TODAY'S TALKING POINTS 10-30-15

TODAY'S TALKING POINTS

After a marathon session, the Senate passed a super ambitious budget deal. The bill, which is on its way to President Barack Obama's desk, will raise the debt limit and boost spending. Critics like Sen. Rand Paul said the deal would basically let Obama borrow as much money as he wants to in his last year of office.

China made a bold move to end its one-child policy. Now that the government sees that a huge portion of its population is graying, Chinese parents will be allowed to have two kids. The one-child law was enacted almost four decades ago to curb the country’s population of nearly 1 billion, but it turns out that meant a ton of people would age out of the workforce at the same time. The decision is a game-changer for society, since the law prevented somewhere around 400 million births and resulted in forced abortions and children being taken from their parents. But individually, a lot of Chinese families aren't having kids or are sticking with one for the same reason many millennials have given: Kids are incredibly expensive.

Rep. Paul Ryan is now second in line to the presidency. With the literal passing of the gavel, Ryan became the 54th speaker of the House. For his first order of business, he changed his Twitter handle to @SpeakerRyanand tweeted, “Let’s do this.”

Russia’s testing the first all-female space crew for a moon mission. Six women between the ages of 22 and 36 began a space mission simulation this week so they can prepare to journey to the moon in 2029. Russia's making up for lost time — the country has only launched four female cosmonauts through the stratosphere in about five decades, while NASA has sent dozens. Naturally, the women were asked how they’ll cope without men, and how they’ll do their makeup and hair. Scientist Anna Kussmaul nailed it: “We are doing work. When you're doing your work, you don't think about men and women."

Raif Badawi just won an incredibly prestigious human rights award. The European Union awarded the 31-year-old flogged and imprisoned blogger the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Badawi was fined more than $260,000 and sentenced to 1,000 lashings and 10 years in prison for insulting Islam after he co-created the Saudi Liberal Network, a forum for political and religious discourse. European officials begged Saudi Arabia yesterday to free him so he could accept the honor.