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An invention to help with obstructed labor has turned some heads — and not just because the idea came from a party trick on YouTube.

The Odon Device, created by Argentine car mechanic Jorge Odon, guides a folded plastic sleeve around the baby's head. A little bit of air is then pumped between the two plastic layers, cushioning the baby's head and allowing it to be sucked out. This trick for removing a cork from an empty wine bottle works the same way.

The device has been embraced by the World Health Organization and is being developed by the global medical technology company BD. Once clinical trials are done, the WHO and individual countries will have to approve it before it's sold. BD hasn't said how much it will charge, but each one is expected to cost less than $50 to make.

A Curious Dilemma

Hominin brains have gotten bigger and female pelvises have narrowed since the advent of walking on two feet. This unfortunate geometric problem, termed the "obstetric dilemma," means that over time it has become harder for babies to fit through where they're supposed to come out. The cause is still under debate.

Many Chinese are pleased with the recent announcement that their government will further loosen the country's one-child policy. Some couples there are already allowed to have two children, while others say that even if they are permitted to have another kid, they can't afford it.

A young, professional couple surnamed Gao and Deng went to a government office in Shanghai earlier this month to apply for a marriage license.

Waiting on a metal bench, Gao, the 30-year-old groom-to-be, said he was glad more couples will be able to have a second child.

"I think for people like us who were born after 1980s, this is a very good policy change," Gao said. "Now, if families are financially capable and conditions allow, they should totally have two children."

Deng, the bride-to-be, who wore a long pink dress, said the couple hopes to have two children.

"They can help each other and grow up together," she said. "When we get older, they can take care of each other."

In fact, Deng and Gao are already permitted to have two children.

A Steady Policy Evolution

More than a decade ago, the government began allowing couples to have two kids if both parents were only-children. It's a reminder that China has been easing its one-child policy over the years.

Officials took a further step in that direction this month, announcing that if just one parent is an only child, a couple can have a second child as well.

That's an incremental change, but many see it as progress after years of lobbying.

Wang Feng, a leading demographer in China and a sociologist at the University of California, Irvine, has spent more than a decade urging Chinese officials to change the one-child policy. Until relatively recently, he said, the topic was too sensitive for public discussion.

More On China

Parallels

Children Of China's Wealthy Learn Expensive Lessons

Thanksgiving — like the universe — is expanding.

Traditionally a time for Americans to pause and give thanks to a Supreme Being — for health or harvest or happenstance, Thanksgiving is evolving before our very eyes into a holiday where we give thanks to each other as well.

Just this week we received Thanksgiving-themed thank-you notes from a doctor's office, a lawyers' association, a New Jersey congressman and others. Can Thanksgiving-themed gift cards be far behind?

It's not a bad idea. Saying thank you to more people.

So, in the widening spirit of the season: Thank you everyone for sending us reports of Thanksgiving 2013 celebrations in other countries. Thank you for sharing your photos and stories with us. Thank you for helping us get glimpses into what it's like to be an American where you are. Thank you for showing us your food. And your families. And your friends. And your surroundings.

Thank you to colleague, Melody Kramer, for juggling the social media aspects of the Xpat Project, which is scheduled to continue until Christmas.

Thank you to all other NPR colleagues, especially those working the long holiday weekend to continue to give the LURVers — Listeners, Users, Readers and Viewers — of NPR meaningful stories.

Thank you to our NPR bosses for letting us experiment with this idea — not knowing whether it would be a triumph or, well, a turkey.

And, year-round, thank you to you.

**

As part of The Xpat Project, NPR asked American expatriates to send stories and photos of their 2013 Thanksgiving observances in other countries. Now follows an edited sampling — updated now and then over the next few days:

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Unless Congress acts quickly, taking mass transit to work is about to get more expensive for some people.

For the past four years, public transportation users and people who drive their cars to work and pay for parking have been able set aside up to $245 a month in wages tax free if they're used for commuting costs or workplace parking.

The transit tax break expires at the end of the year. So starting Jan. 1, the benefit for riders will be cut nearly in half — to $130 a month. Drivers, on the other hand, will get a slightly bigger break as their parking benefit rises to $250.

"It doesn't make sense at all, the fact that you get a bigger tax break for driving your car than riding a train," says Dan Smith, who lobbies Congress on tax issues for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. He says many commuters don't realize that the parity for transit and parking tax breaks vanishes in the new year. But they soon will.

Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer, who rides his bike to work, is sounding the alarm.

"We've heard lots of talk about fiscal cliffs, a dairy cliff, but at the end of the year, we are facing a transit commuter cliff," he says.

Blumenauer has rounded up five House Republicans and 44 fellow Democrats to co-sponsor legislation that would keep the parking subsidy, which by law is automatically renewed, equal to the transit subsidy, which requires congressional approval every year:

"You might tilt it the other way and provide greater benefit for people who are having less impact on the planet," he says. "But the fact is, this is embedded, ingrained and accepted, so we want to at least just have transit parity for the full range of commuter options."

Indeed, eliminating or even reducing the parking subsidy is a bipartisan non-starter in Congress.

"My own view is there are some people — many people — who don't have the luxury of being able to take transit," says Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

The California Democrat defends the tax break for people who drive to work:

"I don't agree that you should put one group against the other," she says. "I think we should encourage fuel-efficient cars, and if someone really needs their car for work, I don't have a problem with saying, you know what, there's enough expense here, we can make sure that this isn't exorbitant for you."

That's unfortunate, says Elyse Lowe. She's one of Boxer's constituents as well as the executive director of Move San Diego, a group advocating smart growth in that city. For Lowe, it makes sense to subsidize public transit users, not drivers:

"This is at the heart of getting people to change their travel behaviors through economic incentives," she says, "and typically people don't actually look at their own personal behavior until there's some sort of economic reason to do so."

Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse agrees. He's skeptical, though, that Congress can act in time to keep the transit break on par with the parking subsidy.

"What certainly doesn't make sense is to favor that over using public transportation. But given the general level of blockade of anything and everything by our Republican friends around here, I can't promise that we'll get to that."

Making parity between transit and parking subsidies — one more casualty of congressional gridlock.