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Marie Colvin, was killed in Syria in Feb 2012, while reporting for the Sunday Times of London. She was a student at Oyster Bay High School and Yale University, and was remembered by fellow students as passionate and determined and always involved in the issues of the time. Her makeshift media center was destroyed during an assault on the city of Homs by Syrian government forces.

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"The privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and profound gift." The 14th Amendment was a repudiation of infamous Dred Scott decision and stood up for rights of black people, at no time was it intended to bring mothers from Asia or Africa to the US to get automatic citizenship for a child. 255,000 mothers a year with no connections to the US arrive here for automatic bithright citizenship- US Supreme Court rules "no" June 27 2025, and objects to mothers filing the lawsuits for their children when the mother has no legal status. Justice Coney Barrett in a 6-3 decision says the district courts cannot make laws over the decisions of the executive branch for the whole country as they have tried to do till now. This means birthright citizenship executive branch decision cannot be overruled across the nation. Most of the lawsuits are filed in states favorable to this or that approach.  In a few months the Supreme Court will address the automatic birthright citizenship issue at its core. Can a mother come to the US just to get her child US citizenship coming on a visitor visa. Much of the nation sees this as belittling the value of US citizenship.  ...

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Mikaela Shiffrin of Edwards, Colorado, and her original coach, mother Eileen, her candor, and her spirited struggle - as she recovers from a punctured abdomen crash and PTSD to compete in slalom skiing at the Milan Olympics in Feb. 2026. The adjoining story gives her own account of her ordeal and her recovery winning the slalom by a second and a half at the Milan Cortina Olympics in 2026. The title is a misnomer as its not revenge. Her first reaction as she finished her slalom ski run yesterday- so true for someone with this amazing candor and openness seen in her words in the adjoining story of her struggle with PTSD - was complete disbelief that she had won the slalom event in the Olympics at Cortina.  

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Nearly 9-10 million Indians work in the Persian Gulf kingdoms. They are affected by the war with Iran. About 1 million have returned to India during the current war in 2026. About 2.2 million of the 9 million are from Kerala state in southern Indian coastline with cities such as Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram the capital. Of the $50 billion they send back as remittances to India Kerala gets the largest amount among the states in India. As aresult this is affecting the state economy. Many people in the Gulf are being laid off as the Gulf economies are hit by the war. Recovery will be strong in 2027 only in Saudi and UAE (Emirates), others Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman will take much longer to recover according to some forecasts.

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The rescue of a dead son buried in the debris of the Sichuan earthquake, shifting debris with the help of family members some from as far away as Harbin, as army personnel ignore their request and move on to schools and other bigger locations of damage A mother describes the ordeal. Its as personal an account of a mother and her dead son from Wudu, Sichuan, China, one of the smaller villages in China. Both the dead son Deng and his surviving wife Quin and their son are all single children making the tragedy more poignant, this is because of China's one child policy. And with the government soldiers unable or unwilling to help the family suppresses its anger and its grief.

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Retail sales are down across the board for stores from Gap to Macy's and Target. And even Walmart is having a tough time in this environment. December sales were down 14% at Gap ,4% at Macy's, 4.1% at Target and up only 1.9% at Walmart.

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Paul McCartney of the Beatles talks about the times he was asked to write an autobiography. In a new book he writes about how some of the most well known songs he had written came to him in his imagination. The Times shows glimpses of McCartney's song writing skills putting on the words on thoughts in his life and imagination, on his surroundings in London and Liverpool, England. 

Shown here are actual handwritten notes of the lyrics, amazing to see for songs such as Let it Be that are some of the best music singles of all time nd the song Yesterday. Others include Penny Lane.

'Yesterday' and 'Let it Be' come from memories of his mother who died in 1956. The lyrics for 'Yesterday' were written years later in 1965 and for 'Let in Be' in 1969.  

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Norwegian skier Lie McGrath with father US alpine skierand Norwegian mother on Vermont ski team, does something unusual in the Olympics. After leading 0.59 seconds and in a good position for first in downhill skiing in slalom he goes all out but makes one error missing a tightly set gate, then decides to throw his poles, teke off his skiis and go into the woods. He says-

"I thought I would get some peace and quiet, which I didn’t because photographers and police found me out in the woods. I just needed some time for myself.”

McGrath is a 5 time World Cup winner in slalom. He had lost his grandfather just at the start of the games and was distraught. He just decided this was it after the slight error. The Gold, Silver or Bronze medal meant little by that time.

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Jill Biden visits refugee centers in Romania and Slovakia for Mothers Day. About 800,000 refugees have crossed into Romania from Ukraine. So far 6 million refugees have fled Ukraine for Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and other Eastern European countries. Jill Biden will spend Mothers Day visiting displaced families at a village in Slovakia near the border with Ukraine. Jill Biden said "its so important to the president and to me that the Ukrainian people know we stand with them." Jill Biden has said earlier that "their resilience inspires me."

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Claire Cain Miller is a Pulitzer Prize winner for public service. Here she writes about the results of the Pew Survey on Parenting. It shows that many of today's parents feel they had emotional needs which were not met and are trying harder to do this for their children, to show love and build relationships with their children. In open ended responses they say want to check in on the emotions of their children to see how they are.  About one third of mothers say parenting is a lot harder than expected. parents today worry about the mental health of their children, about anxiety and depression. Mothers also found competing pull from work and careers which made it a lot harder. During Covid many mothers simply focused on the children and gave up work to do this. Economic anxieties are also present for today's parents who see the financial independence of their children and finding careers they enjoy as more important than starting families of their own. ...

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The sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shiites in the Middle East worsen as the Saudi government of the royal family executes a Shiite cleric, Baqr al-Nimr, involved in Arab Spring related protests in Saudi Arabia calling for change in the country to improve the conditions of minorities. The continuing war in Syria with the support of Iran, the involvement of Russia and bombing of Turkey related ethnic groups, worsen tensions in the Middle East. The Obama administration's efforts to work with Russia to bring a peaceful resolution to the Syrian civil war, cited by WP's correspondent Liz Sly, may have lost credibility with Sunni states because of Russia's bombing campaign in Syria and on the border with Turkey.

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Women are represented more in lower paid part time jobs and have borne more of child care responsibilities by two thirds than men according to ONS in Britain. Women spend more time than men on nondevelopmental care of children and average about 3 hours 18 minutes each day during the pandemic. The pandemic puts greater strain on working mothers and mothers who lost pay during the coronavirus layoffs.

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President Biden has asked for $18 billion for child care stabilization, the children's infrastructure of today. Republican controlled Congress is not responding. Nationwide 16000 childcare providers closed their doors across 37 states in 15 months of 2020 through March 2021. Childcare givers in the US make less than parking attendants, says this story in The Washington Post. Federal grants provided help in Wisconsin and other states, but this money dried up and more childcare centers have closed. This is the soft infrastructure that America needs and is so crucial- for its children and for mothers and fathers. The losses reverberate through local economies. And it disrupts parents, especially mothers ability to work. 

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Estimates show one in five new mothers or about 800,000 mothers in America are experiencing anxiety disorders during the pregnancy or a year after giving birth. Mental health disorders are now the leading cause of maternal death, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The US is the only high income nation in the world without paid maternity leave and this increases risks of mental health. About one in four women return to work within 4 weeks of giving birth. This report shows the work done by the University of North Carolina Chapel Hills's Center for Women Mood Disorders, one of only 3 inpatient facilities for mental health in the US. 

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Only 13% of mothers in the workforce have access to paid leave in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 25% of working mothers in the U.S. return to work in 2 weeks.

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Anne Lukits brings this exceptional bit of evidence about improved parenting and family life. Only about 15% of families in a University of British Columbia research study had fathers who shared equally in household work with mothers. About 65% of fathers and 14% of mothers reported inconsistent behaviour about their beliefs in gender roles and how they acted at home. Girls were seen as more likely to pursue careers in science and nontraditional fields if fathers played out their beliefs in real life by taking active part in household work, from doing the laundry, washing dishes, vacuuming and cooking meals. The study is discussed in the August 2014 issue of Psychological Science. This means that only one in four fathers who believe women should not have to do all the household work and work outside in paid jobs, actually play their beliefs out in real life roles in the home by sharing in the household work. Other aspects of this that are still to be researched are how much an active role by fathers in the home can improve the number of meals that are home cooked with fresh ingredients, with fathers taking daughters or sons out to fresh food markets, which have a significant bearing on how families can eat healthy and pass this onto the next generation. An unnoticed aspect of this is that it improves the overall quality of life for families through healthy eating and healthy living. When companies recognize this and encourage their employees with some extra time for family acitivity and work the overall benefits would include- healthier employees able to do more productive work in shorter time, less paid for employee medical coverage, and healthier members of society....