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Last summer's mix of sun, beer and excitement during the football World Cup appears to have produced a massive hormone rush in German bedrooms, gardens and back alleys. Nine months on, birth clinics across the country that hosted the tournament are reporting a much-needed baby boom. The football World Cup from June 9 to July 9 last year appears to have sparked a baby boom in the host country Germany, where hospitals are reporting a marked rise in imminent births nine months after the tournament, remembered here as a month-long fairy-tale of sunshine, parties and soccer success. The head of...

HONG KONG -- In China, longstanding family-planning policies limit most urban families to just one child. But that didn't stop a 31-year-old merchant named Ms. Li: Two weeks ago, she gave birth to her second child here in the former British colony of Hong Kong, a 10-hour bus ride from Ms. Li's home in Fujian province. Hong Kong maintains separate government records from the rest of China, so Ms. Li's newborn son won't count toward her family's quota. "I wanted to have a second child to keep my daughter company," says Ms. Li, who asked to be identified only by...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the traditional seasons of American civic life, January is the time new governments are planted. A president is inaugurated every four years, in January. A new Congress is sworn in every two years, in January. A president addresses the state of the union most every year, in January. It is the time when the victors and rulers, not the mere campaigners, tell their stories and give their accountings to citizens, not voters. I was taken back 30 years, to the January of 1977, by Jimmy Carter's eulogy for the president he vanquished, Gerald Ford. Carter poetically ended his...

NEW ORLEANS — First came the storm. Then came the workers. Now comes the baby boom. In the latest twist to the demographic transformation of New Orleans since it was swamped by Hurricane Katrina last year, hundreds of babies are being born to Latino immigrant workers, both legal and illegal, who flocked to the city to toil on its reconstruction. The throng of babies gurgling in the handful of operational maternity wards here has come as a big surprise — and a financial strain — to this historically black and white city, which before the hurricane had only a small...

JUMEAUVILLE, France -- When the municipal day-care center ran out of space because of a local baby boom, the town government gave Maylis Staub and her husband $200 a month to defray the cost of a "maternal assistant" to care for their two children. When Staub delivered twins last December -- her third and fourth children -- the nation not only increased their tax deductions and child allowances, the government-owned French train system offered 40 percent discounts off tickets for the parents and the children until they reach their 18th birthdays. "The government favors families a lot," said Staub, 35,...

Most conservative commentators have heralded Ned Lamont's victory as the solidification of far left's grip on the Democratic Party. Lamont's victory "defined the Democratic Party as a vigorous, motivated, organized force that is...completely out of touch with mainstream America," claimed Kathleen Parker. "Today, the Democratic Party is, simply, a McGovernite party," said Jonah Goldberg. "That is where the passion and the money are. But, nedrenaline addicts beware: That is not necessarily where the voters are." The reasoning goes that Lamont's win means that Democrats have succumbed to the McGovern thinking of "Come Home America." This spells disaster for the Democrats...

Nearly half of American children aged under five are from an ethnic minority, according to a new report from the US Census Bureau. The latest figures show 45% of US pre-schoolers are non-white, with the Latino population growing the fastest. Of the overall US population, one-third are now from an ethnic minority. The report comes amid a series of huge immigrant demonstrations protesting against tough anti-immigration measures being considered by the US government. Immigrant increase In 2005 the minority population was 98 million, 33% of the 296.4 million people in the US, the census agency said. These mid-decade numbers provide...

Nearly half of American children aged under five are from an ethnic minority, according to a new report from the US Census Bureau. The latest figures show 45% of US pre-schoolers are non-white, with the Latino population growing the fastest. Of the overall US population, one-third are now from an ethnic minority. The report comes amid a series of huge immigrant demonstrations protesting against tough anti-immigration measures being considered by the US government. Immigrant increaseIn 2005 the minority population was 98 million, 33% of the 296.4 million people in the US, the census agency said. Latinos are the largest minority,...

Conservative Baby Boom, Liberal Baby Bust In a trend that’s found worldwide as well as in the U.S., liberals are much less likely to have children than conservatives. That trend "augers a far more conservative future — one in which patriarchy and other traditional values make a comeback, if only by default,” Phillip Longman, a fellow at the New America Foundation, writes in an essay in USA Today. "Childlessness and small families are increasingly the norm today among progressive secularists. As a consequence, an increasing share of all children born into the world are descended from a share of the...

There has been a good deal of speculation about the state of the US economy lately. Which way are interest rates headed, now that Bernake has replaced Greenspan at the Fed? Will the housing bubble burst or just leak slowly? What will be the influence of the tensions in Iran? While all of these questions are challenging, and may present the opportunity for a quick strike, they are still among the easiest of all economic questions. Why? Because they are short term questions. If we just wait six months or a year, the answers will have already happened. Instead of...

CHICAGO, Dec. 12 (UPI) -- A third of the aging baby-boom generation employees of Bruce Power, Canada's private nuclear power producer, are poised to retire in the coming years, taking decades of insights into complex nuclear reactor systems and steam generators with them. Like many other employers of sophisticated technical talent, the energy company is hoping to retain some of those insider perceptions through so-called knowledge networks, software and hardware solutions to capture, and keep, the vital information, experts tell United Press International's Networking. By Gene Koprowski

Before we bust out the .50 caliber rifles and start shooting people from a mile away it’s important to know exactly who we’re talking about. Your parents, the baby boomers, are between 40 and 60 years old. They “stopped a war.” They “can’t remember the 60s” and they ruined everything for every generation to come. Though their politics were knee-jerk liberal 25 years ago, today they combine the worst of both parties. They pretend to be Democrats but secretly vote Republican at the last second so they don’t have to pay taxes on the incredible amount of income they’ve accrued...

I'm feeling a little guilty these days. in fact, President Bush sometimes makes me feel awful. He and I both hail from Texas, we've both been Republicans, and we're about the same age. But he's constantly reminding all of us baby boomers that when we first started working each of us was 1 of nearly 7 workers paying Social Security taxes for every retiree. By the time we retire, however, there will only be two workers supporting each of us. As we say in Texas, that ain't right. But I do wish the president, with a lot of heavy burdens...

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Some doctors are attributing a recent baby boom in Florida (search) to the three hurricanes that hit the Sunshine State last summer. One health official says there are more than twice the number of parents-to-be in her birthing class. And another says she has 51 expectant mothers due this month and 43 more due in June, up from an average of about 30 per month. One set of parents admits that the numbers are no coincidence. The couple says it, too, was stuck at home with no electricity and ended up getting pregnant.

"Svorsk" baby boomWhile Norway may be experiencing a swell of national pride and heightened rivalry in the centennial year of independence from Sweden, the citizenry have warmer feelings that ever.The number of children born to Swedish-Norwegian (svensk-norsk or "svorsk") couples has risen 128 percent from 1990 to 2004, according to figures Statistics Norway (SSB) has prepared for newspaper VG.At the beginning of 2005 there were 24,648 persons in Norway who were the result of a union between a Norwegian and a Swede, and 12,369 of these were under the age of 18.In 1990 the comparable figures were 10,794 and 7,201....

Tony Blair today launched an extraordinary attack on the decline of the traditional family and the rise of "different lifestyles". In a speech which risked a backlash from single parents' groups and Labour MPs, the Prime Minister said the culture of the "Swinging Sixties" was partly to blame for crime and social breakdown. "A society of different lifestyles spawned a group of young people who were brought up without parental discipline, without proper role models and without any sense of responsibility to others," said Mr Blair. "All of this was then multiplied in effect by the economic and social changes...

Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - The Australian government is risking the ire of population-control advocates by urging -- and offering incentives for -- citizens to have more children. Announcing the conservative government's federal budget, Treasurer Peter Costello, the minister responsible for economic and fiscal policy, unveiled a "family-friendly" $13.3-billion package that for five years starting in June will pay couples $2,000 for each new baby born. The budget also made provision for maternity payments, family tax credits and an increase in the number of subsidized after-school childcare places. Costello, widely regarded as a prime ministerial hopeful when John Howard finally...

We were born at the end of World War II to a generation that had just won a war against pure evil. We were their hope for a brighter future. The forbearers of a new era. An era of peace and prosperity. An era of fun. We had hula-hoops, silly putty, slinkies and slip 'n slides. We ate Spaghetti-o's, Alphabits, TV dinners and Spam. We watched Ed Sullivan, I Love Lucy, The Flintstones and American Bandstand. We witnessed the first manned space flight and prayed for Apollo 13. We saw a man step onto the moon and suffered through the...

Some of the lessons Father Kevin Martin learned in seminary have faded with time, but he remembers when the future Episcopal priests were taken to see Catherine Deneuve play a Paris prostitute in the soft-porn “Belle de Jour.” The late 1960s were heady times at Yale University’s Berkeley Divinity School, he said. The sexual revolution inspired people in clerical collars to do things that, today, would turn a sexual-harassment attorney into a pillar of salt. “It was the spirit of the day,” said Martin, who leads a renewal group called Vital Church Ministries near Dallas. “We were supposed to be...

Mayor Predicts Baby Boom, Slams Candles 1 hour, 10 minutes ago Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo! TORONTO (Reuters) - Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman predicted on Friday that a surge in births may be seen in nine months after the blackout that struck Canada's largest city, but he advised citizens against using candles in any get-togethers in the dark. "I guess in nine months we're going to see the biggest baby boom we've ever seen," Lastman told a news conference on Friday, responding to the state of emergency in the city. It is widely believed that the birth...