A family decision

October 30, 2015 - Daily News Briefing

Beijing has changed from a one-child to a two-child per family policy. But the Chinese people likely have changed, too.

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A jet plane's engine caught fire Thursday as it prepared for takeoff from a Florida airport, and passengers had to quickly evacuate using emergency slides, officials said. Broward County Sheriff Fire Rescue spokesman Mike Jachles said one person was seriously injured and about a dozen other people were taken to the hospital for minor injuries. Dozens of passengers could be seen in video footage gliding down the slides and running away from the plane to the terminal as fire crews rushed to put the blaze out. Passengers on another plane on the runway recorded the fire and posted video to Twitter showing plumes of thick black smoke coming from the plane.

China said Thursday it would allow all married couples to have two children, signaling the end after 35 years to its drastic and unpopular "one-child" policy that has been blamed for skewing the gender balance, forcing women into unwanted abortions and bringing about a rapidly aging workforce. The decision was the most significant easing of strict population policies that were long considered some of the ruling Communist Party's most onerous intrusions into family life and had been gradually relaxed in recent years. Many rural families and some urban ones already were able to have two children.

Pentagon officials are investigating what caused a 250-foot surveillance blimp to break from its mooring at a military base in Maryland on Wednesday and float 150 miles before crashing in rural Pennsylvania. The high-tech blimp – which is designed to detect missile attacks – caused electrical outages for thousands of residents as its tether hit power lines along its three-and-a-half-hour journey. Shotgun-wielding authorities eventually shot down the blimp over the Pennsylvania countryside near Muncy, a small town about 80 miles north of Harrisburg. It climbed from a starting altitude of 6,600 feet to 16,000 feet before deflating.

The tiny Pacific nation of Palau plans to make almost all of its coastal waters a marine sanctuary amid growing concern over the lack of ocean conservation efforts worldwide. Last week, lawmakers passed the Palau National Marine Sanctuary Act that designates 80 percent of the nation's maritime territory as a fully protected marine reserve. Palau's president signed the legislation on Wednesday. The law prohibits all extractive activities, such as fishing or mining, from taking place inside the sanctuary. At 193,000 square miles, the sanctuary is slightly larger than California, making it the sixth-largest fully protected marine area in the world.

A high school football coach in Washington State has been placed on paid administrative leave for praying at games after school district officials told him to stop. School officials said in a statement Wednesday that Joe Kennedy, an assistant football coach at Bremerton High School, was put on leave because he refused to refrain from praying on the football field while on duty as a coach. Mr. Kennedy has reportedly prayed before and after games, sometimes with students, since 2008. District officials recently told him to stop after the practice came to their attention.

The European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft detected molecules of oxygen surrounding the comet known as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, reports a study published Thursday in the journal Nature. Although molecular oxygen has been detected on similarly icy moons of Saturn and Jupiter, it has “has remained undetected in cometary comas,” until now, the study authors wrote. This discovery could challenge current theories about the formation of our solar system, because it defies the conditions predicted in current solar system models.

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