Globe Trot: China's birth policy supports massive bureaucracy

CHINA: The one-child policy involved a vast bureaucracy that employs half a million people at the national level and in 2012 collected more than $3 billion in fines from parents. According to this Chinese lawyer, it created a state industry that isn’t going anywhere with the “end” of the one-child policy. It’s just being converted into two-child policy enforcement. This helps explain the uneven enforcement of the one-child policy: According to attorney Wu Youshui, local family planning associations didn’t actually want to deter births. They were more interested in preserving the revenue stream they got by fining families for additional children. Wu believes forced abortions will not be eliminated under the new policy. They, too, serve to perpetuate the vast family-planning bureaucracy.

SINAI: As the investigation widens into this weekend’s crash of the Russian Metrojet charter plane that killed 224, the Islamic State claims it downed the aircraft, something the airline disputes. The only thing really known at this stage is the debris field is unusually large—over seven miles—suggesting the plane did break apart mid-air.

SYRIA: Over the past five years, the United States has admitted a grand total of 53 Syrian Christian refugees. And while from the town of Maaloula to the Khabur River valley they are the most targeted group, they are getting no special consideration from the U.S. State Department as it ramps up the total number it’s apparently willing to accept. This ought to be the focus of Republican candidates looking to craft a better Mideast policy, not gotcha one-liners that portray all refugees as potential terrorists.

SYRIAN-AMERICAN Najib George Awad, who teaches Christian Theology at the Hartford Seminary, in this interview gives a succinct account of the Syrian crisis driving refugees to abandon their country and the political solution needed to resolve it.

AFRICA is much, much bigger than you think.