Trending News Of USA

1. Trending News Of USA A glimpse of trending news of USA in the month of February.

2. US visa tremors rock Indian information technology • India’s information technology industry will face short-term challenges if the Bill to double minimum wages for H1B visa-holders is passed in the US Congress. The impact will be felt by American technology companies such as IBM, Accenture and Microsoft, which have been sending Indian engineers on these visas to the US. • A California lawmaker Zoe Lofgren on Tuesday introduced a Bill in the US Congress requiring companies that employ workers on H1B visas to double their minimum pay to $130,000 a year, the first revision  proposed in nearly two decades. The legislative process will take time. • US President Donald Trump was likely to issue an executive order restricting H1B visas, his spokesperson Sean Spicer said separately.

3. Revoking of OPT extension by Trump to divert Indian STEM students elsewhere • Newly-elected US president Donald Trump's plans to reverse extension of Optional Practical Training (OPT) for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students could benefit immigrant-friendly nations like Australia, Canada and New Zealand, among others. • OPT allows foreign STEM students to extend their stay in the US after completion of studies for 6-12 months under student visa. Foreign students are found to make use of OPT to either look for jobs or apply for further education or simply float around till the OPT term expires. • The regime of previous US president Barack Obama had looked to extend the same to over three years but ran out of time with the country going into elections. Read more here..

4. Trump then: Won't hesitate in banning lobbyists. Trump now: You're hired • During his campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly welcomed the idea of banning lobbyists from his administration. • Fast forward eight months, and now-President Trump is welcoming them in. • Last June on CBS's "Face the Nation," host John Dickerson asked Donald Trump: Given the candidate's drumbeat of criticism of the Washington lobbyist class, “Will you say 2018No lobbyists will work for me and no big donors?” • "I would have no problem with it, honestly," Trump responded. Full article here.

5. Why Facebook is most vulnerable to proposed changes in H1B visa scheme • Among Silicon Valley’s top tech employers, Facebook could be the most vulnerable to US President Donald Trump’s expected crackdown on guest-worker visas, according to a Reuters analysis of US Labor Department filings. • More than 15 per cent of Facebook’s US employees in 2016 used a temporary work visa, giving the social media leader a legal classification as a H1B “dependent” company. That is a higher proportion than Alphabet’s Google, Apple, Amazon.com or Microsoft. • That could cause problems for Facebook if Trump or Congress decide to make the H1B program more restrictive, as the president and some Republican lawmakers have threatened to do.

6. From Trump's Mar-a-Lago to Facebook, a National Security Crisis in the Open • President Trump and his top aides coordinated their response to North Korea’s missile test on Saturday night in full view of diners at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida — a remarkable public display of presidential activity that is almost always conducted in highly secure settings. • The scene — of aides huddled over their computers and the president on his cellphone at his club’s terrace — was captured by a club member dining not far away and published in pictures on his Facebook account. The images also show Mr. Trump conferring with his guest at the resort, Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister. • Shortly before the club member, Richard DeAgazio, who joined Mr. Trump’s club recently, took the pictures, North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile into the sea off its eastern coast. Mr. DeAgazio posted his photographs to Facebook as the two leaders and their staff members reviewed documents and worked on their laptops, using cellphones as flashlights. More information available here.

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