AFP, Beijing
Married couples in China will from today be allowed to have two children, after concerns over an ageing population and shrinking workforce ushered in an end to the country’s controversial one-child policy.
The change, which was announced in October by the ruling Communist Party, takes effect from January 1, 2016, Beijing’s official Xinhua news agency reported over the weekend.
Over 55,000 killed in Syria war in 2015
AFP, Beirut
More than 55,000 people were killed in Syria in 2015, the country’s fifth year of war, including over 2,500 children, a monitor said today.
The total number of dead since the beginning of the conflict had reached more than 260,000, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, though the number of those killed in 2015 was lower than the 76,021 people who died in 2014.
Delhi car rationing to curb pollution
AFP, New Delhi
More than a million private cars were banned from New Delhi’s roads on Friday, as authorities began trialling drastic new measures to cut smog in the world’s most polluted capital.
From January 1 only cars with odd-numbered licence plates will be allowed on the roads on odd-numbered dates and those with even-numbered plates on the other days to try to reduce pollutant levels which regularly hit 10 times the World Health Organization safe limits.
