Major coal-using countries including Poland, Vietnam and Chile are among those to make the commitment.

But some of the world’s biggest coal-dependent countries, including Australia, India, China and the US, did not sign up to the pledge.

Coal is the single biggest contributor to climate change.

Signatories to the agreement have committed to ending all investment in new coal power generation domestically and internationally.

They have also agreed to phase out coal power in the 2030s for major economies, and the 2040s for poorer nations, the UK said.

Dozens of organisations also signed up to the pledge, with several major banks agreeing to stop financing the coal industry.

“The end of coal is in sight,” UK business and energy secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said.

“The world is moving in the right direction, standing ready to seal coal’s fate and embrace the environmental and economic benefits of building a future that is powered by clean energy.”

But UK Shadow business secretary Ed Miliband said there were “glaring gaps” from China and other large emitters, who have not committed to stop increasing coal use domestically. He also noted that there was nothing on the phasing out of oil and gas.

Mr Miliband said the UK government “has let others off the hook”.

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro said the state respects the decision to investigate, but does not share it.

More than 100 people died during the clampdown on protesters.

The demonstrations started after the Supreme Court decided to dissolve the opposition-dominated National Assembly.

The ICC’s Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan announced the move after a three-day trip to Caracas.

Both Venezuela’s opposition and its government have urged the ICC to investigate alleged crimes carried out by their opponents.

Opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who claims to be Venezuela’s interim president and has the backing of more than 50 countries, welcomed the development.

Writing on Twitter, he said it would enable the victims and their families to “claim the right to obtain justice that has been denied in Venezuela”.

Human Rights Watch said the investigation “offers a pathway to justice for victims of atrocities” by Mr Maduro’s government.

“The ICC’s first investigation in the Americas comes on the back of the extreme repression the Maduro government has inflicted on the Venezuelan people,” José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

Mr Khan said his job was to uphold the rule of law, not to settle political scores.

“I ask everybody now, as we move forward to this new stage, to give my office the space to do its work,” he said. “I will take a dim view of any efforts to politicise the independent work of my office.”

Mr Maduro has complained that the government was not granted access to documents and information during the ICC’s preliminary investigation in 2018.

“We were blind in that stage,” the president said.

Some 150 police and military members have been charged or sentenced for human rights violations over Venezuela’s 2017 crackdown, according to the public ministry.

The opposition says these prosecutions were simply an effort to avoid an ICC probe.

The first pill designed to treat symptomatic Covid has been approved by the UK medicines regulator.

The tablet – molnupiravir – will be given twice a day to vulnerable patients recently diagnosed with the disease.

In clinical trials the pill, originally developed to treat flu, cut the risk of hospitalisation or death by about half.

Health secretary Sajid Javid said the treatment was a “gamechanger” for the most frail and immunosuppressed.

In a statement he said: “Today is a historic day for our country, as the UK is now the first country in the world to approve an antiviral that can be taken at home for Covid.”

Molnupiravir, developed by the US drug companies Merck, Sharp and Dohme (MSD) and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, is the first oral antiviral medication for Covid which can be taken as a pill rather than injected or given intravenously.

It targets an enzyme that the virus uses to make copies of itself, introducing errors into its genetic code. That should prevent it from multiplying, so keeping virus levels low in the body and reducing the severity of the disease.

Merck said that approach should make the treatment equally effective against new variants of the virus as it evolves in the future.

The UK regulator, the MHRA, said the tablet had been authorised for use in people who have mild to moderate Covid and at least one risk factor for developing severe illness such as obesity, old age, diabetes or heart disease.

The organisation’s chief executive, June Raine, described the treatment as “another therapeutic to add to our armoury against Covid-19”.

“It is the world’s first approved antiviral for this disease that can be taken by mouth rather than administered intravenously,” she said.

“This is important, because it means it can be administered outside of a hospital setting, before Covid-19 has progressed to a severe stage.”

The UK has initially ordered 480,000 courses of molnupiravir to be delivered by the end of the year, along with 250,000 courses of a similar experimental drug currently being developed by US drug company Pfizer.

The UK government has not revealed how much the contract is worth.

But the US government has made an advance purchase of 1.7 million courses of the drug at a cost of roughly $1.2 billion, or roughly $700 (£513) for each course.

Other countries including Australia, Singapore and South Korea have made purchase agreements.

Professor Stephen Powis, national medical director for NHS England, said: “The NHS stands ready to support the planned study on molnupiravir and other antivirals in patients at higher risk of complications, and to provide wider roll out if it is shown to be clinically and cost effective in reducing hospitalisations and death.”

Clinical trials

Earlier clinical trials of molnupiravir on 775 patients who had recently caught Covid found:

The data was published in a press release and has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Trial results suggest molnupiravir needs to be taken early after symptoms develop to have an effect. An earlier study in patients who had already been hospitalised with severe Covid was halted after disappointing results.

Merck is the first company to report trial results of a pill to treat Covid, but other companies are working on similar treatments.

Its US rival Pfizer has started trials of two different antiviral tablets, while Swiss company Roche is working on a similar medication.