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for cover. They are already compiling lists of dozens of Senate and House Democrats like Rahall who, in video clips and written statements, have parroted Obama's pledge that voters' existing coverage would not be annulled.
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Baby boom not expected in China despite easing of country's strict one-child policy
• BEIJING (AP) -- Don't expect a new Chinese baby boom, experts say, despite the first easing of the country's controversial one-child policy in three decades.
• Some 15 million to 20 million Chinese parents will be allowed to have a second child after the government announced Friday that couples where one partner has no siblings can have two children. But the easing of the policy is so incremental that demographers and policymakers are not anticipating an influx of newborn babies at a time when young Chinese couples are already opting for smaller families, driving the country's fertility rate down to 1.5-1.6 births per woman.
• "A baby boom can be safely ruled out," said Wang Feng, professor of sociology at the University of California Irvine.
• Wang noted that although Chinese couples where both parents have no siblings have for some time been allowed to have a second child, many have elected to have only one.
• "Young people's reproductive desires have changed," she said.
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Karzai: Draft of US-Afghan security pact ready for Loya Jirga council, but differences remain
• KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan and U.S. negotiators have finished a draft of a contentious security pact to be presented to a traditional council next week, President Hamid Karzai said Saturday, but added that there remain disagreements between the two countries over the final content of the accord.
• Karzai also told reporters at a news conference that without approval of the Loya Jirga, a gathering of several thousand prominent figures from across the country, Afghanistan will likely refuse to sign the so-called Bilateral Security Agreement.
• U.S. officials refused to comment on what they described as an ongoing diplomatic process.
• Negotiations have been protracted and often acrimonious. In the end it took a surprise visit to Afghanistan in October by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to pro (Continued on page 23)
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