and Japan, highlighting the challenges facing Chinese policymakers as they try to tackle rapidly declining birth rates, new research showed.

Her father, mother, two brothers and a younger sister were all at home. Dec 14 (Reuters) - Aisha vividly recalls her family's last time together.

It was a pleasant evening in the summer of 2014, in her Nigerian village near the Cameroon border. The rainy season had nourished her father's grain, pushing the stalks knee-high.

They can stagger starting days but all pupils should be back by Monday next week. Masks have been reintroduced in secondary school classrooms, while all secondaries have been asked to provide on-site testing for coding and programming for kids students ahead of their return.

The sister, who said she'd been a servant to the wife of a high-ranking Boko Haram leader during her captivity, had not seen Aisha since their arrival in Sambisa Forest. After they reunited, she said, Aisha shared the details of her life during their time apart - including her escape, the abortion and the suspected poisoning of Fatima.

Experts warn China's ageing population will put huge pressure on its health and social security system, while a dwindling workforce could also severely limit growth for the world's second largest economy in the coming decades.

Caroline Derbyshire, head of Saffron Walden County High School in Essex, said: 'Staff shortages will be a factor and there will be schools in particular parts of the country where rates have been extremely high.

Although new policies allow families to have as many as three children, China's birth rate dropped to 7.52 births per 1,000 people in 2021, the lowest since the National Bureau of Statistics began recording the data in 1949.

The Local Government Association (LGA), which represents councils across England, said crews have been badly impacted by the spread of the Omicron variant and called for workers be prioritised for Covid tests.

David Thorp, 42, has been publishing the identity of the axed pairings on his website Strictly Spoiler every Saturday evening since 2012, much to the frustration of viewers keen to wait for Sunday's instalment, which is pre-recorded from the night before.

China would need to spend at least 5% of its annual GDP to create incentives for couples to have more children, including education subsidies, preferential mortgage rates, tax breaks, equal paternity and maternity leave, as well as the construction of more childcare centres, it added.

Child rearing costs are even higher in China's major cities, reaching more than 1 million yuan in Shanghai and 969,000 yuan in Beijing.

Birth rates in the two cities are even lower than the national average.

Aisha's ordeal encompasses some of the most extreme hardships the war has inflicted upon civilians: enslavement by Boko Haram, forced abortion by the military, the loss of one child in a military bombing and another, she suspects, to poisoning by soldiers.

The war also took the life of a brother, in addition to her mother, and all but destroyed one of her arms, Aisha said.

Aisha took months to recover after the bombing attack. Lying in the insurgent camp's infirmary, she plotted her escape, intent on saving Fatima from a future of hunger and rape under the militants.

By then, she had been in captivity for more than three years.

Beijing-based YuWa Population Research Institute said in a report published on Tuesday that the average cost of raising a child to the age of 18 in China in 2019 stood at 485,000 yuan ($76,629) for a first child, 6.9 times China's per capita GDP that year.