Foreign-born mothers give birth to more babies than U.S.-born mothers, and other surprising facts for Mother’s Day

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/foreign-born-mothers-give-birth-to-more-babies-than-us-born-mothers-and-3-other-surprising-facts-for-mothers-day-2017-05-12

Most people can agree Mother’s Day, which falls on May 14, is a good time to reflect on what moms do for their children, but also for themselves and their families.

There were 43.5 million mothers between 15 and 50 years old last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and together they had almost 96 million children. Millennials have pushed off parenthood longer than generations before them, but moms in that age group (born between 1980 and 2000) now account for a majority (82%) of annual births. The average age a woman gives birth for the first time was 26 years old in 2013, up from 21 in 1970, according to Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan think tank Pew Research Center.

The rise in U.S births has largely been driven by immigrant women, and has been since 1970 — up to 4 million births in 2014 (or 23% of all babies), from 3.74 million in 1970, were to foreign-born moms, according to the Pew Research Center. Alternatively, the number of births by U.S.-born mothers has been declining, to 3.1 million births in 2014 from 3.46 million in 1970. Immigrant mothers are also more likely to be married than almost a decade ago — a third of all births were to unmarried immigrant mothers, down from 37% in 2008. Births to unmarried U.S.-born mothers were around 42%.

The average amount of time mothers took in the past two years for maternity leave, following a birth or adoption, was 11 weeks (far more than the one week fathers took for paternity leave). Mothers in households that earned $75,000 or more took 12 weeks on average, compared with mothers with household incomes under $30,000, who took six weeks. More than half of mothers said they wished they took more time, according to Pew Research Center, but 36% said they took as much as needed or wanted. Women were also twice as likely as men to say leaving the workforce for paternal leave negatively impacted them. President Donald Trump said in his first official address to Congress that he wanted to ensure parents receive paid family leave, which would come out of unemployment benefits to parents working for companies that didn’t offer it.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/11/politics/trump-time-magazine-ice-cream/index.html

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump is living every child's dream: More ice cream.

According to an extensive interview with TIME Magazine, Trump's White House staff has settled into Trump's routine and know his desires, sometimes before he does,

For example: Trump takes two scoops of ice cream with his chocolate cream pie, TIME reported, while everyone else around the table gets just one.

Trump casts himself throughout the interview as America's businessman, someone who is bringing his private-sector savvy to the White House to spur growth and create jobs. That focus extends to faulty digital launching systems on aircraft carriers -- "Time and material means you're going to get your ass kicked" -- to arms deals with unlikely African leaders.

TIME reported that Trump brought up how he is trying to mint an arms deal with an African leader who has decades-old human rights concerns, all in the name of spurring American business. Trump declined to name the country.

Cognizant Technology Solutions has blown the whistle on what many have merely whispered about on receding cost arbitrage of H1B workers versus locals onsite.

In a departure from niceties on the global outsourcing model pioneered by Indian IT giants, Cognizant CFO Karen McLoughlin said the gap in the price tag dangling on an H1B worker and a local American techie is now next to nothing.

The remarks came when Cognizant, which competes with TCS and Infosys, had an hour-long earnings call Friday, and the CFO was asked about the 13.5-billion IT giant's cost base.

“In terms of the onsite cost, if we are hiring people with the same skill sets — a local worker versus someone who comes on an H1B visa, there really is no significant cost difference when you consider the cost of wages and relocation etc versus the compensation we are paying… And with the H1B visa, you have to remember that there is a prevailing wage that sets the salaries and those are set at market rate, so there is no signifinant difference as you shift the workforce. The real issue to find the right talent. If we can find the talent here or in Europe, we go there, but if the talent is not available. As for the issue of moving work offshore, if we don’t find the talent here, then the issue there too is about finding talent," McLoughlin stated.

OPEC has asked a favor of other major producers: Please stop pumping so much and help us balance the market.

The unusual plea was issued Thursday in the cartel's closely-watched monthly report, which found that global markets are still suffering from too much supply.

The report said that balancing the market would "require the collective efforts of all oil producers" and should be done "not only for the benefit of the individual countries, but also for the general prosperity of the world economy."

OPEC said that one producer in particular is to blame: The U.S., where shale producers have continued to ramp up their drilling despite lower crude prices.

The increased production has undermined OPEC's efforts to keep prices between $50 and $60 per barrel.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/french-women-see-revenge-in-macrons-marriage-to-an-older-woman/2017/05/03/3b21fc1a-2f47-11e7-9dec-764dc781686f_story.html

PARIS — Emmanuel Macron, the front-runner in Sunday’s French presidential election, shares something with President Trump: a 24-year age gap with his wife. The difference is that Macron’s wife is the older one.

That cliche-busting fact — a candidate young enough to be his wife’s son, rather than old enough to be her father — is a little social “revenge” that delights many French women, including Martine Bergossi.

“Why can’t we marry younger men? I date them all the time,” said Bergossi, the stylish owner of Alternatives, a secondhand-couture shop in Paris, who prefers to leave her exact age to the imagination.

“It’s normal to see men with younger women,” she said. “So it’s rather great to see the opposite.”

France is famous for its laissez-faire attitude toward sex and love, yet the May-December romance between Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron has added a little ooh-la-la to a presidential campaign that is otherwise a deadly serious matter.



Lilach Eliyahu, a fashion designer, said the fact that Macron has a wife who “has wrinkles and cellulite makes me think of him as a feminist. He is the opposite of Donald Trump.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/01/politics/investigates-fbi-syria-greene/index.html

An FBI translator with a top-secret security clearance traveled to Syria in 2014 and married a key ISIS operative she had been assigned to investigate, CNN has learned.

The rogue employee, Daniela Greene, lied to the FBI about where she was going and warned her new husband he was under investigation, according to federal court records.

Greene's saga, which has never been publicized, exposes an embarrassing breach of national security at the FBI—an agency that has made its mission rooting out ISIS sympathizers across the country.

It also raises questions about whether Greene received favorable treatment from Justice Department prosecutors who charged her with a relatively minor offense, then asked a judge to give her a reduced sentence in exchange for her cooperation, the details of which remain shrouded in court-ordered secrecy.



Within weeks of marrying Cuspert, Greene, 38, seemed to realize she had made a terrible mistake. She fled back to the US, where she was immediately arrested and agreed to cooperate with authorities. She pleaded guilty to making false statements involving international terrorism and was sentenced to two years in federal prison. She was released last summer.