The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Beijing - There could be a significant crack developing in China's 'one-child' policy. Chinese authorities in Shanghai say divorced people who remarry will be allowed to have a second child. The city is acting under a policy that allows local governments to rule on how they apply China's controversial one-child-per-couple law. The one-child policy was adopted in the 1970s to slow the growth of China's population. The government says the law has meant 300 million fewer children were born in the past decade. Washington - In what appears to be a major policy shift, U.S. President George W. Bush endorsed Israel holding on to some West Bank settlements and rejected Palestinian refugees' claims to settle in all of Israel. Bush made the comments after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in the 1967 war and has developed settlements in some areas. Zanzibar - Zanzibar's parliament unanimously passed a bill outlawing homosexuality in the east African country. Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous island in the Indian Ocean that forms part of Tanzania, is mainly Muslim. If the bill becomes law, the penalty for a homosexual relationship between men will be a 25-year sentence, and the punishment for a lesbian relationship will be a seven-year sentence.
