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king jili American rugby sevens star Ilona Maher will join 15-a-side club Bristol in January in a bid to play in next year's women's Rugby World Cup, the English club announced on Monday. Maher, 28, helped the USA to a bronze medal at this summer's Olympic Games in Paris and is the sport's most popular player on social media.

Sukhbir’s ‘tankhah’: Akal Takht key meet on December 2Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer who won the presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal and Vietnam War, endured humbling defeat after one tumultuous term and then redefined life after the White House as a global humanitarian, has died. He was 100 years old. The longest-lived American president died on Sunday, more than a year after entering hospice care, at his home in the small town of Plains, Georgia, where he and his wife, Rosalynn, who died at 96 in November 2023, spent most of their lives, The Carter Center said. Businessman, Navy officer, evangelist, politician, negotiator, author, woodworker, citizen of the world — Carter forged a path that still challenges political assumptions and stands out among the 45 men who reached the nation’s highest office. The 39th president leveraged his ambition with a keen intellect, deep religious faith and prodigious work ethic, conducting diplomatic missions into his 80s and building houses for the poor well into his 90s. “My faith demands — this is not optional — my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can, with whatever I have to try to make a difference,” Carter once said. A moderate Democrat, Carter entered the 1976 presidential race as a little-known Georgia governor with a broad smile, outspoken Baptist mores and technocratic plans reflecting his education as an engineer. His no-frills campaign depended on public financing, and his promise not to deceive the American people resonated after Richard Nixon’s disgrace and U.S. defeat in southeast Asia. “If I ever lie to you, if I ever make a misleading statement, don’t vote for me. I would not deserve to be your president,” Carter repeated before narrowly beating Republican incumbent Gerald Ford, who had lost popularity pardoning Nixon. Carter governed amid Cold War pressures, turbulent oil markets and social upheaval over racism, women’s rights and America’s global role. His most acclaimed achievement in office was a Mideast peace deal that he brokered by keeping Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the bargaining table for 13 days in 1978. That Camp David experience inspired the post-presidential center where Carter would establish so much of his legacy. Yet Carter’s electoral coalition splintered under double-digit inflation, gasoline lines and the 444-day hostage crisis in Iran. His bleakest hour came when eight Americans died in a failed hostage rescue in April 1980, helping to ensure his landslide defeat to Republican Ronald Reagan. Carter acknowledged in his 2020 “White House Diary” that he could be “micromanaging” and “excessively autocratic,” complicating dealings with Congress and the federal bureaucracy. He also turned a cold shoulder to Washington’s news media and lobbyists, not fully appreciating their influence on his political fortunes. “It didn’t take us long to realize that the underestimation existed, but by that time we were not able to repair the mistake,” Carter told historians in 1982, suggesting that he had “an inherent incompatibility” with Washington insiders. Carter insisted his overall approach was sound and that he achieved his primary objectives — to “protect our nation’s security and interests peacefully” and “enhance human rights here and abroad” — even if he fell spectacularly short of a second term. Ignominious defeat, though, allowed for renewal. The Carters founded The Carter Center in 1982 as a first-of-its-kind base of operations, asserting themselves as international peacemakers and champions of democracy, public health and human rights. “I was not interested in just building a museum or storing my White House records and memorabilia,” Carter wrote in a memoir published after his 90th birthday. “I wanted a place where we could work.” That work included easing nuclear tensions in North and South Korea, helping to avert a U.S. invasion of Haiti and negotiating cease-fires in Bosnia and Sudan. By 2022, The Carter Center had declared at least 113 elections in Latin America, Asia and Africa to be free or fraudulent. Recently, the center began monitoring U.S. elections as well. Carter’s stubborn self-assuredness and even self-righteousness proved effective once he was unencumbered by the Washington order, sometimes to the point of frustrating his successors. He went “where others are not treading,” he said, to places like Ethiopia, Liberia and North Korea, where he secured the release of an American who had wandered across the border in 2010. “I can say what I like. I can meet whom I want. I can take on projects that please me and reject the ones that don’t,” Carter said. He announced an arms-reduction-for-aid deal with North Korea without clearing the details with Bill Clinton’s White House. He openly criticized President George W. Bush for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He also criticized America’s approach to Israel with his 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” And he repeatedly countered U.S. administrations by insisting North Korea should be included in international affairs, a position that most aligned Carter with Republican President Donald Trump. Among the center’s many public health initiatives, Carter vowed to eradicate the guinea worm parasite during his lifetime, and nearly achieved it: Cases dropped from millions in the 1980s to nearly a handful. With hardhats and hammers, the Carters also built homes with Habitat for Humanity. The Nobel committee’s 2002 Peace Prize cites his “untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” Carter should have won it alongside Sadat and Begin in 1978, the chairman added. Carter accepted the recognition saying there was more work to be done. “The world is now, in many ways, a more dangerous place,” he said. “The greater ease of travel and communication has not been matched by equal understanding and mutual respect.” Carter’s globetrotting took him to remote villages where he met little “Jimmy Carters,” so named by admiring parents. But he spent most of his days in the same one-story Plains house — expanded and guarded by Secret Service agents — where they lived before he became governor. He regularly taught Sunday School lessons at Maranatha Baptist Church until his mobility declined and the coronavirus pandemic raged. Those sessions drew visitors from around the world to the small sanctuary where Carter will receive his final send-off after a state funeral at Washington’s National Cathedral. The common assessment that he was a better ex-president than president rankled Carter and his allies. His prolific post-presidency gave him a brand above politics, particularly for Americans too young to witness him in office. But Carter also lived long enough to see biographers and historians reassess his White House years more generously. His record includes the deregulation of key industries, reduction of U.S. dependence on foreign oil, cautious management of the national debt and notable legislation on the environment, education and mental health. He focused on human rights in foreign policy, pressuring dictators to release thousands of political prisoners. He acknowledged America’s historical imperialism, pardoned Vietnam War draft evaders and relinquished control of the Panama Canal. He normalized relations with China. “I am not nominating Jimmy Carter for a place on Mount Rushmore,” Stuart Eizenstat, Carter’s domestic policy director, wrote in a 2018 book. “He was not a great president” but also not the “hapless and weak” caricature voters rejected in 1980, Eizenstat said. Rather, Carter was “good and productive” and “delivered results, many of which were realized only after he left office.” Madeleine Albright, a national security staffer for Carter and Clinton’s secretary of state, wrote in Eizenstat’s forward that Carter was “consequential and successful” and expressed hope that “perceptions will continue to evolve” about his presidency. “Our country was lucky to have him as our leader,” said Albright, who died in 2022. Jonathan Alter, who penned a comprehensive Carter biography published in 2020, said in an interview that Carter should be remembered for “an epic American life” spanning from a humble start in a home with no electricity or indoor plumbing through decades on the world stage across two centuries. “He will likely go down as one of the most misunderstood and underestimated figures in American history,” Alter told The Associated Press. James Earl Carter Jr. was born Oct. 1, 1924, in Plains and spent his early years in nearby Archery. His family was a minority in the mostly Black community, decades before the civil rights movement played out at the dawn of Carter’s political career. Carter, who campaigned as a moderate on race relations but governed more progressively, talked often of the influence of his Black caregivers and playmates but also noted his advantages: His land-owning father sat atop Archery’s tenant-farming system and owned a main street grocery. His mother, Lillian, would become a staple of his political campaigns. Seeking to broaden his world beyond Plains and its population of fewer than 1,000 — then and now — Carter won an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating in 1946. That same year he married Rosalynn Smith, another Plains native, a decision he considered more important than any he made as head of state. She shared his desire to see the world, sacrificing college to support his Navy career. Carter climbed in rank to lieutenant, but then his father was diagnosed with cancer, so the submarine officer set aside his ambitions of admiralty and moved the family back to Plains. His decision angered Rosalynn, even as she dived into the peanut business alongside her husband. Carter again failed to talk with his wife before his first run for office — he later called it “inconceivable” not to have consulted her on such major life decisions — but this time, she was on board. “My wife is much more political,” Carter told the AP in 2021. He won a state Senate seat in 1962 but wasn’t long for the General Assembly and its back-slapping, deal-cutting ways. He ran for governor in 1966 — losing to arch-segregationist Lester Maddox — and then immediately focused on the next campaign. Carter had spoken out against church segregation as a Baptist deacon and opposed racist “Dixiecrats” as a state senator. Yet as a local school board leader in the 1950s he had not pushed to end school segregation even after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, despite his private support for integration. And in 1970, Carter ran for governor again as the more conservative Democrat against Carl Sanders, a wealthy businessman Carter mocked as “Cufflinks Carl.” Sanders never forgave him for anonymous, race-baiting flyers, which Carter disavowed. Ultimately, Carter won his races by attracting both Black voters and culturally conservative whites. Once in office, he was more direct. “I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over,” he declared in his 1971 inaugural address, setting a new standard for Southern governors that landed him on the cover of Time magazine. His statehouse initiatives included environmental protection, boosting rural education and overhauling antiquated executive branch structures. He proclaimed Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the slain civil rights leader’s home state. And he decided, as he received presidential candidates in 1972, that they were no more talented than he was. In 1974, he ran Democrats’ national campaign arm. Then he declared his own candidacy for 1976. An Atlanta newspaper responded with the headline: “Jimmy Who?” The Carters and a “Peanut Brigade” of family members and Georgia supporters camped out in Iowa and New Hampshire, establishing both states as presidential proving grounds. His first Senate endorsement: a young first-termer from Delaware named Joe Biden. Yet it was Carter’s ability to navigate America’s complex racial and rural politics that cemented the nomination. He swept the Deep South that November, the last Democrat to do so, as many white Southerners shifted to Republicans in response to civil rights initiatives. A self-declared “born-again Christian,” Carter drew snickers by referring to Scripture in a Playboy magazine interview, saying he “had looked on many women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.” The remarks gave Ford a new foothold and television comedians pounced — including NBC’s new “Saturday Night Live” show. But voters weary of cynicism in politics found it endearing. Carter chose Minnesota Sen. Walter “Fritz” Mondale as his running mate on a “Grits and Fritz” ticket. In office, he elevated the vice presidency and the first lady’s office. Mondale’s governing partnership was a model for influential successors Al Gore, Dick Cheney and Biden. Rosalynn Carter was one of the most involved presidential spouses in history, welcomed into Cabinet meetings and huddles with lawmakers and top aides. The Carters presided with uncommon informality: He used his nickname “Jimmy” even when taking the oath of office, carried his own luggage and tried to silence the Marine Band’s “Hail to the Chief.” They bought their clothes off the rack. Carter wore a cardigan for a White House address, urging Americans to conserve energy by turning down their thermostats. Amy, the youngest of four children, attended District of Columbia public school. Washington’s social and media elite scorned their style. But the larger concern was that “he hated politics,” according to Eizenstat, leaving him nowhere to turn politically once economic turmoil and foreign policy challenges took their toll. Carter partially deregulated the airline, railroad and trucking industries and established the departments of Education and Energy, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He designated millions of acres of Alaska as national parks or wildlife refuges. He appointed a then-record number of women and nonwhite people to federal posts. He never had a Supreme Court nomination, but he elevated civil rights attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the nation’s second highest court, positioning her for a promotion in 1993. He appointed Paul Volker, the Federal Reserve chairman whose policies would help the economy boom in the 1980s — after Carter left office. He built on Nixon’s opening with China, and though he tolerated autocrats in Asia, pushed Latin America from dictatorships to democracy. But he couldn’t immediately tame inflation or the related energy crisis. And then came Iran. After he admitted the exiled Shah of Iran to the U.S. for medical treatment, the American Embassy in Tehran was overrun in 1979 by followers of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Negotiations to free the hostages broke down repeatedly ahead of the failed rescue attempt. The same year, Carter signed SALT II, the new strategic arms treaty with Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union, only to pull it back, impose trade sanctions and order a U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. An exciting, adventurous and gratifying existence Hoping to instill optimism, he delivered what the media dubbed his “malaise” speech, although he didn’t use that word. He declared the nation was suffering “a crisis of confidence.” By then, many Americans had lost confidence in the president, not themselves. Carter campaigned sparingly for reelection because of the hostage crisis, instead sending Rosalynn as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy challenged him for the Democratic nomination. Carter famously said he’d “kick his ass,” but was hobbled by Kennedy as Reagan rallied a broad coalition with “make America great again” appeals and asking voters whether they were “better off than you were four years ago.” Reagan further capitalized on Carter’s lecturing tone, eviscerating him in their lone fall debate with the quip: “There you go again.” Carter lost all but six states and Republicans rolled to a new Senate majority. Carter successfully negotiated the hostages’ freedom after the election, but in one final, bitter turn of events, Tehran waited until hours after Carter left office to let them walk free. At 56, Carter returned to Georgia with “no idea what I would do with the rest of my life.” Four decades after launching The Carter Center, he still talked of unfinished business. “I thought when we got into politics we would have resolved everything,” Carter told the AP in 2021. “But it’s turned out to be much more long-lasting and insidious than I had thought it was. I think in general, the world itself is much more divided than in previous years.” Still, he affirmed what he said when he underwent treatment for a cancer diagnosis in his 10th decade of life. “I’m perfectly at ease with whatever comes,” he said in 2015. “I’ve had a wonderful life. I’ve had thousands of friends, I’ve had an exciting, adventurous and gratifying existence.” ___ Former Associated Press journalist Alex Sanz contributed to this report. Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here .

On 23rd December, India celebrates the National Farmer’s Day or the Rashtriya Kisan Diwas to commemorate the significant contribution of farmers, the backbone of Indian economy and rural prosperity. Rashtriya Kisan Divas is observed to mark the birth anniversary of Late Chaudhary Charan Singh, India’s fifth Prime Minister. The day is popular amongst India’s agricultural and farming states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and others. In India, the day marks the contributions of Chaudhary Charan Singh to the agriculture sector and welfare of farmers. Almost 50% of the population of the country is dependent on agriculture. And that is why National Farmer’s Day was recognised by the 10th government of independent India in 2001. Contributions of Chaudhary Charan Singh An Indian politician and a freedom fighter, Chaudhary Charan Singh was born in Meerut. After completing his studies, Singh entered politics as part of the Indian Independence Movement under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. In the following years, he was jailed twice by the British government. Singh remained a Congress person for most of this time. But during the national emergency, imposed by Indira Gandhi between 1975 to 1977, Chaudhary Charan Singh became part of an emergency opposing political movement led by Morarji Desai. Under the name of ‘Janata Party’, the movement became the first, other than the Indian National Congress, to form a government in Uttar Pradesh. And Charan Singh became the first non-congress chief minister in Northern India. Desai’s political movement defeated the Congress in 1977 general elections to elect Morarji Desai as the Prime Minister of the post emergency India. By 1979, the Janata Party started splitting because of loyalty of some of its members towards the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist organisation. During this time, Murari Desai resigned, and Singh was appointed the Prime Minister. His government was supported by Indira Gandhi’s Congress party, the same leader against whom Singh signed an arrest order as the union home minister. But this sport came with a cost. Indira Gandhi had conditions for supporting Singh. And the conditions were to drop all charges against her and son Sanjay Gandhi. Charan Singh decided to not agree to the conditions, and had to resign just after 23 days of Prime Ministership. This made him the only Prime Minister of the country to never face a Parliament session. Charan Singh continued as the caretaker Prime Minister until January 1980. In 1979, Singh founded the Lok Dal in 1979. He led Lok Dal until his death in 1987. His last remains rest at Kisan Ghat in Delhi. Champion of Farmers Chaudhary Charan Singh left behind a rich legacy of agricultural landscape in India. With his instrumental role in piloting pro-formal legislations, like the Uttar Pradesh Zamindari Abolition and Land Reform Act of 1950, he became the chief architect of land reforms in Uttar Pradesh. His formulation of the Debt Redemption Bill in 1939 eased the burden of debt on the agricultural community of India. As the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Charan Singh enacted the Land Holding Act of 1960 that aimed at lowering the ceiling on land holdings. This called for a uniform land sharing system across the state, promoting fair distribution and addressing disparities in land ownership. Because of his contributions to the agricultural society, Chaudhary Charan Singh was posthumously honoured with the Bharat Ratna in 2024. On This Day On 24th December, the Rashtriya Kisan Diwas is observed to recognise the sacrifice and efforts of the farming community of India. The day is used to campaign for digital literacy, economic independence and technological knowledge sharing in the field of agriculture.

Shares of Rokmaster Resources Corp. ( CVE:RKR – Get Free Report ) dropped 25% during mid-day trading on Friday . The company traded as low as C$0.02 and last traded at C$0.02. Approximately 396,000 shares traded hands during mid-day trading, an increase of 182% from the average daily volume of 140,187 shares. The stock had previously closed at C$0.02. Rokmaster Resources Stock Down 25.0 % The business’s fifty day simple moving average is C$0.02 and its 200 day simple moving average is C$0.02. The stock has a market cap of C$2.45 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -0.30 and a beta of 2.99. The company has a current ratio of 0.02, a quick ratio of 0.60 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 103.54. Rokmaster Resources Company Profile ( Get Free Report ) Rokmaster Resources Corp., an exploration stage company, engages in the acquisition, exploration, and development of mineral properties in North, Central, and South America. It explores for zinc, lead, silver, copper, gold, and polymetallic deposits, as well as precious metals. The company holds a 100% in the Duncan Lake property comprising 35 contiguous mineral claims that covers an area of 3,929 hectares; and a 55% interest in the Big Copper property located in the Slocan Mining Division in southeast British Columbia, Canada. Further Reading Receive News & Ratings for Rokmaster Resources Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Rokmaster Resources and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter .

World Cup selection drives US sevens star Maher's move to BristolThe New York Knicks are no strangers to playing on Christmas Day. But few of their holiday games have come with the anticipation that accompanies Wednesday's clash against the San Antonio Spurs. The Knicks will look to remain hot, while second-year Spurs superstar Victor Wembanyama will play at Madison Square Garden for the second time in his career Wednesday afternoon. Both teams were off Tuesday after playing on Monday night. The Knicks beat the visiting Toronto Raptors 139-125 and the Spurs' late comeback fell short in a 111-106 loss to the host Philadelphia 76ers. The lopsided victory was the latest evidence a new mix is starting to gel for the Knicks, who have won four straight and have gone 9-2 since Nov. 29 to move into third place in the Eastern Conference. Karl-Anthony Towns, who was acquired from the Minnesota Timberwolves on Oct. 2, and OG Anunoby shared the team lead with 31 points each on Monday night. "It's great vibes right now," the Knicks' Josh Hart said. "So we've just got to make sure we continue to bring that to the game." Anunoby became the fifth different player in the last 11 games to at least share the team lead in scoring. The only player to pace the Knicks in scoring in consecutive games over that span is Towns, who scored 23 points in a 121-106 win over the Orlando Magic on Dec. 3 and 27 points two nights later in a 125-101 victory over the Charlotte Hornets. "We're a very talented team, so it could be anyone's night, for sure," Anunoby said. Few players in the NBA are as talented as Wembanyama, the versatile 7-foot-3 star who already has collected three triple-doubles in 95 NBA games. Wembanyama earned Western Conference Player of the Week honors last week after collecting 72 points, 14 blocks, 13 rebounds and eight assists in a pair of wins. "He has helped put us in a lot of cool positions, especially this year," Spurs point guard Tre Jones told the San Antonio Express-News. Wembanyama finished with 26 points, nine rebounds and eight blocks Monday, when the Spurs overcame a nine-point fourth-quarter deficit to take a pair of late leads. Wembanyama missed a potential go-ahead 3-pointer with 2:08 left for San Antonio, which went ahead once more at 103-102 before the 76ers ended the game on a 9-3 run. The loss was just the second in the last six games for the Spurs, who are in ninth place in the Western Conference but just 1 1/2 games behind the sixth-place Los Angeles Clippers in the race for the final guaranteed playoff spot. San Antonio has missed the playoffs in each of the last five seasons. While Wembanyama struggled in his first game in New York on Nov. 8, 2023 (14 points on 4-of-14 shooting), his breakout game against the Knicks in San Antonio on March 29 -- when he had 40 points and 20 rebounds in a 130-126 overtime victory -- has increased the intrigue surrounding the Christmas meeting. "The first time I'm going to play on Christmas," Wembanyama told the Express-News. "I'm super excited." The Knicks will be playing on Christmas Day for the fourth straight season and an NBA-high 57th time overall. They improved to 24-32 on the holiday last Dec. 25 with a 129-122 win over the Milwaukee Bucks. The Spurs are playing on Christmas Day for the first time since 2016, when they beat the Chicago Bulls 119-100 to improve to 6-5 all-time on the holiday. This article first appeared on Field Level Media and was syndicated with permission.Andrew McCutchen is running it back with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2025, and he celebrated the occasion with a great social media post. The Pirates on Monday shared that McCutchen would be returning to the team for a third straight season. He’s getting a 1-year, $5 million deal, which is the same contract he has been on the last two years. McCutchen responded to the Pirates’ post on X about the matter with a GIF of Big Bird from “Sesame Street” kicking in a door to announce his arrival. https://t.co/eOWQcHOoBU pic.twitter.com/V6w0N4fj2e — Andrew McCutchen (@TheCUTCH22) December 23, 2024 McCutchen, 38, is in his second stint with the Pirates. He played with them to start his career from 2009-2017. He made five All-Star teams during that span, won a Gold Glove and four Silver Slugger honors. McCutchen then was traded to the San Francisco Giants for 2018, and they traded him to the New York Yankees. After that McCutchen played with Philadelphia Phillies and Milwaukee Brewers before returning to the Pirates in 2023. Despite being 37 years old last season, McCutchen was still productive. He batted .232 with 18 doubles and 20 home runs in 120 games. His .411 slugging percentage was his best since 2021. The Pirates went 76-86 in 2024 and are looking to improve from that mark. This article first appeared on Larry Brown Sports and was syndicated with permission.

Published 4:54 pm Saturday, November 23, 2024 By Data Skrive Top-25 teams will hit the court across three games on Sunday’s college basketball slate. That includes the Pittsburgh Panthers taking on the Wisconsin Badgers at Colonial Hall. Watch men’s college basketball, other live sports and more on Fubo. What is Fubo? Fubo is a streaming service that gives you access to your favorite live sports and shows on demand. Use our link to sign up for a free trial. Catch tons of live college basketball , plus original programming, with ESPN+ or the Disney Bundle.

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Carter served just one-term in the White House, but became one of the most active former presidents in US history. Among the maize, yam and peanut farms of Savelugu-Nanton, a remote district of northern Ghana, the legacy of Jimmy Carter is less complicated than it is back in the former US president’s homeland. Thanks to the work of his charity, The Carter Center, locals are nowadays spared the misery of Guinea worm disease – a parasite that breeds in the human belly and emerges through the skin before laying larvae in stagnant pools to await the next victim. Carter’s work in fighting the bug and tracking votes in poor countries won him a Nobel Prize for Peace in 2002. It followed a presidency that achieved a landmark Middle East peace deal, but was hamstrung by economic woes and the Iranian hostage crisis. He died on Sunday, aged 100, the Carter Center announced. He had entered hospice care in February 2023, electing to stay home after a series of short hospital stays. The former president had been diagnosed with cancer in 2015 but had responded well to treatment. At 100, he was the longest-lived president of the United States. During six decades of politics, aid work and diplomacy, Carter “was committed to ideals like human rights, peace, and improving human life”, Steven Hochman, research director at The Carter Center, told Al Jazeera. “He didn’t just want talk, he wanted action,” Hochman said. “Whether this was through monitoring elections in Latin America or witnessing the terrible suffering from Guinea worm disease in Asia and Africa, and working to eradicate it.” Southern peanuts Carter grew up on the red clay soil of rural Georgia during the Great Depression. He sold boiled peanuts on the streets of Plains, his hometown, and ploughed the land with his family. His father James “Earl” Carter, was a peanut farmer and warehouseman; his mother, Lillian, was a nurse. He married Rosalynn Smith, a family friend, in 1946. The couple celebrated their 76th wedding anniversary in July 2022, a year before the former first lady died in November 2023. After a seven-year US navy career, Carter returned to his home state of Georgia, where he garnered national attention as a Democrat state governor for his prudent management, winning a spot on the cover of Time magazine as a symbol of the “New South”. Running for the presidency, Carter styled himself as an outsider to Washington politics, which were stained by the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War. His “Peanut Brigade”, a group of friends from Georgia, crisscrossed the US and trumpeted their candidate as a straight-talking man of principle. “Carter’s election in 1976 promised to redeem the nation from the sins of Vietnam and Watergate,” Randall Balmer, a historian and author, told Al Jazeera. “He aspired to restore faith in government, but betrayal during the Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon years had already given way to cynicism.” In the White House, Carter’s trademark candour did not always translate into political victories. Many of his progressive social and economic plans hit logjams in Congress; an inability to translate ideals into legislative reality sapped his popularity. The United States was mired in the stagflation woes of low economic growth, unemployment and high inflation, brought about by an energy crisis from the early 1970s. Carter’s solution, tackling US dependence on foreign oil via taxes and green energy , was quashed in the Senate. Better abroad Carter fared better overseas. He struck treaties that saw the Panama Canal brought under local control; established full diplomatic relations with China; and brokered a deal to limit nuclear weapons with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. His masterwork was bringing Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to his presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland, in 1978, and hammering out a peace deal between the foes over 13 tense days. “He had credibility as a peace negotiator because he listened to both sides. He could think on his feet; and speak on his feet,” said Hochman. “He was a skilled negotiator who came up with ideas for overcoming conflict and tried them out. He took chances, even if that meant he might fail.” The Camp David Accords led to full diplomatic and economic relations between the neighbours, on condition that Israel return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. They did not solve the Palestinian issue, but they have spared the region a repeat of the multi-state Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967 . “When Carter was considering the summit, and even after he announced it, just about every foreign-policy guru, Henry Kissinger included, counselled against it,” Gerald Rafshoon, the White House communications director under Carter, told Al Jazeera. “The wise men warned that a head of state should never go into a negotiation without knowing the outcome in advance. Carter rejected that advice – and did more to further the security of Israel than any US president before or since.” Middle East tumult The Middle East offered Carter a diplomatic win, but it also brought his downfall. In 1979, Iranian students stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage – sparking a 444-day crisis that did not end until Carter had been kicked out of the White House. Carter’s efforts to secure the release of captives via the government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were a political liability that was spotlighted nightly on US television news. A botched US rescue mission in April 1980 epitomised Carter’s misfortunes. Later that year, Americans gave the Republican presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan, a former actor and governor of California, a landslide victory over Carter. Carter’s talk of a US “crisis of spirit” and national “malaise” may have been true, but it was no vote-winner. “People say they want honest leaders, but when you give that to them, they say that’s not what a leader’s supposed to do,” Gary Sick, a White House official under Carter and other presidents, told Al Jazeera. “They expect their leaders to be somewhat devious and make things sound better than they really are. “Jimmy Carter called a spade a spade, and people weren’t prepared for that honesty.” Despite losing office, Carter’s diplomatic skills remained in demand. He mediated in Nicaragua, Panama, and Ethiopia, helped broker a power handover in Haiti and tackled North Korea’s nuclear weapons scheme. He wrote several books, mostly on Middle East peace. He also retained the frankness that created political foes while president. He said the 2003 invasion of Iraq was “unjust”; and that the US was “in bed with the Israelis to the detriment” of Palestinians. An evangelical Christian, he also criticised abortion . In 2006 Carter published the book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. He defended the use of the word apartheid in a 2007 interview with the US broadcaster NPR, calling it “an accurate description of what has been going on in the West Bank”. He also said he hoped the book would make Americans aware of “the horrible oppression and persecution of the Palestinian people and it would precipitate for the first time any substantive debate on these issues”. More than a decade later, major human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International , would back his assessment, accusing Israel of imposing apartheid on Palestinians. Philanthropy: The Carter Center Founded in 1982 by the former president and his wife, The Carter Center has monitored 113 elections in 39 countries and tackled diseases such as river blindness, trachoma and malaria, often by bringing medics to less populated, less frequented areas. There were 3.5 million cases of Guinea worm disease in 21 African and Asian countries when Carter declared war on the metre-long parasites in 1986. Savelugu-Nanton district and the rest of Ghana was declared rid of the disease in 2015, and has virtually been wiped out elsewhere. Late into life, the former president continued to volunteer for the home-building organisation Habitat for Humanity, hosting an annual event that attracted thousands of volunteers in the US and abroad. Carter’s supporters say that history will judge his presidency more favourably than American voters did in 1980. Outside the White House, the legacy of the father of four and grandfather of 22 is assured. In his own words: “I can’t deny I’m a better ex-president than I was a president.”

NEW YORK —The New York Department of State’s Division of Consumer Protection is providing tips to help consumers navigate return and refund policies. According to the National Retail Federation, this year’s holiday weekend from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday set record levels for consumer spending. The State of Retail Returns 2024 Report states $743 billion dollars’ worth of merchandise were returned last year. However, policies vary from store to store, making returns and refunds a challenge at times. Consumers should be aware of laws that protect them so they can make informed decisions about holiday returns and understand what to look for when reviewing return and refund policies. “As the holiday shopping season comes to an end, both gift givers and receivers may have changed their minds about what they bought,” Secretary of State Walter T. Mosley said in a news release. “But depending on where you’re returning the items, there may be some limitations. It’s important for consumers to pay attention, prior to purchase, the return and refund policy so you can exchange that item you’ll never use for something you love.” The Division of Consumer Protection offers the following tips to help consumers navigate return and refund policies: Pay Attention to Return Policies: New York State law requires that stores post their refund policies conspicuously – on the item, at the store entrance or on or near the cash register. Retailers must provide a written copy of the store’s return policy when requested. New York State Law does not require retailers to accept returns; however, they must post a conspicuous notice visible to consumers before the point of sale, advising that no returns will be accepted.If the retailer does not post a return policy, the law requires the retailer accept returns of unused, undamaged merchandise within 30 days of the purchase date. The returned item must include a proof of purchase and the refund must be in the form of cash or credit based on the customer’s preference.Understand the Refund Terms: For retailers that allow returns, New York State law does not require refunds to be given in any specific manner. However, it does require the form of the refund – cash, credit or exchange – be clearly disclosed in advance of purchase. Retailers must also disclose any fees associated with the return. If no fee is listed, customers should inquire whether the store imposes a re-stocking fee for returned merchandise and determine prior to purchase if the item can be returned for a refund or only store credit. Retain Any Proofs of Purchase: Consumers should hold on to receipts in the event a product needs to be returned. If purchasing gifts, ask if a gift receipt is available. It is also advised to keep the packaging of an item, along with its confirmation number. Consumers having difficulty obtaining a refund are encouraged to file a complaint with the New York State Division of Consumer Protection. About the New York State Division of Consumer Protection Follow the New York Department of State on Facebook, X and Instagram and check in every Tuesday for more practical tips that educate and empower New York consumers on a variety of topics. Sign up to receive consumer alerts directly to your email or phone here. The New York State Division of Consumer Protection provides voluntary mediation between a consumer and a business when a consumer has been unsuccessful at reaching a resolution on their own. The Consumer Assistance Helpline 1-800-697-1220 is available Monday to Friday from 8:30am to 4:30pm, excluding State Holidays, and consumer complaints can be filed at any time at www.dos.ny.gov/consumerprotection. The Division can also be reached via X at @NYSConsumer or Facebook.POSCO Holdings Inc. (NYSE:PKX) Sees Significant Increase in Short InterestWhy is Visa the Best Stock to Invest In?

Jimmy Carter, the farmer, president and Nobel peace crusader, dies at age 100Subscribe to our newsletter Privacy Policy Success! Your account was created and you’re signed in. Please visit My Account to verify and manage your account. An account was already registered with this email. Please check your inbox for an authentication link. Support Hyperallergic We’re funded by readers like you! If you value our reviews and news reporting, we need your support more than ever. Please join us as a member today. Already a member? Sign in here. Support Hyperallergic’s independent arts journalism for as little as $8 per month. Become a Member An emaciated man stands alone. He’s naked and in an all-too-white room. The hair on his head has recently been shaved, though his beard is full. The handcuffs shackling his wrists appear oversized for his small frame. A yellow earplug is jammed in only one ear. This photograph is the public’s first, and so far only, look at a War on Terror detainee in a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) black site: a secret detention center set up to hold and interrogate prisoners who have not been charged with a crime. It’s a surprising image, stark and overexposed, both in terms of how bright the photograph is and how naked the man is. Someone employed by the CIA took this photograph, though we don’t know who. But we do know why it was taken, and who it is in the frame. His name is Ammar al-Baluchi, a detainee at Guantanamo Bay currently facing capital charges for the 9/11 attacks. This photograph, likely from 2004, is from the period before he was transported to the United States’s offshore penal colony in 2006. Baluchi was one of at least 119 Muslim men held incommunicado by the CIA for years in its global network of clandestine black sites, where he and at least 38 others were repeatedly subject to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a US-government euphemism for torture. Get the latest art news, reviews and opinions from Hyperallergic. Daily Weekly Opportunities From May 2003 to September 2006, Baluchi was secretly shuffled between five black sites, including one in Romania, where this photo is believed to have been taken. (The photo, recently declassified, was provided to me by Baluchi’s lawyers, who added the black band across his midsection to preserve his dignity. I broke the story surrounding the photograph and Baluchi for the Guardian earlier this year.) Whenever any of these Muslim men were moved, CIA protocol dictated that field officers photograph each one, both naked and clothed, “to document his physical condition at the time of transfer.” The image before us isn’t just any photograph. It’s visual evidence of crimes authorized and committed by the United States government, an entry in the annals of self-reported atrocity photography. In all, the CIA took some 14,000 photographs of the agency’s black sites around the world, but we, the public, have never been able to see any of them until now. There are plenty of examples of this macabre genre. Israel produces it . So does Syria’s Bashar al-Assad . As did the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The Nazis . The Soviets . The French . Governments of different political leanings have contributed to this dark archive, uniting the magical technology of the camera with the awesome power of detention and even death. They take pictures of their own crimes and immediately file them away, in an acrobatic technocratic act of simultaneous remembering and forgetting. The question is why. A photograph, presumably, is meant to be seen. These images, on the other hand, were intended to record but almost never to be viewed. They were certainly never meant to be seen by the public. Of course, anyone who has used their phone camera to take a picture of a receipt knows that a photograph doesn’t have only a public function. It can also operate as a trace of memory and documentation of a transaction. Self-reported atrocity photographs, indeed, fulfill the record-keeping needs of a government bureaucracy. The fact that the CIA was using black sites was revealed to the public in 2005, but it was not until 2015 that the photo archive documenting them was exposed. In response to that revelation, a US government official described the photographs as having been “taken for budgetary reasons to document how money was being spent.” Behold the banality of bureaucratic evil. Photography, since its inception, has subjected Muslim men to coercive violence. In 1850, barely a decade after the invention of photography in 1839, French travel writer Maxime Du Camp sojourned with the novelist Gustave Flaubert through Egypt, Nubia, Palestine, and Syria, taking pictures along the way. On the Nile, Du Camp routinely photographed one of the sailors on his steamer, Hajj Ishmael, usually with the latter draped in just a loin cloth. “He was an extremely handsome Nubian,” Du Camp writes in his travelogue . “I sent him climbing up onto the ruins which I wanted to photograph, and that way, I was able to obtain an exact scale of proportions.” The challenge in early photography, with its long exposure times, was to get your subjects to sit still. Du Camp came up with a solution that he proudly described to his friend, the French poet Théophile Gautier. “I finally arrived at the idea of a rather baroque deception that will make you, dear Théophile, understand something about the gullible naiveté of these poor Arabs,” he wrote. “I told him that the copper pipe of my lens jutting out of the camera was a cannon that would burst into shrapnel if he had the misfortune to move while I was pointing it in his direction, a story which immobilized him completely. Persuaded, Hajj Ishmael did not move for more than a minute.” I suppose there’s a reason why we talk about a “photo shoot.” “To photograph people is to violate them,” Susan Sontag writes in On Photography (1977), “by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as the camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is sublimated murder — a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.” More than any other subgenre, it is self-reported atrocity photography that most closely approximates the murder Sontag describes. During the first two years of Bashar al-Assad’s violent repression of a popular uprising in Syria, a photographer who worked for the military police was assigned the duty of taking pictures of the corpses of civilians the regime killed. The bodies were mostly in military hospitals, often in a severely mutilated state. Initially, each corpse had the person’s name written on it. Eventually, names were replaced with three sets of numbers, the first indicating who the person was, the second pointing to the branch of the intelligence service responsible for the imprisonment, and the third referring to the person’s medical report, stripping them of the final remnants of their humanity. It became immediately clear to the photographer, who is now known by the pseudonym “Caesar,” that these people were being tortured to death. Government higher-ups required his photos as proof that their orders to punish and kill dissidents were being carried out. For two years, he did his work while smuggling copies of over 52,000 of those photos out of the country, before defecting in 2013. His photos have since been displayed around Europe and North America and have been instrumental in proving Assad’s ruthlessness. In Caesar’s photographs, mostly captured with a Nikon Coolpix P50 , the people photographed are already dead. The camera operates as an apparatus of confirmation, the final stage of the government’s killing machine. The Khmer Rouge also systematically documented the atrocities they committed. More than a fifth of the Cambodian population died during its genocidal rule between 1975 and 1979. The Khmer Rouge’s most notorious political prison and torture center Tuol Sleng, also known as S-21, was a converted high school in the middle of Phnom Penh, through which more than 14,000 people were shuttled. Fewer than a dozen survived. Each person was photographed upon entry, many by Nhem En, S-21’s chief photographer, who was only 15 years old when the Khmer Rouge sent him to China to study photography. He returned six months later with a Chinese box camera and began working at S-21. What we see in the photographs of S-21 is the sober reality that those brought and photographed here are marked for death, even though, unlike Caesar’s photos, they are still alive when photographed. By capturing the imminence of their demise, the photographer closes in on killing them, not by knife or bullet but by immortalizing them. Death pervades the frame of the living, which makes a photo of Kong Saman , for example, all the more stunning. A child’s tiny, bony arm and hand extend upward, grabbing the woman’s sleeve. We can’t see the child’s face, but the gesture is enough to remind us of the horrifying fact that young life coexists with mechanized death. In both the Syrian and Khmer Rouge examples, the photographers themselves have been identified. That knowledge, along with the change of venue (from hidden government files to art museum or US Congress) and the political purpose of their display, which serves to prove the brutality of the exhibiting state’s enemies, has radically changed our perception and reception of these images. What was once meant as evidence of efficiency has transformed into proof of brutality. If the photographs previously functioned to label enemies who had been exterminated, they now serve as mementos to identify and remember specific victims. The Tuol Sleng photographs gained particular fame after a 1997 exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art featuring about 20 images from the archive. The Caesar photos have been exhibited widely, from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to the European Union Parliament and beyond. But exhibiting the photos in a museum or public hall desensitizes the viewer by making the images feel as if they are fully understood objects, either as historical artifacts or works of art, quite unlike the Baluchi photograph, which remains opaque. None of this extra knowledge is brought to this now 20-year-old photograph of Ammar al-Baluchi. We don’t know who took the picture, and it hasn’t been exhibited in any galleries or political halls of power. All we know is that this is but one of 14,000 photos, that Baluchi was tortured by the CIA, and that no one in the US government has ever been held accountable for the torture program it put into place following the 9/11 attacks. Self-reported atrocity photography, however, transcends government bureaucracy, in the same way that photography is more than simply a visual record. Like all images of its kind, the Baluchi photo records a massive imbalance of power: He is naked before the photographer’s lens and helpless before the machine of the state. Despite this disparity, Baluchi looks straight through the lens with a defiant, wounded, and all-too-human expression. With that gaze, he manages to resist his own soft murder. Despite his shrunken size and condition, he fills the photograph with life and presence. While his body appears defeated, his face looks ready to free himself of the photograph by force of will alone. And that may be the greatest surprise of all. The irony behind this image is that, while it is Baluchi in the frame, it is the nameless photographer, and the apparatus of power behind him, who remain in hiding. We hope you enjoyed this article! Before you keep reading, please consider supporting Hyperallergic ’s journalism during a time when independent, critical reporting is increasingly scarce. Unlike many in the art world, we are not beholden to large corporations or billionaires. Our journalism is funded by readers like you , ensuring integrity and independence in our coverage. We strive to offer trustworthy perspectives on everything from art history to contemporary art. We spotlight artist-led social movements, uncover overlooked stories, and challenge established norms to make art more inclusive and accessible. With your support, we can continue to provide global coverage without the elitism often found in art journalism. If you can, please join us as a member today . Millions rely on Hyperallergic for free, reliable information. By becoming a member, you help keep our journalism free, independent, and accessible to all. Thank you for reading. Share Copied to clipboard Mail Bluesky Threads LinkedIn Facebook