Coming up, China announces the relaxation of its controversial one-child policy. We'll findthe reasons why and the implications. A UN official assures that aid is now reaching areas of thePhilippines hit hardest by super typhoon Haiyan a weak ago.
"There is a lot of materials coming in now. And you're gonna see trucks heading in everydirection, which is taking longer than we ever want it to but everyone does the best they can".
Also in the podcast, our reporter tries to find out the truth about recent unrest in Sudan. Anda British father explains how he persuaded his young children to spend less time stuck in frontof the television.
"It's about going out of the door, really, just getting people to step outside into the garden,into the local park, into a forest."
But frist, just before we recorded our podcast, some important news came from Beijing. TheChinese government announced major reforms including plans to relax the one-child policy andto abolish its much criticized system of labor camps. The country's state-run news agencysaid that couples would now be allowed to have two children as long as one of the parents wasan only child. To find out more, Macally Karen Genoni spoke to our correspondent in BeijingMartin Patience. She started by asking him if this announcement had come as a surprise.
"Yeah. Now, the country' s state-run news agency says that couples will be allowed to have twochildren if one of the parents is the only child. So their so-called one-child policy hasn't beencompletely abolished but it has been relaxed. It was introduced in the late 1970s. The reasonChina's leaders did that: they say that they were concerned the over population will threatenChina's development. But now there is growing concern that the working age population isactually shrinking. And that could well threaten the country's development in the future.They've also announced they will abolish the country's reeducation through labor camps. Theywere highly controversial. Certainly, this appears to be a clear sign that China's new leaderswant to try and improve the legal workings within the country."
The Philippines government says that some 3.5 thousand people are now confirmed dead.
