Local collaboration sees 455 hams delivered to Kamloops Food Bank in time for Christmas (Kamloops)Jimmy Carter, a no-frills and steel-willed Southern governor who was elected president in 1976, was rejected by disillusioned voters after a single term and went on to an extraordinary post-presidential life that included winning the Nobel Peace Prize, died Sunday at his home in Plains, Georgia, according to his son James E. Carter III, known as Chip. He was 100 and the oldest living U.S. president of all time. His son confirmed the death but did not provide an immediate cause. In a statement in February 2023, the Carter Center said the former president, after a series of hospital stays, would stop further medical treatment and spend his remaining time at home under hospice care. He had been treated in recent years for an aggressive form of melanoma skin cancer, with tumors that spread to his liver and brain. His wife, Rosalynn, died Nov. 19, 2023, at 96. The Carters, who were close partners in public life, had been married for more than 77 years, the longest presidential marriage in U.S. history. His final public appearance was at her funeral in Plains, where he sat in the front row in a wheelchair. Mr. Carter, a small-town peanut farmer, U.S. Navy veteran, and Georgia governor from 1971 to 1975, was the first president from the Deep South since 1837, and the only Democrat elected president between Lyndon B. Johnson’s and Bill Clinton’s terms in the White House. As the nation’s 39th president, he governed with strong Democratic majorities in Congress but in a country that was growing more conservative. Four years after taking office, Mr. Carter lost his bid for reelection, in a landslide, to one of the most conservative political figures of the era, Ronald Reagan. When Mr. Carter left Washington in January 1981, he was widely regarded as a mediocre president, if not an outright failure. The list of what had gone wrong during his presidency, not all of it his fault, was long. It was a time of economic distress, with a stagnant economy and stubbornly high unemployment and inflation. “Stagflation,” connoting both low growth and high inflation, was a description that critics used to attack Mr. Carter’s economic policies. In the summer of 1979, Americans waited in long lines at service stations as gasoline supplies dwindled and prices soared after revolution in Iran disrupted the global oil supply. Mr. Carter made energy his signature domestic policy initiative, and he had some success, but events outside his control intervened. In March 1979, a unit of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pa., suffered a core meltdown. The accident was the worst ever for the U.S. nuclear-energy industry and a severe setback to hopes that nuclear power would provide a safe alternative to oil and other fossil fuels. Mr. Carter’s fortunes were no better overseas. In November 1979, an Iranian mob seized control of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans as hostages. It was the beginning of a 444-day ordeal that played out daily on television and did not end until Jan. 20, 1981, the day Mr. Carter left office, when the hostages were released. In the midst of the crisis, in April 1980, Mr. Carter authorized a rescue attempt that ended disastrously in the Iranian desert when two U.S. aircraft collided on the ground, killing eight American servicemen. Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, who had opposed the mission, resigned. “I may have overemphasized the plight of the hostages when I was in my final year,” Mr. Carter said in a 2018 interview with The Washington Post in Plains. “But I was so obsessed with them personally, and with their families, that I wanted to do anything to get them home safely, which I did.” A month after the Iranian hostage crisis erupted, an emboldened Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Mr. Carter ordered an embargo of grain sales to the Soviet Union, angering American farmers, and a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, a step that was unpopular with many Americans and was widely seen as weak and ineffectual. As the years wore on, the judgment on Mr. Carter’s presidency gradually gave way to a more positive view. He lived long enough to see his record largely vindicated by history, with a widespread acknowledgment that his presidency had been far more than long lines at the gas station and U.S. hostages in Iran. Near the end of Mr. Carter’s life, two biographies argued forcefully that he had been a more consequential president than most people realized - “perhaps the most misunderstood president in American history,” author Jonathan Alter wrote in his 2020 book, “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life.” Both books - the other was Kai Bird’s 2021 volume, “The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter” - said Mr. Carter was often ahead of his time, especially with his early focus on reducing fossil fuel use and his efforts to mitigate the nation’s racial divide, including by expanding the number of people of color in federal judgeships. The biographies concluded that Mr. Carter’s reputation as a poor president was unfair and came largely from his stubborn insistence on doing what he thought was correct even when it cost him politically. “He insisted on telling us what was wrong and what it would take to make things better,” Bird wrote. “And for most Americans, it was easier to label the messenger a ‘failure’ than to grapple with the hard problems.” Mr. Carter, noted for his mile-wide smile in public, was also tenacious and resolute, and those qualities were critical to achieving the Camp David Accords, a signature success of his presidency. He spent 13 days at the presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains in September 1978, shuttling between cabins that housed Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. In a process that almost collapsed several times, Mr. Carter was instrumental in brokering a historic agreement between bitter rivals. The Camp David Accords led to the first significant Israeli withdrawal from territory captured in the Six-Day War of 1967 and a peace treaty that has endured between Israel and its largest Arab neighbor. In 1978, Begin and Sadat were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor conferred on Mr. Carter 24 years later for a lifetime of working for peace. Against fierce conservative opposition, Mr. Carter pushed through the Panama Canal treaties, which ultimately placed the economically and strategically critical waterway under Panamanian control, a major step toward better U.S. relations with Latin American neighbors. He signed a nuclear-arms-reduction treaty, SALT II, with the Soviets, but he withdrew it from Senate consideration when Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan. Taking advantage of the opening made by President Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Carter granted full diplomatic recognition to China. He made human rights a central theme of U.S. foreign policy, a sharp departure from the approach of Nixon and his national security adviser and second secretary of state, Henry A. Kissinger. Two Cabinet-level departments - Energy and Education - were created under Mr. Carter, as was the Superfund to clean up toxic-waste sites. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act more than doubled the size of the national park and wildlife refuge system. Mr. Carter was ahead of his time on environmental issues. In June 1979, he installed 32 solar panels on the roof of the West Wing of the White House, telling reporters that the point was to harness “the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.” “A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people,” Mr. Carter said. Reagan removed the panels in 1986. His relations with Congress were often strained, even though it was controlled by his party, but he had more success than most modern presidents at winning passage of his legislative proposals. With the deregulation of the airline and trucking industries, Mr. Carter set in motion a movement that picked up steam under Reagan and his conservative allies. The military buildup under Reagan was often credited with hastening the collapse of the Soviet Union, but that buildup began under Mr. Carter. Inflation was a constant scourge to his administration, but it was Mr. Carter who appointed Paul Volcker chairman of the Federal Reserve. Volcker was later hailed as the man who broke the back of inflation in the early 1980s, when Reagan was president. In the 2018 Post interview, Mr. Carter said he had “a lot of regrets” from his time in office, mainly over the Iran hostage crisis and his not having done more to unify the Democratic Party. He said he was most proud of the Camp David Accords, his work to normalize relations with China and his focus on human rights. “I kept our country at peace and championed human rights, and that’s a rare thing for post-World War II presidents to say,” he said, adding that he was also proud that he “always told the truth.” Mr. Carter was a former president for more than four decades - longer than anyone else in history - and he was only the second to live to 94, after George H.W. Bush, who died in 2018. He dedicated his post-presidential life to public service at home and supporting democracy and human rights abroad. It was a career that even some of his supporters said seemed better suited to him than being president. “Nothing about the White House so became Mr. Carter as his having left it,” historian Douglas Brinkley wrote in “The Unfinished Presidency,” a 1998 account of Mr. Carter’s life after the presidency. Mr. Carter lived more modestly than any ex-president since Harry S. Truman, whom Mr. Carter called his favorite president. He and Rosalynn lived in Plains until the end in the ranch house that they built for themselves in 1961, and where Mr. Carter will be buried with her next to a shady willow tree near a pond that he helped dig. Mr. Carter declined the corporate board memberships and lucrative speaking engagements that have made other ex-presidents tens of millions of dollars. He said in the 2018 interview that he didn’t want to “capitalize financially on being in the White House.” “I don’t see anything wrong with it; I don’t blame other people for doing it,” Mr. Carter said. “It just never had been my ambition to be rich.” Instead, he wrote 33 books on topics ranging from war to woodworking, which gave him a comfortable retirement income. He also won three Grammy Awards for his recordings of audio versions of his books. For decades, the Carters spent a week a year building homes with Habitat for Humanity, the Georgia-based nonprofit organization that constructs housing for low-income people. Wearing their own tool belts, they helped build or renovate about 4,300 homes in 14 countries. In 1982, the Carters founded the Carter Center at Emory University in Atlanta. It became the base from which they traveled widely on peacemaking and other humanitarian missions. The Carter Center sponsors programs in education, agricultural development and health care and supports fair elections in countries around the world. Mr. Carter became an unofficial roving ambassador, monitoring elections, mediating disputes and promoting human rights and democracy. In 1994, at the request of President Clinton, he helped forge an agreement that removed a brutal military regime in Haiti and averted a possible U.S. invasion of that country. Mr. Carter’s missions required meeting with some of the world’s most notorious despots, including Kim Il Sung of North Korea and Moammar Gaddafi of Libya. Fledgling democracies trusted him, and he was asked to monitor elections in Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Zambia, the West Bank and Gaza. The Carter Center has monitored 115 elections in 40 countries, according to its website. He was not always successful, but Mr. Carter never seemed discouraged about his efforts to resolve conflicts. He spent the days leading up to the 1994 Christmas holiday in the Balkans, engaging in negotiations that included a shouted conversation by shortwave radio with Serbian strongman Radovan Karadzic, who in 2016 was convicted of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Mr. Carter’s efforts resulted in a four-month cease-fire in the bloody conflict. From Atlanta, the Carter Center coordinated dozens of initiatives, including a decades-long effort that helped to virtually eradicate Guinea worm disease, a painful and disabling condition that once afflicted millions of people in some of Africa's poorest countries. Mr. Carter’s freelance diplomacy, which at times included outspoken criticism of U.S. policies, could provoke outrage. He angered Clinton in 1994 by thrusting himself into a dispute over U.N. inspections of North Korea’s nuclear facilities. In his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” (2006), Mr. Carter set off a storm of criticism by seeming to equate Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories with the former apartheid regime in South Africa. Over the years, Mr. Carter was a constant source of irritation to conservative critics. In a book about Mr. Carter’s life after the White House - a book whose subtitle called him “Our Worst Ex-President” - conservative political commentator Steven F. Hayward accused him of engaging in “usually embarrassing and often disastrous peace missions around the world.” The far more common judgment was that Mr. Carter’s tireless pursuit of peace and human rights was admirable and set a new standard for ex-presidents. In awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, the Nobel committee lauded him “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” Introducing the 2002 Peace Prize laureate in Oslo, Gunnar Berge, a member of the Nobel committee, said: “Jimmy Carter will probably not go down in American history as the most effective president. But he is certainly the best ex-president the country ever had.” That Mr. Carter became president was something of a historical accident, one that followed an unprecedented chain of events. The progression began in 1973 with the resignation of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, who was caught in a web of corruption dating from his time as a Maryland politician. That led to the appointment of then-Minority Leader Gerald Ford, a respected but relatively little-known U.S. House member from Michigan, as Agnew’s successor. And, finally, in 1974, there was the resignation of Nixon to avoid impeachment stemming from the Watergate scandal. Two years later, Mr. Carter narrowly defeated Ford, but the person he really campaigned against was Nixon. Mr. Carter was the peanut farmer from Georgia, the candidate who carried his own garment bag off the aircraft and promised to bring an open and honest style of leadership to the nation’s capital. It later became commonplace for presidential candidates, and most challengers to incumbents, to run “against Washington.” Mr. Carter was among the first of the modern era to do so. Mr. Carter signaled his disdain for the “imperial” trappings of the presidency on Inauguration Day in 1977, when he, Rosalynn and their daughter, Amy, stepped out of the presidential limousine on Pennsylvania Avenue and walked the parade route to the White House. “He didn’t feel suited to the grandeur,” Stuart E. Eizenstat, a Carter aide and biographer, said in 2018. While that seemed refreshing to many people after the Nixon years, it ultimately grated on those who thought that Mr. Carter’s style - refusing, for example, to have “Hail to the Chief” played when he entered rooms - demeaned and diminished the presidency. Eizenstat said Mr. Carter’s order eliminating drivers for top staff members was meant to signal a more frugal approach to governing. Instead, he said, it meant that busy officials were driving instead of reading and working for an hour or two every day. Two years later, in 1979, Americans were in a sour mood, and Mr. Carter’s response to events seemed to make matters worse. In July, he abruptly canceled a speech on energy and retreated to Camp David, where he held a series of intense discussions with a cross section of guests. When he emerged July 15, he delivered a nationally televised address that was soon dubbed the “malaise” speech, although Mr. Carter never used that word in his address. In the speech, Mr. Carter spoke of a “crisis of the American spirit” and, before setting out a series of energy policy proposals, warned that “we are at a turning point in our history.” “There are two paths to choose,” he continued. “One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.” The speech, initially well received, was soon turned against Mr. Carter, who was accused of blaming the American people for the failures of his administration. Mr. Carter did not help his cause when, two days later, he demanded the resignation of his entire Cabinet and fired five of the secretaries. Then came the takeover of the U.S. Embassy by Iranian student protesters. By the early 21st century, Mr. Carter’s warning about the fragmentation of American society leading to political paralysis appeared prescient to many. So, too, did his emphasis on concerns then only dimly perceived as threats - foremost among them, the spread of nuclear weapons to unfriendly and unstable regimes. But hindsight was of no benefit to him then. Mr. Carter’s dignity was ruthlessly assailed by reports in August 1979 of his encounter with a “killer rabbit” a few months before while fishing in Georgia. “President Attacked by Rabbit,” a front-page headline in The Post proclaimed. His use of a paddle to fend off a rabbit swimming toward his small boat was widely lampooned as a desperate struggle. The story, inconsequential in itself, reinforced an impression, cultivated by his political opponents, that Mr. Carter was a hapless bumbler unequal to his office. He also had been mocked for wearing a cardigan in February 1977 while sitting next to a fire to deliver his first speech on energy, in which he called the nation’s response to a growing energy crisis “the moral equivalent of war.” But his energy policies led to a reduction in U.S. consumption of foreign oil. Long after he left public office, there was a public outcry over congressional “earmarks” and other forms of pork-barrel spending because of the soaring federal budget deficit. One of Mr. Carter’s first acts as president was to veto a bill authorizing a number of federal water projects he considered wasteful, incurring the lasting enmity of some of the Democratic barons of Capitol Hill. “If you are president and you’re going to diagnose a problem, you better have a solution to it,” journalist Hendrik Hertzberg, who as a White House speechwriter worked on the “malaise” speech, later observed. “While he turned out to be a true prophet, he turned out not to be a savior.” To many who were sympathetic to Mr. Carter and considered his presidency underrated, his shortcomings stemmed largely from the way he defined the role more in moral than political terms, which reflected his deep religious faith. He craved political power to do good as he saw it, and he was adept at gaining power. But he was not a natural politician, and he was never at home in the messy world of politics and governing in an unruly democracy. He was always far more at home in Plains, the speck of a town in South Georgia that he never really left. Until late in their lives, he and Mrs. Carter frequently were seen walking hand in hand along Church Street on their way home from Saturday dinners at the home of their friend Jill Stuckey. Mr. Carter was a champion for the town, which is essentially a living museum of his life, with old-fashioned storefronts and shops selling everything from Carter Christmas ornaments to campaign memorabilia. He helped woo a Dollar General store to Plains, then shopped for his clothes there. In the 2018 interview, Mr. Carter said he and Mrs. Carter wanted to be buried in Plains partly because they knew their gravesite would draw tourists and provide a much-needed economic boost to their hometown. They celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary in 2021 with a party for more than 300 people at Plains High School, which they both had attended about eight decades earlier. The guests included country music stars Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, a married couple who had worked with the Carters for years building homes for Habitat for Humanity. (Brooks and Yearwood quietly presented the Carters with a 1946 Ford Super Deluxe convertible, in honor of the year they were married.) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi came to the party, as did billionaire and CNN founder Ted Turner, who was Mr. Carter’s longtime friend and fly-fishing buddy, and civil rights leader Andrew Young, whom President Carter appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and who later served as mayor of Atlanta. Also there was Mary Prince, an African American woman who was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1970. She met the Carters when she was a prisoner assigned to work at the Georgia governor’s mansion. Rosalynn Carter was convinced of her innocence and hired her to be Amy Carter’s nanny. After he became president, Mr. Carter persuaded the parole board to let him be Prince’s parole officer. She moved into the White House and lived there for all of Mr. Carter’s presidency, looking after Amy. She later received a full pardon. She still lives in Plains and sometimes cares for the Carters’ grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Most notably, Bill and Hillary Clinton made the long trip to Plains. The Carters and the Clintons had tense relations for decades but seemed ready to set their differences aside in the twilight of Carter’s life. Onstage, Mr. Carter, who was then 96, spoke haltingly, showing the combined effects of his age and many health problems, including brain cancer that appeared to have been treated successfully in 2015. Seated next to his wife, Mr. Carter expressed “particular gratitude” to her for “being the right woman.” Then he flashed his trademark toothy grin, looked out at an auditorium jammed with family and friends, many of them choking up, and declared, “I love you all very much.” Friends said it felt like a goodbye. The next morning, an exhausted Mr. Carter was wheeled into the Baptist church where he had until recently taught Sunday school. He kissed Pelosi’s hand when she walked in. “I thought he was a great president because he was a president of values, and he acted upon the values,” Pelosi said later. She admired him for his vision, for his striving to help free the world of nuclear weapons, and for the way he inspired people by his good works in his post-presidency. “He went from the White House to building houses for poor people,” she said. “He glorified that work. Others wanted to do it because he did it. That’s powerful.” Despite the feeling of farewell in Plains that summer weekend, Mr. Carter did not fade completely from public view. Nearly five months later, on the eve of the first anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters, he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times decrying “unscrupulous politicians” who guided the mob and the “lie” that the 2020 election had been stolen. He called on Americans to reject political violence, polarization, disinformation and embrace “fairness, civility and respect for the rule of law.” “Our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss,” Mr. Carter warned. “Without immediate action, we are at genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy. Americans must set aside differences and work together before it is too late.” Survivors include their four children, John W. “Jack” Carter, James E. “Chip” Carter III, Donnel J. “Jeff” Carter and Amy Carter; 11 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren. James Earl L. “Buddy” Carter Jr., the eldest of four children, was born Oct. 1, 1924, in Plains, a farming town about 150 miles south of Atlanta. The Carters lived on the family farm in Archery, Ga., about two miles west of Plains, in a house with no electricity or running water. But that was not uncommon in the rural South of the time, and the Carters, though not wealthy, were not poor. As they prospered, the Carters eventually moved to a larger and more modern, although still modest, home in Plains. Mr. Carter’s father, who was known as Earl, was ambitious, hard-working and shrewd. Over the years, he enlarged his farm holdings in the region and branched into other business ventures, including a peanut warehouse. Running for president, Jimmy Carter was often described, and described himself, as a peanut farmer, but that label did not capture the full extent of the family’s business interests. By the time he entered state politics in the early 1960s, Mr. Carter was an affluent agribusinessman, the head of a sizable and thriving commercial enterprise. It was his mother who probably had the most influence on the future president. A nurse by training, Lillian Gordy Carter was talkative, outgoing, at times irrepressible. In 1966, at the age of 68, “Miss Lillian,” as she came to be known, decided to join the Peace Corps, and she spent nearly two years serving in India. She slipped quietly out of town to begin her training because, she said later, the family thought her joining the Peace Corps might arouse conservative suspicions about her son’s campaign for governor. Mr. Carter grew up in the rigidly segregated South of the 1920s and ’30s. But unlike in much of the North, which was segregated in fact if not in law, contact between Black and White people was part of everyday life in much of the South. There was only one other White family in Archery, and many of Mr. Carter’s boyhood friends were Black. His mother turned the family home into a social center where Black and White people were welcome and where she dispensed medical treatment and advice to the sharecropper families who worked the Carter land. In his youth, Mr. Carter made no attempt to conceal his ambition. Perhaps influenced by an uncle, Tom Watson Gordy, a Navy enlisted man who sent messages to the family from exotic places, he declared at an early age that he intended to enter the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and eventually become chief of naval operations. He also told a friend that one day he would be governor of Georgia. Mr. Carter graduated from Plains High School in 1941. To qualify for the Naval Academy, he enrolled at Georgia Southwestern College in nearby Americus, and he later spent a year studying at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. In 1943, as World War II raged, he was admitted to the Naval Academy. He was a good student, a quick study who seemed to move through the academy’s rigorous academic schedule with ease. He was also popular with his classmates, viewed as a “nice guy,” but not necessarily destined to be a leader. He was officially a member of the Class of 1947, but under the Navy’s accelerated wartime schedule, he graduated in 1946, ranking 59th in a class of more than 800. Shortly after his graduation, Mr. Carter married Eleanor Rosalynn Smith of Plains, a close friend of his sister Ruth’s. The new Mrs. Carter, three years younger than her husband, was from a respectable Plains family and shared Mr. Carter’s values and outlook. After graduating from the Naval Academy, Mr. Carter spent two compulsory years on Navy surface ships and then applied for the submarine service. He was accepted and soon won entry to the Navy’s newest and most glamorous program, which was developing the nation’s first nuclear-powered submarines under the iron-fisted direction of a captain (later admiral) named Hyman G. Rickover. Rickover was a cold man who drove his subordinates relentlessly. He never praised his men; he signaled his approval by allowing them to remain in their jobs. Years later, Mr. Carter would say, “I think, second to my own father, Rickover had more effect on my life than any other man.” The title of his 1975 presidential campaign autobiography, “Why Not the Best?” was based on his first encounter with Rickover, who asked him whether he had always done his best at the Naval Academy. The young lieutenant junior grade answered honestly that, no, he had not always done his best. After a long pause, Rickover asked icily, “Why not?” Rickover was not a man who cultivated friendships, and his influence on Mr. Carter might have reinforced the same tendency in the future president. Supremely self-confident, Mr. Carter, too, was a taskmaster, and he was not a favorite president among those who served on the permanent White House staff and saw chief executives come and go. When Mr. Carter came to Washington as the newly elected “outsider” president, he had few real friends in the capital, even among members of his own party. In four years, he did little to forge the bonds of friendship and loyalty that can help carry a president through times of turmoil. He alienated potential allies, and the engineer in him was given to micromanagement. Early in his term, Mr. Carter personally controlled access to the White House tennis court. “Although most considered Mr. Carter a kind, amiable man, he could turn nasty in an instant,” Brinkley wrote in “The Unfinished Presidency.” He added, “At times he was downright vicious; in fact, his trademark steely, laser-sharp stare usually preceded a hurtful put-down. Even in the most informal settings, Mr. Carter had to let everybody know he was in charge.” Mr. Carter, however, did develop deep friendships. One of them, surprisingly, was with Ford, the man he defeated in 1976. Out of office, the two men saw each other frequently and collaborated on various projects. Mr. Carter delivered a eulogy at Ford’s funeral in Grand Rapids, Mich., in 2007. Mr. Carter never stopped taking positions on personally and politically difficult issues. He cut ties with the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000, citing its “increasingly rigid” views, especially on the role of women in society. “I’ve made this decision with a great deal of pain and reluctance,” Mr. Carter told the Associated Press at the time. “For me, being a Southern Baptist has always been like being an American. ... My father and his father were deacons and Sunday school teachers. It’s something that’s just like breathing for us.” But he added: “I personally feel the Bible says all people are equal in the eyes of God. I personally feel that women should play an absolutely equal role in service of Jesus in the church.” By 1952, promoted to lieutenant and assigned as the engineering officer on the USS Sea Wolf, the fleet’s second nuclear submarine, Mr. Carter’s Navy career was off to a good start. But his father died in July 1953, leaving the farm and other family business interests in shaky financial condition. As the oldest of the Carter siblings, the young naval officer felt a duty to return to Georgia and take his place as head of the family. And his mother wanted him at home to hold things together through a challenging time. He resigned from the Navy on Oct. 9, 1953, and headed home. His return to Plains reunited him with his sisters, Gloria and Ruth, and his brother, Billy, who became a well-known figure during the Carter presidency. Always the family rebel, Billy Carter reveled in the role of Georgia good ol’ boy at the gas station he owned in Plains. He also marketed a beer - Billy Beer - under his own name. But he became an embarrassment to his brother when it was disclosed that he had accepted a $220,000 loan from Libya and registered as a foreign agent of the Libyan government. Mr. Carter’s siblings all died before him - all from pancreatic cancer. Mr. Carter’s Navy resignation was a difficult decision, especially for Rosalynn. She enjoyed the adventure and security of military life, and as a young girl, she had yearned to leave the confines of Plains for the wider world. Now, at 26, with three small children, she headed back to the small town amid the dusty farm fields of southwest Georgia and a life she thought she had escaped. But the Carters soon found their footing in their native region. They formed an effective business partnership, with Rosalynn handling the bookkeeping and other managerial duties at the warehouse and her husband immersing himself in the technical and scientific details of modern farming. They began to prosper. The Carters remained partners in all facets of life. At the White House, Rosalynn Carter was an unusually activist first lady, regularly attending Cabinet meetings and policy sessions and serving as a trusted adviser to the president. She placed special emphasis on mental health issues and served as the active honorary chairman of the President’s Commission on Mental Health. After the White House years, she accompanied her husband on his global missions. Like his father before him, Mr. Carter became an active member in community institutions - Plains Baptist Church, the Lions Club, the local school and library boards, and the county planning commission. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter had been elected to the Georgia legislature the year before his death, and in 1962, his elder son embarked on a political career. He ran for a state Senate seat representing Sumter and six other counties. Mr. Carter ran an energetic campaign for the Democratic primary, the only election that counted at that time in the Deep South, but he came up just short against the incumbent. On the day of the primary, however, his operatives in the small city of Quitman witnessed widespread voting irregularities, including ballot stuffing. It was the way things had been done in Quitman for years. Mr. Carter convinced John Pennington, a young investigative reporter for the Atlanta Journal, that there was a good story to be had in Quitman. Pennington’s subsequent stories exposed the extent of voter fraud in the county and brought Mr. Carter statewide attention. Through intermediaries, including Griffin Bell, who became attorney general in the Carter administration, Mr. Carter made contact with Charles Kirbo, a partner in a prestigious Atlanta law firm. Kirbo, who had never met the Georgia peanut farmer, agreed to represent him in a challenge to the primary election’s outcome. Kirbo remained a friend and trusted adviser. Mr. Carter prevailed, and in January 1963 he took his seat in the Georgia Senate. He served four years, his only legislative experience, generally keeping a low profile while achieving a reputation for diligence and hard work. He promised to read every bill introduced in the legislature, and when he had trouble keeping up, he took a speed-reading course. In 1966, Mr. Carter announced that he was running for the congressional seat held by Howard “Bo” Calloway, a wealthy Republican and graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. When Calloway unexpectedly dropped his reelection bid and entered the race for the Republican nomination for governor, Mr. Carter jumped into the race for the Democratic nomination. His primary opponents included Ellis Arnall, a former governor who was regarded as a progressive, and Lester Maddox, an Atlanta restaurant owner who dispensed ax handles to patrons as a symbol of his resistance to the civil rights advances of the 1960s. Mr. Carter finished third in the primary, which was won by Maddox. The 1966 defeat affected Mr. Carter profoundly. It was then, he later wrote, that he underwent a deep religious transformation, a “born-again” experience that guided him for the rest of his life. From then on, he pursued a moral as much as a political agenda and tended to define issues in terms of right and wrong. When he ran for president, he described himself as a “born-again Christian,” at the time a new and somewhat jarring term in the lexicon of presidential politics. He almost immediately began planning to run a second campaign for governor in 1970. His main rival in the Democratic primary was Carl Sanders, a well-regarded former governor with a moderate record on race. Mr. Carter had taken courageous stands on the issue of race, although he was never in the forefront of the civil rights movement, which was gathering momentum and tearing the South apart. In the 1950s, he withstood intense pressure from his neighbors and threats to the family business as one of the few White men in Plains who would not join the local chapter of the White Citizens Council, an organization whose thinly veiled purpose was the continued subjugation of Black people. In 1965, he and other members of his family stood virtually alone in opposing a resolution barring Black people from Plains Baptist Church. But in the 1970 campaign, Mr. Carter aggressively courted the state’s conservative, rural voters, kept his distance from the African American community and relentlessly attacked Sanders as the wealthy crony of the “bigwigs” of Atlanta’s business establishment. Sanders had refused to allow Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace (D), the most prominent segregationist politician in the country, to address the Georgia legislature. Mr. Carter promised repeatedly to invite Wallace to the state. Mr. Carter was endorsed by some of Georgia’s leading segregationists, but the 1970 campaign cost him the support of some old allies. Mr. Carter defeated Sanders in a primary runoff and easily won the general election. He then executed a stunning political pivot. On Jan. 12, 1971, Mr. Carter delivered his inaugural address in front of the Georgia Capitol, declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over. ... No poor, rural, weak or Black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job or simple justice.” The speech was probably the most important of his life, including those he delivered as president. It brought him national attention and soon landed him on the cover of Time magazine. Mr. Carter became a leading figure in a generation of young New South politicians who were seen as determined to move their region beyond the rancorous politics of race. As governor, Mr. Carter largely lived up to his lofty words. He appointed more women and minorities to state government positions than all of his predecessors combined. He also continued efforts, begun in the state Senate, to upgrade Georgia’s public schools, and he overhauled the prison system and judiciary. Mr. Carter was constitutionally limited to one term as governor (Georgia governors can now serve two consecutive terms), but his ambitions were not similarly constrained. He began to think of running for president, a goal that might seem wildly out of reach even for a bright young governor with a progressive reputation. As late as October 1975, a public-opinion poll on possible 1976 Democratic presidential contenders did not include his name. By the 1970 gubernatorial campaign, Mr. Carter had acquired the services, and the fierce loyalty, of two young Georgians who would be at his side through his presidency. One was Hamilton Jordan, a political science student who volunteered to work for Mr. Carter in 1966 and became his closest political strategist and White House chief of staff. The other was Jody Powell, who began as Mr. Carter’s driver in the 1970 campaign and went on to be his chief spokesman and White House press secretary. Jordan died in 2008; Powell died in 2009. While still governor of Georgia, Mr. Carter quietly pursued the presidency with the same determination that marked all of his endeavors. He managed to get appointed to an important Democratic National Committee campaign post, providing a vehicle to meet Democratic politicians and activists around the county. Jordan, his executive assistant, left Atlanta for a job with the DNC in Washington, where he served as the unannounced candidate’s eyes and ears at national party headquarters. Jordan also wrote a long memo setting out the changing contours of the nomination process and a strategy that would lead to victory. Mr. Carter, with Powell at his side, crisscrossed the country tirelessly, impressing the people he met and gradually building a foundation of support. It all came together on a cold January night in Iowa. Mr. Carter did not win the Iowa caucuses in 1976 - the most votes were cast for uncommitted delegates - but he finished first among those who competed. That gave him a burst of publicity and momentum that carried him to victory in the New Hampshire primary and eventually to the nomination as his rivals dropped out of the race one by one. It was the 1976 Carter campaign that firmly established Iowa as the starting point of the road to the White House. After Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration, it was a good year to be a Democrat. Mr. Carter chose Sen. Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota, a Northern liberal with strong ties to organized labor, as his running mate, and they headed into the fall campaign with a 30-point lead in the polls over their Republican opponents. They almost lost. Ford ran a disciplined campaign that made maximum use of his status as the incumbent, and Mr. Carter’s lead in the polls steadily dwindled. Shortly before Election Day, Playboy magazine published a long interview with the Democratic nominee. As a final question, Mr. Carter was asked whether he thought that he had reassured people who were uneasy about his religious beliefs and fearful that he would be a rigid, unbending president. In the midst of a long, rambling response, Mr. Carter said: “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times.” Public doubts about the born-again peanut farmer and one-term governor deepened. Mr. Carter won the election by two percentage points. His steep slide during the 1976 campaign was an early warning signal of his political vulnerability. Four years later, Mr. Carter was the incumbent, but that was hardly an advantage. One July 1980 poll put his approval rating at 21 percent, one of the lowest ever recorded for a president. Mr. Carter was the first president to openly embrace rock-and-roll music, and he credits the Allman Brothers and other musicians with helping him win election in 1976. “I was practically a nonentity, but everyone knew the Allman Brothers,” Mr. Carter said in a 2020 documentary, “Jimmy Carter: Rock-and-roll President.” “When they endorsed me, all the young people said, ‘Well, if the Allman Brothers like him, we can vote for him.’” Mr. Carter was challenged for his party’s nomination by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a hero to Democratic liberals who had come to detest Mr. Carter for what they considered his conservative policies. The Kennedy campaign badly damaged Mr. Carter’s reelection chances, but it also exposed weaknesses in Kennedy’s presidential aspirations. Mr. Carter won the nomination, and the youngest of the Kennedy brothers never again sought the presidency. In the fall, Mr. Carter faced Reagan, the hero of a rising conservative movement. As he had in the 1970 campaign for governor of Georgia, Mr. Carter played to win. He mounted a negative assault that depicted Reagan as a right-wing ideologue who was too dangerous to entrust with the nation’s future. In the only nationally televised debate of the fall campaign, Reagan disarmed that portrayal. “There you go again,” he said in his avuncular, optimistic style, responding to Mr. Carter’s accusations. Reagan won by almost 10 percentage points, sweeping 44 of the 50 states. For years, people in Mr. Carter’s orbit believed that Reagan supporters had been in contact with Iranian officials and urged them to delay the release of the U.S. hostages in Tehran until after the 1980 election. The purpose, allegedly, was to make sure that Mr. Carter didn’t pull off an “October surprise” that could swing the election in his favor. Investigations by the U.S. House and Senate concluded that there was no credible evidence of any such plot. In March 2023, while Mr. Carter was in hospice care, the New York Times reported allegations made by Ben Barnes, a longtime politician and operative from Texas, that supported those suspicions. Barnes said that he had accompanied his mentor, former Texas governor and former U.S. treasury secretary John B. Connally Jr., to several Middle East countries in the summer of 1980 and that Connally urged leaders there to pass a message to Iranian officials that they should wait until Reagan was president to release the hostages. Connally and most other key players had died, and Barnes’s allegations could not be independently confirmed. But the Times story felt like a vindication to Mr. Carter’s allies. Gerald Rafshoon, Mr. Carter’s White House communications director, told the Times that the allegations were “pretty damn outrageous.” After the Times story was published, grandson Jason Carter told The Post that he believed that Mr. Carter remained alert enough to know about the article and that the family was gratified by what it added to the historical record, but “my grandfather had moved on.” Jason Carter said he never once - despite all that had been written about dirty politics played at the expense of the hostages and Mr. Carter - heard his grandfather talk about it. “I think that tells you a lot,” Jason Carter said. “He believed there were other things more important than politics.” In his first act as a former president, performed at the request of the new president, Mr. Carter flew to a U.S. air base in Germany to greet the American hostages who were returning from Iran. He was 56 and could not know how much time he had left or how he would use it. But in a farewell address a week earlier, Mr. Carter suggested that although he had lost an election, he was not finished with what he saw as his life’s work. “In a few days,” he said, “I will lay down my official responsibilities in this office to take up once more the only title in our democracy superior to that of president, the title of ‘citizen.’” Mary Jordan contributed to this report. Edward Walsh, who died in 2014, served as The Washington Post’s White House correspondent during the Carter administration.WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden kicked off his final holiday season at the White House on Monday by issuing the traditional reprieve to two turkeys who will bypass the Thanksgiving table to live out their days in southern Minnesota. Biden welcomed 2,500 guests to the South Lawn under sunny skies as he cracked jokes about the fates of “Peach” and “Blossom” and sounded wistful tones about the last weeks of his presidency after a half-century in Washington power circles. “It’s been the honor of my life. I’m forever grateful,” Biden said, taking note of his impending departure on Jan. 20, 2025. That's when power will transfer to Republican President-elect Donald Trump, the man Biden defeated four years ago and was battling again until he was pressured to bow out of the race amid concerns about his age and viability. Biden is 82. Until Inauguration Day, the president and first lady Jill Biden will continue a busy run of festivities that will double as their long goodbye. The White House schedule in December is replete with holiday parties for various constituencies, from West Wing staff to members of Congress and the White House press corps. Biden relished the brief ceremony with the pardoned turkeys, named for the official flower of the president's home state of Delaware. “The peach pie in my state is one of my favorites,” he said during remarks that were occasionally interrupted by Peach gobbling atop the table to Biden's right. “Peach is making a last-minute plea,” Biden said at one point, drawing laughter from an overflow crowd that included Cabinet members, White House staff and their families, and students from 4H programs and Future Farmers of America chapters. Biden introduced Peach as a bird who “lives by the motto, ‘Keep calm and gobble on.’” Blossom, the president said, has a different motto: “No fowl play. Just Minnesota nice.” Peach and Blossom came from the farm of John Zimmerman, near the southern Minnesota city of Northfield. Zimmerman, who has raised about 4 million turkeys, is president of the National Turkey Federation, the group that has gifted U.S. presidents Thanksgiving turkeys since the Truman administration after World War II. President Harry Truman, however, preferred to eat the birds. Official pardon ceremonies did not become an annual White House tradition until the administration of President George H.W. Bush in 1989. With their presidential reprieve, Peach and Blossom will live out their days at Farmamerica, an agriculture interpretative center near Waseca in southern Minnesota. The center's aim is to promote agriculture and educate future farmers and others about agriculture in America. Separately Monday, first lady Jill Biden received the official White House Christmas tree that will be decorated and put on display in the Blue Room. The 18.5 foot (5.64 meters) Fraser fir came from a farm in an area of western North Carolina that recently was devastated by Hurricane Helene . Cartner’s Christmas Tree Farm lost thousands of trees in the storm “but this one remained standing and they named it ‘Tremendous’ for the extraordinary hope that it represents,” Jill Biden said at the event. The Bidens also traveled to New York City on Monday for an evening “Friendsgiving” event at a Coast Guard station on Staten Island. Biden began his valedictory calendar Friday night with a gala for hundreds of his friends, supporters and staff members who gathered in a pavilion erected on the South Lawn, with a view out to the Lincoln Memorial. Cabinet secretaries, Democratic donors and his longest-serving staff members came together to hear from the president and pay tribute, with no evidence that Biden was effectively forced from the Democratic ticket this summer and watched Vice President Kamala Harris suffer defeat on Nov. 5. “I’m so proud that we’ve done all of this with a deep belief in the core values of America,” said Biden, sporting a tuxedo for the black-tie event. Setting aside his criticisms of Trump as a fundamental threat to democracy, Biden added his characteristic national cheerleading: “I fully believe that America is better positioned to lead the world today than at any point in my 50 years of public service.” The first lady toasted her husband with a nod to his 2020 campaign promise to “restore the soul of the nation,” in Trump’s aftermath. With the results on Election Day, however, Biden’s four years now become sandwiched in the middle of an era dominated by Trump's presence on the national stage and in the White House. Even as the first couple avoided the context surrounding the president's coming exit, those political realities were nonetheless apparent, as younger Democrats like Maryland Gov. Wes Moore , Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Biden's Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg not only raised their glasses to the president but held forth with many attendees who could remain in the party's power circles in the 2028 election cycle and beyond. ___ Associated Press writer Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis contributed to this report.
Google Pixel 9 Plummets to $299 for Black Friday: An Unbelievable Deal You Can’t Afford to MissCentre must issue a statement on Adani scam in Parliament, demands CPI(M)
If you know someone who lives and breathes travel, there are so many chic and functional gift options to choose from. Whether they're always headed out on a weekend trip or are no stranger to an international excursion , you can't go wrong with gifting them something that'll make jet-setting off to a new destination easier or more enjoyable. Ahead, we curated a list of gifts for travel lovers, ranging from tried-and-true staples like packing cubes and document organizers to luxe items like a carry-on suitcase to a trendy tumbler that they might not have been willing to splurge on for themselves (but will love as a gift). Keep reading to check them all out, but be warned: you might fall in love with one or two for your own future travels. — Additional reporting by Kelsey Garcia I've Taken 30 Flights This Year — These Are the Black Friday Luggage Deals I'm Shopping Best Suitcase Gift For Travelers Monos Carry-On ($301, originally $320) For the traveler in your life who always insists on taking a carry-on no matter what, might we suggest this option? Monos suitcases glide effortlessly and look great while on the go. We especially like this banana yellow shade, which is unexpected and will certainly help prevent any incidents of mistaken luggage. Best Tech Gift For Travelers Twelve South AirFly SE Bluetooth Wireless Audio Transmitter Receiver ($35) You've likely already seen it on TikTok, and if the traveler in your life doesn't already have it, chances are they want it. This nifty doohickey makes it so that flyers with AirPods or wireless headphones can still connect to in-flight entertainment systems. What will they think of next? Best Gift For Preventing Lost Baggage Apple AirTag 4-Pack ($73, originally $99) This is a smart investment for the frequent traveler, especially those who've dealt with lost luggage in the past. They'll be able to track their bags throughout their travels using the Find My app on their iPhone to make sure their checked luggage is safe and sound. For more details, read our Apple AirTag review . Editor Quote: "When we landed, I was able to see one of the Apple Airtags immediately at our airport, which gave me peace of mind knowing the others would follow shortly, which they did. They're affordable and easy to use; I'll be taking them with me on every trip." — India Yaffe, former associate editor, Shopping Best Packing Cubes Gift Away The Insider Packing Cubes ($33, originally $45) Packing cubes are a must for seasoned travelers. This packing cube set from Away helps keep clothes tidy, compact, and easier to find once you arrive at your destination (especially if you sort packing cubes by clothing item, which we recommend doing). Plus, there are over ten colors to choose from! Best Weekender Gift Paravel Weekender ($228, originally $325) This durable weekender bag is equal parts stylish and functional. It's spacious, meant to fit a few days worth of clothing, as well as a toiletry bag and laptop. One PS editor described it as her travel staple . Editor Quote: "Even though the bag itself appears compact, it actually has a ton of space inside. I can fit electronics, multiple cosmetic bags, and any other extras I want readily available with plenty of space to spare." — Macy Cate Williams, former content director, Shopping Best Travel Pillow Gift Ostrichpillow Go Neck Pillow ($69) Ensure the frequent traveler in your life is comfortable on their flight with this neck pillow, which received a rave review from one PS editor. For further convincing, check out our complete review of the Ostrichpillow Go Neck Pillow . Editor Quote: "What if I told you that I discovered the ultimate traveling must have that will upgrade your flight experience without having to spend hundreds of dollars? Leave the days of stiff necks behind you." — Indira Diaz, former social strategy coordinator Best Gift For Organized Travelers Cadence Travel Containers ($134) These magnetic, leak-proof, and TSA-approved containers were born to simplify the process of transporting beauty products, pills, and other everyday staples when you're traveling. Still not convinced? Read our review of the Cadence travel case system . Editor Quote: "While using them for my traditional liquids was helpful, it went beyond just that. I started using the capsules for vitamins, jewelry, and even hand lotion. This meant my bag was suddenly filled with far fewer little bottles and baggies and just a handful of these tiny pods." — Krista Jones, former editor, Shopping 9 Products on a Pro Makeup Artist's Holiday Shopping List Best Body Care Travel Gift Nécessaire The Body Essentials Trial + Travel Set ($35) The body care brand Nécessaire has developed quite a cult following in recent years. And while any of their products make for a great gift this holiday season, this trial set is perfect for travelers who prefer to forgo the hotel bar soap and bring their own products with them. And since flying can be so dehydrating, the lotion and serum will be especially appreciated. Best Gift For Travelers With Pets Maxbone Global Citizen Pet Carrier Bag ($325) If they're a new dog parent, they'll be delighted to receive this chic carrier that's spacious yet compact enough for easy traveling. Read our complete review of the Maxbone Global Citizen Pet Carrier Bag . Editor Quote: "Its airline-approved size fits under the plane seats (and the top edges can smoosh down as needed), and my 13-pound dog was able to turn around with no problems with space to spare for a toy and a bone, too." — Morgan Ashley Parker, former contributing editor, Shopping Best Gift For the Business Tripper Mark & Graham Essential Tech Folio ($139-$159) This sleek folio keeps electronic devices and chargers neat and tidy. You can even add a monogram to the front for an extra-special touch. Plus, there are plenty of aesthetic options between various color combinations and monogram style. Best Hydration Gift For Travelers Stanley The Quencher H2.0 Flowstate Tumbler ($45) If they don't already own the ultra-trendy (and TikTok-famous) tumbler , it might just become one of their favorite gifts of the season. It comes in four colors, is dishwasher safe, and boasts an ergonomic, comfortable handle. Best Passport Cover Gift Leatherology Deluxe Passport Cover ($70) There's something so special about a personalized gift, which is why this passport cover earns a spot on our list. It comes in over ten different leather colors and can be monogrammed with their initials in your text style of choice. Best Toiletry Bag Gift For Travelers Calpak Large Clear Cosmetics Case ($76, originally $96) This clear cosmetic case features two spacious zippered compartments that'll store even the most extensive beauty regimens. It comes in this fun papaya color as well as over 15 other colors, so there's something for everyone. Kelsey Garcia (she/her) is the associate content director of PS Balance, where she oversees lifestyle coverage, from relationships to parenting to financial wellness. Kelsey is passionate about travel, dating trends, and changes in the workplace. Before joining the PS team as an editorial assistant in 2015, she interned at Elle and Harper's Bazaar, among other publications. Marisa Petrarca (she/her) is a contributing editor for PS Shopping and has over seven years of experience writing and editing beauty, fashion, and lifestyle content. She was previously the senior beauty editor at Grazia USA and the style and beauty editor at Us Weekly. Now freelancing, her work has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Allure, Marie Claire, and more.NEW YORK — Top-ranked chess player Magnus Carlsen is headed back to the World Blitz Championship on Monday after its governing body agreed to loosen a dress code that got him fined and denied a late-round game in another tournament for refusing to change out of jeans. Lamenting the contretemps, International Chess Federation President Arkady Dvorkovich said in a statement Sunday that he'd let World Blitz Championship tournament officials consider allowing “appropriate jeans” with a jacket, and other “elegant minor deviations” from the dress code. He said Carlsen's stand — which culminated in his quitting the tournament Friday — highlighted a need for more discussion “to ensure that our rules and their application reflect the evolving nature of chess as a global and accessible sport.” Carlsen, meanwhile, said in a video posted Sunday on social media that he would play — and wear jeans — in the World Blitz Championship when it begins Monday. “I think the situation was badly mishandled on their side,” the 34-year-old Norwegian grandmaster said. But he added that he loves playing blitz — a fast-paced form of chess — and wanted fans to be able to watch, and that he was encouraged by his discussions with the federation after Friday's showdown. “I think we sort of all want the same thing,” he suggested in the video on his Take Take Take chess app’s YouTube channel. “We want the players to be comfortable, sure, but also relatively presentable.” The events began when Carlsen wore jeans and a sportcoat Friday to the Rapid World Championship, which is separate from but held in conjunction with the blitz event. The chess federation said Friday that longstanding rules prohibit jeans at those tournaments, and players are lodged nearby to make sartorial switch-ups easy if needed. An official fined Carlsen $200 and asked him to change pants, but he refused and wasn't paired for a ninth-round game, the federation said at the time. The organization noted that another grandmaster, Ian Nepomniachtchi, was fined earlier in the day for wearing sports shoes, changed and continued to play. Carlsen has said that he offered to wear something else the next day, but officials were unyielding. He said “it became a bit of a matter of principle,” so he quit the rapid and blitz championships. In the video posted Sunday, he questioned whether he had indeed broken a rule and said changing clothes would have needlessly interrupted his concentration between games. He called the punishment “unbelievably harsh.” “Of course, I could have changed. Obviously, I didn’t want to,” he said, and “I stand by that.” This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.Police say FBI agent sexually assaulted 2 women after promise of free tattoos, modeling
‘Intrusive and presumptuous’: Fury in Germany after Musk backs far-right party ahead of electionsThe move could usher in an end to a protracted political crisis in the European Union country following the annulment of a presidential election by a top court. Parliament approved the new administration in a 240-143 vote in Romania’s 466-seat legislature. The new coalition is made up of the leftist Social Democratic Party (PSD) the centre-right National Liberal Party (PNL), the small ethnic Hungarian UDMR party and national minorities. It caps a month-long period of turmoil in which far-right nationalists made significant gains in a parliamentary election on December 1 a week after a first-round presidential race saw the far-right outsider Calin Georgescu emerge as the front-runner. “It will not be an easy mandate for the future government,” Mr Ciolacu, whose PSD party topped the polls in the parliamentary election, said in a statement. “We are aware that we are in the midst of a deep political crisis,” he said. “It is also a crisis of trust, and this coalition aims to regain the trust of citizens, the trust of the people.” Romania’s 16 ministerial positions will be shared among the parties, which will hold a slim majority in the legislature. It is widely seen as a tactical partnership to shut out far-right nationalists whose voices found fertile ground amid high living costs and a sluggish economy. Mr Ciolacu, who came third in the first-round presidential ballot despite polls indicating he would win the most votes, has served as prime minister since June 2023. After parliament’s approval, President Klaus Iohannis swore in the new government and warned the new Cabinet that it is entering a “difficult new period” in which “for many Romanians, there are major concerns”. Romania was plunged into turmoil after Mr Georgescu’s surprise success in the presidential race, after allegations of electoral violations and Russian interference emerged. Days before the December 8 run-off, the Constitutional Court made the unprecedented move to annul the presidential race. “We go through complicated times, but I think we all learned from mistakes of the past,” Mr Ciolacu said. “I hope that together with my colleagues in the coalition, we’ll find the best solutions to get past the challenges we have in front of us.” Mr Ciolacu said that the new government would aim to quickly organise the rerun of the presidential election in which the new coalition has agreed to put forward an agreed common pro-European candidate. Cristian Andrei, a political consultant based in Bucharest, said that the new government made up of the same political parties will likely embrace “soft populist” rhetoric such as economic patriotism, anti-austerity, and a peace solution in neighbouring Ukraine to counter the rise of far-right populism. “This will be a way to answer the concerns of many Romanians who voted for populists... but will not solve the fundamental problem of trust,” he said. “The only decisive factor now will be who and how convincing the pro-European candidates will be against this popular revolt.” George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, which came second in the parliamentary election, said that all politicians from his party on Monday would vote against the Ciolacu government. In 2021, the PSD and the PNL also formed an unlikely but increasingly strained coalition together with UDMR, which exited the Cabinet last year after a power-sharing dispute.
Trump team signs agreement to allow Justice to conduct background checks on nominees, staff
New pro-European coalition approved in Romania amid period of political turmoilWASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump's transition team on Tuesday signed an agreement to allow the Justice Department to conduct background checks on his nominees and appointees after a weekslong delay. The step lets Trump transition aides and future administration staffers obtain security clearances before Inauguration Day to access classified information about ongoing government programs, an essential step for a smooth transition of power. It also allows those nominees who are up for Senate confirmation to face the background checks lawmakers want before voting on them. Teams of investigators have been standing by to process clearances for Trump aides and advisers. FILE - Susie Wiles watches as Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a caucus night party in Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File) "This agreement with the Department of Justice will ensure President Trump and his team are ready on Day 1 to begin enacting the America First Agenda that an overwhelming majority of our nation supported on Election Day," said Susie Wiles, Trump's designate to be White House chief of staff. The announcement came a week after the Trump transition team signed an agreement with the Biden White House to allow transition staff to coordinate with the existing federal workforce before taking office Jan. 20. The White House agreement was supposed to have been signed by Oct. 1, according to the Presidential Transition Act, and the Biden White House issued both public and private appeals for Trump's team to sign on. Security clearances are required to access classified information, including on ongoing operations and threats to the nation, and the Biden White House and outside experts emphasized to Trump's team the importance of having cleared personnel before Inauguration Day so they could be fully briefed and ready to run the government. President-elect Donald Trump arrives before the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024 in Boca Chica, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Pool via AP) Republican Senators also insisted on FBI background checks for Trump's nominees before they face confirmation votes, as has been standard practice for decades. Lawmakers were particularly interested in seeing the findings of reviews into Trump's designated nominee for defense secretary, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, and for Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence. "That's why it's so important that we have an FBI background check, a committee review of extensive questions and questionnaires, and a public hearing," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Monday. John Thune, incoming Senate Republican leader, said the Trump team "understands there's going to have to be a thorough vetting of all these nominees." Among President-elect Donald Trump's picks are Susie Wiles for chief of staff, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of state, former Democratic House member Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general. Susie Wiles, 67, was a senior adviser to Trump's 2024 presidential campaign and its de facto manager. Trump named Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to be secretary of state, making a former sharp critic his choice to be the new administration's top diplomat. Rubio, 53, is a noted hawk on China, Cuba and Iran, and was a finalist to be Trump's running mate on the Republican ticket last summer. Rubio is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “He will be a strong Advocate for our Nation, a true friend to our Allies, and a fearless Warrior who will never back down to our adversaries,” Trump said of Rubio in a statement. The announcement punctuates the hard pivot Rubio has made with Trump, whom the senator called a “con man" during his unsuccessful campaign for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. Their relationship improved dramatically while Trump was in the White House. And as Trump campaigned for the presidency a third time, Rubio cheered his proposals. For instance, Rubio, who more than a decade ago helped craft immigration legislation that included a path to citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally, now supports Trump's plan to use the U.S. military for mass deportations. Pete Hegseth, 44, is a co-host of Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends Weekend” and has been a contributor with the network since 2014, where he developed a friendship with Trump, who made regular appearances on the show. Hegseth lacks senior military or national security experience. If confirmed by the Senate, he would inherit the top job during a series of global crises — ranging from Russia’s war in Ukraine and the ongoing attacks in the Middle East by Iranian proxies to the push for a cease-fire between Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah and escalating worries about the growing alliance between Russia and North Korea. Hegseth is also the author of “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,” published earlier this year. Trump tapped Pam Bondi, 59, to be attorney general after U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration. She was Florida's first female attorney general, serving between 2011 and 2019. She also was on Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment trial in 2020. Considered a loyalist, she served as part of a Trump-allied outside group that helped lay the groundwork for his future administration called the America First Policy Institute. Bondi was among a group of Republicans who showed up to support Trump at his hush money criminal trial in New York that ended in May with a conviction on 34 felony counts. A fierce defender of Trump, she also frequently appears on Fox News and has been a critic of the criminal cases against him. Trump picked South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a well-known conservative who faced sharp criticism for telling a story in her memoir about shooting a rambunctious dog, to lead an agency crucial to the president-elect’s hardline immigration agenda. Noem used her two terms leading a tiny state to vault to a prominent position in Republican politics. South Dakota is usually a political afterthought. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, Noem did not order restrictions that other states had issued and instead declared her state “open for business.” Trump held a fireworks rally at Mount Rushmore in July 2020 in one of the first large gatherings of the pandemic. She takes over a department with a sprawling mission. In addition to key immigration agencies, the Department of Homeland Security oversees natural disaster response, the U.S. Secret Service, and Transportation Security Administration agents who work at airports. The governor of North Dakota, who was once little-known outside his state, Burgum is a former Republican presidential primary contender who endorsed Trump, and spent months traveling to drum up support for him, after dropping out of the race. Burgum was a serious contender to be Trump’s vice presidential choice this summer. The two-term governor was seen as a possible pick because of his executive experience and business savvy. Burgum also has close ties to deep-pocketed energy industry CEOs. Trump made the announcement about Burgum joining his incoming administration while addressing a gala at his Mar-a-Lago club, and said a formal statement would be coming the following day. In comments to reporters before Trump took the stage, Burgum said that, in recent years, the power grid is deteriorating in many parts of the country, which he said could raise national security concerns but also drive up prices enough to increase inflation. “There's just a sense of urgency, and a sense of understanding in the Trump administration,” Burgum said. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ran for president as a Democrat, than as an independent, and then endorsed Trump . He's the son of Democratic icon Robert Kennedy, who was assassinated during his own presidential campaign. The nomination of Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services alarmed people who are concerned about his record of spreading unfounded fears about vaccines . For example, he has long advanced the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism. Scott Bessent, 62, is a former George Soros money manager and an advocate for deficit reduction. He's the founder of hedge fund Key Square Capital Management, after having worked on-and-off for Soros Fund Management since 1991. If confirmed by the Senate, he would be the nation’s first openly gay treasury secretary. He told Bloomberg in August that he decided to join Trump’s campaign in part to attack the mounting U.S. national debt. That would include slashing government programs and other spending. “This election cycle is the last chance for the U.S. to grow our way out of this mountain of debt without becoming a sort of European-style socialist democracy,” he said then. Oregon Republican U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer narrowly lost her reelection bid this month, but received strong backing from union members in her district. As a potential labor secretary, she would oversee the Labor Department’s workforce, its budget and put forth priorities that impact workers’ wages, health and safety, ability to unionize, and employer’s rights to fire employers, among other responsibilities. Chavez-DeRemer is one of few House Republicans to endorse the “Protecting the Right to Organize” or PRO Act would allow more workers to conduct organizing campaigns and would add penalties for companies that violate workers’ rights. The act would also weaken “right-to-work” laws that allow employees in more than half the states to avoid participating in or paying dues to unions that represent workers at their places of employment. Scott Turner is a former NFL player and White House aide. He ran the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council during Trump’s first term in office. Trump, in a statement, credited Turner, the highest-ranking Black person he’s yet selected for his administration, with “helping to lead an Unprecedented Effort that Transformed our Country’s most distressed communities.” Sean Duffy is a former House member from Wisconsin who was one of Trump's most visible defenders on cable news. Duffy served in the House for nearly nine years, sitting on the Financial Services Committee and chairing the subcommittee on insurance and housing. He left Congress in 2019 for a TV career and has been the host of “The Bottom Line” on Fox Business. Before entering politics, Duffy was a reality TV star on MTV, where he met his wife, “Fox and Friends Weekend” co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy. They have nine children. A campaign donor and CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy, Write is a vocal advocate of oil and gas development, including fracking — a key pillar of Trump’s quest to achieve U.S. “energy dominance” in the global market. Wright also has been one of the industry’s loudest voices against efforts to fight climate change. He said the climate movement around the world is “collapsing under its own weight.” The Energy Department is responsible for advancing energy, environmental and nuclear security of the United States. Wright also won support from influential conservatives, including oil and gas tycoon Harold Hamm. Hamm, executive chairman of Oklahoma-based Continental Resources, a major shale oil company, is a longtime Trump supporter and adviser who played a key role on energy issues in Trump’s first term. President-elect Donald Trump tapped billionaire professional wrestling mogul Linda McMahon to be secretary of the Education Department, tasked with overseeing an agency Trump promised to dismantle. McMahon led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s initial term from 2017 to 2019 and twice ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut. She’s seen as a relative unknown in education circles, though she expressed support for charter schools and school choice. She served on the Connecticut Board of Education for a year starting in 2009 and has spent years on the board of trustees for Sacred Heart University in Connecticut. Brooke Rollins, who graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in agricultural development, is a longtime Trump associate who served as White House domestic policy chief during his first presidency. The 52-year-old is president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute, a group helping to lay the groundwork for a second Trump administration. She previously served as an aide to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and ran a think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Trump chose Howard Lutnick, head of brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald and a cryptocurrency enthusiast, as his nominee for commerce secretary, a position in which he'd have a key role in carrying out Trump's plans to raise and enforce tariffs. Trump made the announcement Tuesday on his social media platform, Truth Social. Lutnick is a co-chair of Trump’s transition team, along with Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive who previously led Trump’s Small Business Administration. Both are tasked with putting forward candidates for key roles in the next administration. The nomination would put Lutnick in charge of a sprawling Cabinet agency that is involved in funding new computer chip factories, imposing trade restrictions, releasing economic data and monitoring the weather. It is also a position in which connections to CEOs and the wider business community are crucial. Doug Collins is a former Republican congressman from Georgia who gained recognition for defending Trump during his first impeachment trial, which centered on U.S. assistance for Ukraine. Trump was impeached for urging Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden in 2019 during the Democratic presidential nomination, but he was acquitted by the Senate. Collins has also served in the armed forces himself and is currently a chaplain in the United States Air Force Reserve Command. "We must take care of our brave men and women in uniform, and Doug will be a great advocate for our Active Duty Servicemembers, Veterans, and Military Families to ensure they have the support they need," Trump said in a statement about nominating Collins to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs. Karoline Leavitt, 27, was Trump's campaign press secretary and currently a spokesperson for his transition. She would be the youngest White House press secretary in history. The White House press secretary typically serves as the public face of the administration and historically has held daily briefings for the press corps. Leavitt, a New Hampshire native, was a spokesperson for MAGA Inc., a super PAC supporting Trump, before joining his 2024 campaign. In 2022, she ran for Congress in New Hampshire, winning a 10-way Republican primary before losing to Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas. Leavitt worked in the White House press office during Trump's first term before she became communications director for New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, Trump's choice for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has been tapped by Trump to be director of national intelligence, keeping with the trend to stock his Cabinet with loyal personalities rather than veteran professionals in their requisite fields. Gabbard, 43, was a Democratic House member who unsuccessfully sought the party's 2020 presidential nomination before leaving the party in 2022. She endorsed Trump in August and campaigned often with him this fall. “I know Tulsi will bring the fearless spirit that has defined her illustrious career to our Intelligence Community,” Trump said in a statement. Gabbard, who has served in the Army National Guard for more than two decades, deploying to Iraq and Kuwait, would come to the role as somewhat of an outsider compared to her predecessor. The current director, Avril Haines, was confirmed by the Senate in 2021 following several years in a number of top national security and intelligence positions. Trump has picked John Ratcliffe, a former Texas congressman who served as director of national intelligence during his first administration, to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency in his next. Ratcliffe was director of national intelligence during the final year and a half of Trump's first term, leading the U.S. government's spy agencies during the coronavirus pandemic. “I look forward to John being the first person ever to serve in both of our Nation's highest Intelligence positions,” Trump said in a statement, calling him a “fearless fighter for the Constitutional Rights of all Americans” who would ensure “the Highest Levels of National Security, and PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH.” Trump has chosen former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin to serve as his pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency . Zeldin does not appear to have any experience in environmental issues, but is a longtime supporter of the former president. The 44-year-old former U.S. House member from New York wrote on X , “We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI.” “We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water,” he added. During his campaign, Trump often attacked the Biden administration's promotion of electric vehicles, and incorrectly referring to a tax credit for EV purchases as a government mandate. Trump also often told his audiences during the campaign his administration would “Drill, baby, drill,” referring to his support for expanded petroleum exploration. In a statement, Trump said Zeldin “will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet.” Trump has named Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, as the new chairman of the agency tasked with regulating broadcasting, telecommunications and broadband. Carr is a longtime member of the commission and served previously as the FCC’s general counsel. He has been unanimously confirmed by the Senate three times and was nominated by both Trump and President Joe Biden to the commission. Carr made past appearances on “Fox News Channel," including when he decried Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris' pre-Election Day appearance on “Saturday Night Live.” He wrote an op-ed last month defending a satellite company owned by Trump supporter Elon Musk. Rep. Elise Stefanik is a representative from New York and one of Trump's staunchest defenders going back to his first impeachment. Elected to the House in 2014, Stefanik was selected by her GOP House colleagues as House Republican Conference chair in 2021, when former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney was removed from the post after publicly criticizing Trump for falsely claiming he won the 2020 election. Stefanik, 40, has served in that role ever since as the third-ranking member of House leadership. Stefanik’s questioning of university presidents over antisemitism on their campuses helped lead to two of those presidents resigning, further raising her national profile. If confirmed, she would represent American interests at the U.N. as Trump vows to end the war waged by Russia against Ukraine begun in 2022. He has also called for peace as Israel continues its offensive against Hamas in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon to target Hezbollah. President-elect Donald Trump says he's chosen former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker to serve as U.S. ambassador to NATO. Trump has expressed skepticism about the Western military alliance for years. Trump said in a statement Wednesday that Whitaker is “a strong warrior and loyal Patriot” who “will ensure the United States’ interests are advanced and defended” and “strengthen relationships with our NATO Allies, and stand firm in the face of threats to Peace and Stability.” The choice of Whitaker as the nation’s representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an unusual one, given his background is as a lawyer and not in foreign policy. A Republican congressman from Michigan who served from 1993 to 2011, Hoekstra was ambassador to the Netherlands during Trump's first term. “In my Second Term, Pete will help me once again put AMERICA FIRST,” Trump said in a statement announcing his choice. “He did an outstanding job as United States Ambassador to the Netherlands during our first four years, and I am confident that he will continue to represent our Country well in this new role.” Trump will nominate former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to be ambassador to Israel. Huckabee is a staunch defender of Israel and his intended nomination comes as Trump has promised to align U.S. foreign policy more closely with Israel's interests as it wages wars against the Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah. “He loves Israel, and likewise the people of Israel love him,” Trump said in a statement. “Mike will work tirelessly to bring about peace in the Middle East.” Huckabee, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and 2016, has been a popular figure among evangelical Christian conservatives, many of whom support Israel due to Old Testament writings that Jews are God’s chosen people and that Israel is their rightful homeland. Trump has been praised by some in this important Republican voting bloc for moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Trump on Tuesday named real estate investor Steven Witkoff to be special envoy to the Middle East. The 67-year-old Witkoff is the president-elect's golf partner and was golfing with him at Trump's club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sept. 15, when the former president was the target of a second attempted assassination. Witkoff “is a Highly Respected Leader in Business and Philanthropy,” Trump said of Witkoff in a statement. “Steve will be an unrelenting Voice for PEACE, and make us all proud." Trump also named Witkoff co-chair, with former Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler, of his inaugural committee. Trump asked Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., a retired Army National Guard officer and war veteran, to be his national security adviser, Trump announced in a statement Tuesday. The move puts Waltz in the middle of national security crises, ranging from efforts to provide weapons to Ukraine and worries about the growing alliance between Russia and North Korea to the persistent attacks in the Middle East by Iran proxies and the push for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah. “Mike has been a strong champion of my America First Foreign Policy agenda,” Trump's statement said, "and will be a tremendous champion of our pursuit of Peace through Strength!” Waltz is a three-term GOP congressman from east-central Florida. He served multiple tours in Afghanistan and also worked in the Pentagon as a policy adviser when Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates were defense chiefs. He is considered hawkish on China, and called for a U.S. boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing due to its involvement in the origin of COVID-19 and its mistreatment of the minority Muslim Uighur population. Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner , was a vocal spokesperson during the presidential campaign for Trump's priority of mass deportations. The 39-year-old was a senior adviser during Trump's first administration. Miller has been a central figure in some of Trump's policy decisions, notably his move to separate thousands of immigrant families. Trump argued throughout the campaign that the nation's economic, national security and social priorities could be met by deporting people who are in the United States illegally. Since Trump left office in 2021, Miller has served as the president of America First Legal, an organization made up of former Trump advisers aimed at challenging the Biden administration, media companies, universities and others over issues such as free speech and national security. Thomas Homan, 62, has been tasked with Trump’s top priority of carrying out the largest deportation operation in the nation’s history. Homan, who served under Trump in his first administration leading U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was widely expected to be offered a position related to the border, an issue Trump made central to his campaign. Though Homan has insisted such a massive undertaking would be humane, he has long been a loyal supporter of Trump's policy proposals, suggesting at a July conference in Washington that he would be willing to "run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.” Democrats have criticized Homan for his defending Trump's “zero tolerance” policy on border crossings during his first administration, which led to the separation of thousands of parents and children seeking asylum at the border. Dr. Mehmet Oz, 64, is a former heart surgeon who hosted “The Dr. Oz Show,” a long-running daytime television talk show. He ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate as the Republican nominee in 2022 and is an outspoken supporter of Trump, who endorsed Oz's bid for elected office. Elon Musk, left, and Vivek Ramaswamy speak before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at an Oct. 27 campaign rally at Madison Square Garden in New York. Trump on Tuesday said Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Ramaswamy will lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency" — which is not, despite the name, a government agency. The acronym “DOGE” is a nod to Musk's favorite cryptocurrency, dogecoin. Trump said Musk and Ramaswamy will work from outside the government to offer the White House “advice and guidance” and will partner with the Office of Management and Budget to “drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.” He added the move would shock government systems. It's not clear how the organization will operate. Musk, owner of X and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has been a constant presence at Mar-a-Lago since Trump won the presidential election. Ramaswamy suspended his campaign in January and threw his support behind Trump. Trump said the two will “pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” Russell Vought held the position during Trump’s first presidency. After Trump’s initial term ended, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, a think tank that describes its mission as “renew a consensus of America as a nation under God.” Vought was closely involved with Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump’s second term that he tried to distance himself from during the campaign. Vought has also previously worked as the executive and budget director for the Republican Study Committee, a caucus for conservative House Republicans. He also worked at Heritage Action, the political group tied to The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Dan Scavino, deputy chief of staff Scavino, whom Trump's transition referred to in a statement as one of “Trump's longest serving and most trusted aides,” was a senior adviser to Trump's 2024 campaign, as well as his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. He will be deputy chief of staff and assistant to the president. Scavino had run Trump's social media profile in the White House during his first administration. He was also held in contempt of Congress in 2022 after a month-long refusal to comply with a subpoena from the House committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. James Blair, deputy chief of staff Blair was political director for Trump's 2024 campaign and for the Republican National Committee. He will be deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs and assistant to the president. Blair was key to Trump's economic messaging during his winning White House comeback campaign this year, a driving force behind the candidate's “Trump can fix it” slogan and his query to audiences this fall if they were better off than four years ago. Taylor Budowich, deputy chief of staff Budowich is a veteran Trump campaign aide who launched and directed Make America Great Again, Inc., a super PAC that supported Trump's 2024 campaign. He will be deputy chief of staff for communications and personnel and assistant to the president. Budowich also had served as a spokesman for Trump after his presidency. William McGinley, White House counsel McGinley was White House Cabinet secretary during Trump's first administration, and was outside legal counsel for the Republican National Committee's election integrity effort during the 2024 campaign. In a statement, Trump called McGinley “a smart and tenacious lawyer who will help me advance our America First agenda, while fighting for election integrity and against the weaponization of law enforcement.” Jay Bhattacharya, National Institutes of Health Trump has chosen Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health. Bhattacharya is a physician and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, and is a critic of pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates. He promoted the idea of herd immunity during the pandemic, arguing that people at low risk should live normally while building up immunity to COVID-19 through infection. The National Institutes of Health funds medical research through competitive grants to researchers at institutions throughout the nation. NIH also conducts its own research with thousands of scientists working at its labs in Bethesda, Maryland. Jamieson Greer, U.S. trade representative Kevin Hassett, Director of the White House National Economic Council Trump is turning to two officials with experience navigating not only Washington but the key issues of income taxes and tariffs as he fills out his economic team. He announced he has chosen international trade attorney Jamieson Greer to be his U.S. trade representative and Kevin Hassett as director of the White House National Economic Council. While Trump has in several cases nominated outsiders to key posts, these picks reflect a recognition that his reputation will likely hinge on restoring the public’s confidence in the economy. Trump said in a statement that Greer was instrumental in his first term in imposing tariffs on China and others and replacing the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, “therefore making it much better for American Workers.” Hassett, 62, served in the first Trump term as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. He has a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania and worked at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute before joining the Trump White House in 2017. Trump said Wednesday that he will nominate Gen. Keith Kellogg to serve as assistant to the president and special envoy for Ukraine and Russia. Kellogg, a retired Army lieutenant general who has long been Trump’s top adviser on defense issues, served as National Security Advisor to Trump's former Vice President Mike Pence. For the America First Policy Institute, one of several groups formed after Trump left office to help lay the groundwork for the next Republican administration, Kellogg in April wrote that “bringing the Russia-Ukraine war to a close will require strong, America First leadership to deliver a peace deal and immediately end the hostilities between the two warring parties.” (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib) Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter.
BEIRUT — Israel's military launched airstrikes across Lebanon on Monday, unleashing explosions throughout the country and killing at least 31 while Israeli leaders appeared to be closing in on a negotiated ceasefire with the Hezbollah militant group. Israeli strikes hit commercial and residential buildings in Beirut as well as in the port city of Tyre. Military officials claimed they targeted areas known as Hezbollah strongholds. They issued evacuation orders for Beirut's southern suburbs, and strikes landed across the city, including meters from a Lebanese police base and the city's largest public park. The barrage came as officials indicated they were nearing agreement on a ceasefire, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Security Cabinet prepared to discuss an offer on the table. Bulldozers remove the rubble of a destroyed building Monday that was hit in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon. Foreign ministers from the world’s leading industrialized nations also expressed cautious optimism Monday about possible progress on a ceasefire. “Knock on wood,” Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said as he opened the Group of Seven meeting outside Rome. “We are perhaps close to a ceasefire in Lebanon," he said. "Let's hope it's true and that there's no backing down at the last-minute.” A ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon was foremost on the agenda of the G7 meeting in Fiuggi, outside Rome, that gathered ministers from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, in the last G7 encounter of the Biden administration. For the first time, the G7 ministers were joined by their counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, as well as the Secretary General of the Arab League. Thick smoke, flames and debris erupt Monday from an Israeli airstrike that targeted a building in Tayouneh, Beirut, Lebanon. Meanwhile, massive explosions lit up Lebanon's skies with flashes of orange, sending towering plumes of smoke into the air as Israeli airstrikes pounded Beirut's southern suburbs Monday. The blasts damaged buildings and left shattered glass and debris scattered across nearby streets. Some of the strikes landed close to central Beirut and near Christian neighborhoods and other targets where Israel issued evacuation warnings, including in Tyre and Nabatiyeh province. Israeli airstrikes also hit the northeast Baalbek-Hermel region without warning. Lebanon's Health Ministry said Monday that 26 people were killed in southern Lebanon, four in the eastern Baalbek-Hermel province and one in Choueifat, a neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburbs that was not subjected to evacuation warnings on Monday. The deaths brought the total toll to 3,768 killed in Lebanon throughout 13 months of war between Israel and Hezbollah and nearly two months since Israel launched its ground invasion. Many of those killed since the start of the war between Israel and Hezbollah have been civilians, and health officials said some of the recovered bodies were so severely damaged that DNA testing would be required to confirm their identities. Israel claims to have killed more than 2,000 Hezbollah members. Lebanon's Health Ministry says the war has displaced 1.2 million people. Destroyed buildings stand Monday in the area of a village in southern Lebanon as seen from northern Israel. Israeli ground forces invaded southern Lebanon in early October, meeting heavy resistance in a narrow strip of land along the border. The military previously exchanged attacks across the border with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group that began firing rockets into Israel the day after the war in Gaza began last year. Lebanese politicians have decried the ongoing airstrikes and said they are impeding ceasefire negotiations. The country's deputy parliament speaker accused Israel of ramping up its bombardment to pressure Lebanon to make concessions in indirect ceasefire negotiations with Hezbollah. Elias Bousaab, an ally of the militant group, said Monday that the pressure has increased because "we are close to the hour that is decisive regarding reaching a ceasefire." Israeli officials voiced similar optimism Monday about prospects for a ceasefire. Mike Herzog, the country's ambassador to Washington, earlier in the day told Israeli Army Radio that several points had yet to be finalized. Though any deal would require agreement from the government, Herzog said Israel and Hezbollah were "close to a deal." "It can happen within days," he said. Israeli officials have said the sides are close to an agreement that would include withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and a pullback of Hezbollah fighters from the Israeli border. But several sticking points remain. A member of the Israeli security forces inspects an impact site Sunday after a rocket fired from Lebanon hit an area in Rinatya, outskirts of Tel Aviv, Israel. After previous hopes for a ceasefire were dashed, U.S. officials cautioned that negotiations were not yet complete and noted that there could be last-minute hitches that either delay or destroy an agreement. "Nothing is done until everything is done," White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Monday. The proposal under discussion to end the fighting calls for an initial two-month ceasefire during which Israeli forces would withdraw from Lebanon and Hezbollah would end its armed presence along the southern border south of the Litani River. The withdrawals would be accompanied by an influx of thousands more Lebanese army troops, who have been largely sidelined in the war, to patrol the border area along with an existing U.N. peacekeeping force. Western diplomats and Israeli officials said Israel demands the right to strike in Lebanon if it believes Hezbollah is violating the terms. The Lebanese government says such an arrangement would authorize violations of the country's sovereignty. On paper, being more sustainable and eco-friendly while shopping sounds great—so why don't more people do it? There is growing consumer consciousness about the environmental impact of where people choose to shop and the sustainability of the products they buy. According to McKinsey, over 60% of individuals surveyed in 2020 said they would be willing to pay more for a product that is packaged in an eco-friendly way. Since 2019, products marketed as being environmentally sustainable have seen a 28% growth in revenue compared to 20% for products with no such marketing, a 2023 McKinsey and NielsenIQ report found. Much of this is thanks to the preferences and attitudes of Gen Z, who, on average, care more than their older counterparts about being informed shoppers. The younger generation also has more social justice and environmental awareness altogether. Shoppers are willing to spend around 9.7% more on a product they know is sourced or manufactured sustainably, with 46% saying they would do so explicitly because they want to reduce their environmental footprint, according to a 2024 PwC report. Sustainable practices consumers look for from companies include production methods, packaging, and water conservation. But despite the growing consciousness around being more environmentally responsible, consumer actions don't always align with their values. In psychology, this is defined as the "say-do gap": the phenomenon wherein people openly express concern and intention around an issue, but fail to take tangible action to make a change. According to the Harvard Business Review in 2019, most consumers (65%) say they want to buy from brands that promote sustainability, but only 1 in 4 follow through. So why don't people actually shop sustainably, despite how much they express a preference for eco-friendly products—and how can we close the gap? The RealReal examined reports from the Harvard Business Review and other sources to explore why some shoppers want to buy sustainably but struggle to follow through. This lack of action isn't due to a lack of caring—in many cases, it's hard to know how to be a sustainable consumer and other factors are often outside of shoppers' control. But the more people shop sustainably, the easier and more accessible that market will be for everyone—making it much easier for folks to buy aligned with their values. There are many obstacles preventing shoppers from upholding eco-friendly habits as much as they may want to—but not all of these barriers are necessarily real, or accurately understood. Shopping sustainably simply isn't convenient or accessible for many. Those who live in apartment buildings are 50% less likely to recycle , according to Ipsos. Reasons for this can vary from lack of space to buildings being excluded altogether because of recycling contamination issues. Many believe that sustainable products are too expensive or of a lower quality. The former is often true, which does create a hurdle for many: The manufacturing processes and materials for sustainable products are pricey. For instance, organic cotton requires an intensive production process free of certain chemicals or pesticides; by definition, true eco-friendly products can't be mass-produced, further upping their price tag. Using recycled materials for packaging, or obtaining an eco certification, can also be expensive. However, although the narrative of eco-friendly products being more expensive is true, there is often more of an effort to use better quality materials that last longer than their noneco-friendly counterparts. This could end up saving consumers money in the long run: By paying more upfront, they can get more wear out of sustainable fashion, for instance. There is also undeniable political rhetoric surrounding eco-friendly products—however, despite many Conservative politicians decrying sustainable products, members of all generations are increasingly choosing to prioritize shopping sustainably regardless of their political affiliation, according to research from NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business . This finding shows a trend toward seeing sustainability as a nonpartisan subject everyone can benefit from, no matter where they lie on the political spectrum. Some might think eco-friendly clothing, in particular, is not fashion-forward; after all, many of the top clothing retailers in the world partake in fast fashion. However, brands are increasingly being recognized as 'cool' and 'trendy' for supporting environmentally ethical practices, particularly as younger generations prioritize sustainability, as noted before. Many increasingly popular online stores are taking advantage of this paradigm shift by offering secondhand shopping options that are not only fashionable, but also more affordable, like ThredUp or Poshmark. Additionally, many legacy large-name brands are hopping on the sustainability movement and are gaining appreciation from loyal customers. Amazon's Climate Pledge Friendly program partners with third-party certification bodies to make it easier for shoppers to identify eco-friendly products as they browse the website. H&M's newly launched H&M Rewear program debuts a resale platform that allows the resale of all clothing brands—not just their own. Similarly, Patagonia's Worn Wear program allows shoppers to trade in and buy used gear and clothing. The federal government is also working to close this gap. The Environmental Protection Agency's Safer Choice program is attempting to make sustainable shopping easier for consumers and companies alike. It includes a directory of certified products, a list of safer chemicals to look out for on labels, a "Safer Choice" label that products can earn to denote they are eco-friendly, and resources for manufacturers looking to adopt more sustainable practices. Most of all, though, the biggest way shoppers can shift toward sustainable shopping is through their behaviors and attitudes amongst their peers and communities. Studies show that humans largely care what others think of their actions; the more shoppers make environmentally conscious shopping the norm, the more others will follow suit. From an economic perspective, the more consumers shop eco-friendly, the more affordable and accessible these products will become, too: Sustainable products are currently more expensive because they are not in high demand. Once demand rises, production rates and prices can lower, making these products more accessible for all. Story editing by Carren Jao. Additional editing by Kelly Glass. Copy editing by Kristen Wegrzyn. This story originally appeared on The RealReal and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio. Get local news delivered to your inbox!
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla., Dec. 23, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Murphy Law Firm is investigating claims on behalf of all individuals whose personal and confidential information was compromised in the data breach involving International Coffee & Tea. To join the class action lawsuit, visit our site HERE . International Coffee & Tea, LLC (“International Coffee & Tea”), the parent company of the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf chain, recently detected suspicious activity on its computer network, indicating a data breach. Based on a subsequent forensic investigation, International Coffee & Tea determined that cybercriminals infiltrated its inadequately secured computer environment and thereby gained access to its data files. The investigation further determined that, through this infiltration, cybercriminals potentially accessed and copied files containing the sensitive personal information of 53,901 individuals. The information exposed in the data breach includes, but is not limited to: Names Social Security numbers If you received notice of the data breach or if your personal information was compromised in the breach, please visit our site HERE . Murphy Law Firm is evaluating legal options, including a potential class action lawsuit, to recover damages on behalf of individuals who were affected by the data breach. As a result of the data breach, these individuals’ personal and highly sensitive information may be in the hands of cybercriminals who can place the information for sale on the dark web or use the information to perpetrate identity theft. To join a class action lawsuit, click HERE Murphy Law Firm specializes in data breach class actions, consumer class actions, and federal securities class actions. The firm has extensive experience in securing highly favorable recoveries for its clients. Contact: Murphy Law Firm abm@murphylegalfirm.comRobin Goodfellow's racing tips: Best bets for Tuesday, November 26 By STEVE RYDER Published: 18:35 EST, 25 November 2024 | Updated: 18:35 EST, 25 November 2024 e-mail View comments Mail Sport's racing expert Robin Goodfellow delivers his tips for Tuesday's meetings at Sedgefield and Southwell. Mail Sport's racing expert Robin Goodfellow delivers his tips for Tuesday's meetings Sedgefield ROBIN GOODFELLOW 12.55 Mr Escobar 1.25 Bathgate 2.00 Clean Getaway (nb) 2.30 Harper Valley 3.00 BEBSIDE BANTER (nap) 3.30 Old Blue Eyes GIMCRACK 12.55 Mr Escobar (nb) 1.25 National Question 2.00 Clean Getaway 2.30 Laser Focus 3.00 The Paddy Pie 3.30 Snapaudaciaheros NEWMARKET – 2.30 LASER FOCUS (nap). Southwell ROBIN GOODFELLOW 12.35 Northern Reel 1.05 No No Tango 1.40 The Blueberry One 2.10 King Ulanda 2.40 Elle Est Beau 3.10 Neigh Botha 3.40 Lunar Contact GIMCRACK 12.35 Northern Reel 1.05 No No Tango 1.40 The Blueberry One 2.10 King Ulanda 2.40 Elle Est Beau 3.10 Neigh Botha 3.40 Lunar Contact Share or comment on this article: Robin Goodfellow's racing tips: Best bets for Tuesday, November 26 e-mail Add comment
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BANGKOK — Japanese automakers Honda and Nissan will attempt to merge and create the world's third-largest automaker by sales as the industry undergoes dramatic changes in its transition away from fossil fuels. The two companies said they had signed a memorandum of understanding on Monday and that smaller Nissan alliance member Mitsubishi Motors also had agreed to join the talks on integrating their businesses. Honda will initially lead the new management, retaining the principles and brands of each company. Following is a quick look at what a combined Honda and Nissan would mean for the companies, and for the auto industry. Nissan Chief Executive Makoto Uchida, left, and Honda Chief Executive Toshihiro Mibe, center, and Takao Kato CEO of Mitsubishi Motors, right, arrive to attend a joint news conference Monday, Dec. 23, 2024, in Tokyo, Japan. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) The ascent of Chinese automakers is rattling the industry at a time when manufacturers are struggling to shift from fossil fuel-driven vehicles to electrics. Relatively inexpensive EVs from China's BYD, Great Wall and Nio are eating into the market shares of U.S. and Japanese car companies in China and elsewhere. Japanese automakers have lagged behind big rivals in EVs and are now trying to cut costs and make up for lost time. Nissan, Honda and Mitsubishi announced in August that they will share components for electric vehicles like batteries and jointly research software for autonomous driving to adapt better to dramatic changes in the auto industry centered around electrification. A preliminary agreement between Honda, Japan's second-largest automaker, and Nissan, third largest, was announced in March. A merger could result in a behemoth worth about $55 billion based on the market capitalization of all three automakers. Joining forces would help the smaller Japanese automakers add scale to compete with Japan's market leader Toyota Motor Corp. and with Germany's Volkswagen AG. Toyota itself has technology partnerships with Japan's Mazda Motor Corp. and Subaru Corp. Nissan Chief Executive Makoto Uchida, left, Honda Chief Executive Toshihiro Mibe, center, and Takao Kato, CEO of Mitsubishi Motors, right, pose for photographers during a joint news conference in Tokyo, Japan, Monday, Dec. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) Nissan has truck-based body-on-frame large SUVs such as the Armada and Infiniti QX80 that Honda doesn't have, with large towing capacities and good off-road performance, said Sam Fiorani, vice president of AutoForecast Solutions. Nissan also has years of experience building batteries and electric vehicles, and gas-electric hybird powertrains that could help Honda in developing its own EVs and next generation of hybrids, he said. "Nissan does have some product segments where Honda doesn't currently play," that a merger or partnership could help, said Sam Abuelsamid, a Detroit-area automotive industry analsyt. While Nissan's electric Leaf and Ariya haven't sold well in the U.S., they're solid vehicles, Fiorani said. "They haven't been resting on their laurels, and they have been developing this technology," he said. "They have new products coming that could provide a good platform for Honda for its next generation." Nissan said last month that it was slashing 9,000 jobs, or about 6% of its global work force, and reducing global production capacity by 20% after reporting a quarterly loss of 9.3 billion yen ($61 million). Earlier this month it reshuffled its management and its chief executive, Makoto Uchida, took a 50% pay cut to take responsibility for the financial woes, saying Nissan needed to become more efficient and respond better to market tastes, rising costs and other global changes. Fitch Ratings recently downgraded Nissan's credit outlook to "negative," citing worsening profitability, partly due to price cuts in the North American market. But it noted that it has a strong financial structure and solid cash reserves that amounted to 1.44 trillion yen ($9.4 billion). Nissan's share price has fallen to the point where it is considered something of a bargain. A report in the Japanese financial magazine Diamond said talks with Honda gained urgency after the Taiwan maker of iPhones Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., better known as Foxconn, began exploring a possible acquisition of Nissan as part of its push into the EV sector. The company has struggled for years following a scandal that began with the arrest of its former chairman Carlos Ghosn in late 2018 on charges of fraud and misuse of company assets, allegations that he denies. He eventually was released on bail and fled to Lebanon. Honda reported its profits slipped nearly 20% in the first half of the April-March fiscal year from a year earlier, as sales suffered in China. Toyota made 11.5 million vehicles in 2023, while Honda rolled out 4 million and Nissan produced 3.4 million. Mitsubishi Motors made just over 1 million. Even after a merger Toyota would remain the leading Japanese automaker. All the global automakers are facing potential shocks if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on threats to raise or impose tariffs on imports of foreign products, even from allies like Japan and neighboring countries like Canada and Mexico. Nissan is among the major car companies that have adjusted their supply chains to include vehicles assembled in Mexico. Meanwhile, analysts say there is an "affordability shift" taking place across the industry, led by people who feel they cannot afford to pay nearly $50,000 for a new vehicle. In American, a vital market for companies like Nissan, Honda and Toyota, that's forcing automakers to consider lower pricing, which will eat further into industry profits. ____ AP Auto Writer Tom Krisher contributed to this report from Detroit. Airbags, advanced driver assistance features, and high-strength materials mean that the safest cars today are far better at protecting people from injuries than ever before. Although most new cars compare well to their predecessors, some stand above the rest. The safest cars for 2025 offer excellent occupant protection and also do a good job of preventing accidents from happening in the first place. Based on testing data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety , or IIHS, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration , or NHTSA, these are some of the safest cars available today. Ranging from inexpensive compact cars and mainstream midsize sedans to stylish station wagons, posh luxury cars, and sporty coupes and convertibles, Edmunds shares a list that has something for just about everyone. For those who prefer a higher seating position and maybe some added practicality, Edmunds' list of safest SUVs is for you. The stylish Mazda 3 has a lot to offer compact-car shoppers, including great looks, a composed driving experience, and reasonable fuel economy from its base 2.0-liter engine. It's also one of the safest cars in its class, earning a perfect five stars in NHTSA crash testing and sterling crashworthiness and collision avoidance scores from the IIHS. Its standard features are forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking, and lane departure prevention. With mature styling, a premium interior, and an efficient hybrid powertrain option, the 2025 Honda Civic is a great option if safety is a concern since it aces almost all of the IIHS' crash tests and earns a five-star safety rating from the federal government. It also comes standard with adaptive cruise control, lane departure prevention, and forward collision warning with automatic emergency braking. The Civic falls short slightly in the IIHS' updated moderate overlap front test, which now accounts for rear passenger safety, but even so, it's one of the safest cars in its class. Reflective of parent company BMW, today's Mini Cooper is well constructed and features premium safety features that belie its small size, including automatic emergency braking and forward collision warning. Although the Mini hasn't been tested by NHTSA, the IIHS gives the Cooper its highest score of Good in the original driver-side small overlap front, moderate overlap front, and side-impact tests. That said, the IIHS doesn't place the Cooper on its Top Safety Pick or Top Safety Pick+ lists since it hasn't been evaluated on the updated battery of passenger-side small overlap front, moderate overlap front, or side-impact tests. Expect the new-for-2025 Mini Cooper to earn decent crash ratings in those scenarios, especially since it shares its strong platform with the outgoing model. With its recent redesign, the Toyota Prius transformed from a frumpy little caterpillar to a stylish and efficient butterfly. It also became a very safe hybrid hatchback. Perfect scores in all of its government and IIHS crash tests, as well as a sophisticated system of collision avoidance technology, earn it top marks. It's also one of our favorite cars on the market, period, as evidenced by its status as a 2024 Edmunds Top Rated vehicle. The Honda Accord is among the safest midsize sedans on the market today thanks to excellent crashworthiness scores and a competent standard collision prevention system. It's a Top Safety Pick+, beating out rivals like the Hyundai Sonata, Kia K5, and Subaru Legacy, and the Accord also earns a perfect five-star rating from NHTSA. Honda's hybrid-intensive product planning is on full display here—all but the two lowest Accord trims have a hybrid powertrain—and it's also among the most spacious cars in its class. Like its Honda Accord rival, the Toyota Camry is also an IIHS Top Safety Pick+ with a five-star NHTSA rating. It also has a very impressive suite of driver assistance and safety technology, including lane departure prevention with active centering, full-speed adaptive cruise control, and automatic emergency braking. The Camry edges out the Accord in IIHS testing thanks to a more effective collision avoidance system, but both cars are remarkably well matched otherwise. The fully electric Hyundai Ioniq 6 offers excellent safety and collision prevention, with excellent scores across the entire line of IIHS tests. The Ioniq 6 hasn't been tested for rollover resistance by NHTSA, but it earned a four-star front safety rating and a five-star side-impact rating in government tests. Like most EVs, the Hyundai Ioniq 6 comes standard with forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking, and lane departure prevention. It also offers up to 342 miles of all-electric driving in its longest-range trim level. The Acura Integra is a close mechanical cousin to the Honda Civic, so it's no surprise it does well in both the IIHS' and NHTSA's crash tests. The luxury hatchback is a Top Safety Pick+ and earns a perfect five stars in government testing. The AcuraWatch safety suite is standard on the Integra, bringing automatic emergency braking, lane centering, lane departure prevention, and adaptive cruise control. The Mercedes-Benz C-Class is a safe option in the popular small luxury sedan segment thanks to its good scores in IIHS crash testing. Mercedes' best-selling sedan also comes standard with automatic emergency braking and forward collision warning, which helps it earn a Top Safety Pick award. However, it hasn't been tested by the NHTSA. Both the Genesis G80 and the fully electric Genesis Electrified G80 earn a Top Safety Pick+ score from the IIHS thanks to their good scores on the agency's crash tests, as well as a comprehensive suite of active safety features that avoided collisions with simulated pedestrians. The internal-combustion-engine G80 earned a perfect five-star safety rating from NHTSA, and although the Electrified G80 hasn't been tested by the feds just yet, it should likely excel in those tests too. The flagship Genesis G90 sedan competes with the Mercedes-Benz S-Class and BMW 7 Series, and the South Korean automaker clearly hasn't skimped on safety in its fight against the establishment. Although it hasn't been subjected to the NHTSA array of tests, it aced almost all of its IIHS tests, and a long list of standard active safety and driver assistance features sets it apart from the stingy German makes that charge extra for them. With handsome styling and a well-finished interior, the Volvo V60 is a very appealing station wagon for those looking for such a thing. It's also quite safe, with good crashworthiness scores in the IIHS' original moderate overlap front and side-impact scores. Unfortunately, since it hasn't been tested with the updated versions of those tests, it didn't earn this year's Top Safety Pick award, but it was called a Top Safety Pick+ in 2022. NHTSA also gives the V60 a five-star safety rating. Although the Mercedes-Benz E 450 All-Terrain isn't a traditional wagon — it follows the lifted almost-crossover formula shared with the Audi A6 Allroad and Volvo V90 Cross Country — we'll take what we can get in this dwindling category. The All-Terrain hasn't been tested by the IIHS or NHTSA, but a previous-generation E-Class earned a 2023 Top Safety Pick+ award, and Mercedes isn't the kind of company that goes backward when it comes to safety. The E 450 All-Terrain comes standard with automatic emergency braking and forward collision warning, though, at this price, Benz should just make other active safety features standard. With a five-star NHTSA safety rating, standard forward collision warning and emergency braking, and excellent IIHS crashworthiness scores on its original tests, the Audi A6 Allroad does a good job protecting people (both passengers and pedestrians) from crashes. However, since the IIHS hasn't subjected the Allroad to its updated side and moderate front crash criteria, it lost its Top Safety Pick+ status in 2022. Still, it should be a fine option for luxury longroof shoppers. Both the Ford Mustang coupe and convertible perform well in crash testing. The coupe received a five-star safety rating from NHTSA, and both variants scored decently on all the IIHS tests they've undergone. They also come standard with forward collision warning, lane departure prevention, and automatic emergency braking. However, the IIHS needs to test both models on its updated criteria before it will rate them. Although the government hasn't tested it, the Toyota GR86 aced all of its IIHS crashworthiness tests when it was new for the 2022 model year. Unfortunately, since it hasn't been subjected to the IIHS' updated testing since then, it lost its Top Safety Pick+ status. Still, this is a fun-to-drive, sporty coupe that comes standard with a long list of active safety features, and it's reasonably priced to boot. Mechanically identical to the Toyota GR86, the 2025 Subaru BRZ achieves the same safety ratings—who would have thought? It likewise received a Top Safety Pick+ score in 2022 that lapsed when the IIHS updated its criteria for 2023, but like the Toyota, it has a long list of active safety features to go along with its lightweight, rip-roaring sports car attitude. The Audi A5 lost its traditional two-door coupe body style after 2024, but the five-door Sportback body style remains before it's replaced later in 2025. Although it hasn't seen the IIHS' more stringent test regimen, its original crashworthiness scores were good enough to earn it a Top Safety Pick award as recently as 2022. The Sportback is the only variant to be tested by the government, where it earned a five-star safety rating. This story was produced by Edmunds and reviewed and distributed by Stacker. Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly.
The move could usher in an end to a protracted political crisis in the European Union country following the annulment of a presidential election by a top court. Parliament approved the new administration in a 240-143 vote in Romania’s 466-seat legislature. The new coalition is made up of the leftist Social Democratic Party (PSD) the centre-right National Liberal Party (PNL), the small ethnic Hungarian UDMR party and national minorities. It caps a month-long period of turmoil in which far-right nationalists made significant gains in a parliamentary election on December 1 a week after a first-round presidential race saw the far-right outsider Calin Georgescu emerge as the front-runner. “It will not be an easy mandate for the future government,” Mr Ciolacu, whose PSD party topped the polls in the parliamentary election, said in a statement. “We are aware that we are in the midst of a deep political crisis,” he said. “It is also a crisis of trust, and this coalition aims to regain the trust of citizens, the trust of the people.” Romania’s 16 ministerial positions will be shared among the parties, which will hold a slim majority in the legislature. It is widely seen as a tactical partnership to shut out far-right nationalists whose voices found fertile ground amid high living costs and a sluggish economy. Mr Ciolacu, who came third in the first-round presidential ballot despite polls indicating he would win the most votes, has served as prime minister since June 2023. After parliament’s approval, President Klaus Iohannis swore in the new government and warned the new Cabinet that it is entering a “difficult new period” in which “for many Romanians, there are major concerns”. Romania was plunged into turmoil after Mr Georgescu’s surprise success in the presidential race, after allegations of electoral violations and Russian interference emerged. Days before the December 8 run-off, the Constitutional Court made the unprecedented move to annul the presidential race. “We go through complicated times, but I think we all learned from mistakes of the past,” Mr Ciolacu said. “I hope that together with my colleagues in the coalition, we’ll find the best solutions to get past the challenges we have in front of us.” Mr Ciolacu said that the new government would aim to quickly organise the rerun of the presidential election in which the new coalition has agreed to put forward an agreed common pro-European candidate. Cristian Andrei, a political consultant based in Bucharest, said that the new government made up of the same political parties will likely embrace “soft populist” rhetoric such as economic patriotism, anti-austerity, and a peace solution in neighbouring Ukraine to counter the rise of far-right populism. “This will be a way to answer the concerns of many Romanians who voted for populists... but will not solve the fundamental problem of trust,” he said. “The only decisive factor now will be who and how convincing the pro-European candidates will be against this popular revolt.” George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, which came second in the parliamentary election, said that all politicians from his party on Monday would vote against the Ciolacu government. In 2021, the PSD and the PNL also formed an unlikely but increasingly strained coalition together with UDMR, which exited the Cabinet last year after a power-sharing dispute.
MANCHESTER, England (AP) — Manchester City’s players were booed by their own fans Tuesday after blowing a three-goal lead against Feyenoord in the Champions League to extend their winless run to six games. Jeers rang around the Etihad Stadium after the final whistle of a dramatic 3-3 draw. “They are disappointed. Of course we understand it,” City manager Pep Guardiola said. “They are completely right to express what they feel.” After five-straight losses in all competitions, City looked to be cruising to victory after going three up inside 50 minutes. But Feyenoord mounted an improbable comeback and leveled the game in the 89th to leave the home crowd stunned. While the worst losing streak of Guardiola’s managerial career was brought to an end, his wait for a first win since Oct. 26 goes on. Erling Haaland had scored twice, with Ilkay Gundogan also on target to put City in control. But goals from Anis Hadj Moussa in the 75th, Santiago Gimenez in the 82nd and David Hancko in the 89th turned the game on its head. According to stats supplier Opta, it was the first time in Guardiola's managerial career that his team had failed to win a game after leading 3-0. It said it was the first time City had failed to win from that position since 1989. “We lost a lot of games lately, we are fragile and of course we need a victory," Guardiola said. “The game was good for the confidence, we were playing a good level, but the first time something happened we had problems.” A win would have moved City up to fifth in the Champions League standings , but the draw left it 15th with three games remaining in the first phase of the competition. The top eight teams advance to the round of 16, while teams ranked ninth to 24th go into a playoff. City’s players, including Bernardo Silva, Josko Gvardiol and Haaland looked visibly frustrated as they left the field to cheers from the delirious traveling Dutch fans in the away section of the stadium. “If you are 3-0 up at home you can never give it away like this. It is what it is at the moment. The only thing we can do is fight back and stay strong,” City defender Nathan Ake said. City plays Premier League leader Liverpool on Sunday — defeat would leave it 11 points adrift of its title rival. “We will learn for the future. It has been and will be a tough season for us and we have to accept it," said Guardiola, who had a cut on his nose during the game. He said it had been caused when he scratched it with his fingernail. James Robson is at https://twitter.com/jamesalanrobson AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
The five-part series will debut globally on December 10, following elite global players on and off the field as they compete in the US Open Polo Championship in Wellington, Florida. A trailer for the series titled Polo, executive produced by Harry and Meghan, was released on Thursday, giving a behind-the-scenes look at the “fast-paced and glamorous world of polo”. In a statement, Harry said: “This series offers audiences an unprecedented, behind-the-scenes look into the passion and determination driving some of the world’s elite polo players, revealing the grit behind the glamour. “We’re proud to showcase the true depth and spirit of the sport — and the intensity of its high-stakes moments.” It has been produced by the Sussexes’ Archewell Productions, having previously released three documentaries with Netflix as part of a multimillion-pound deal with the streaming giant. Heart Of Invictus, which aired last August, followed a group of service members on their road to the Invictus Games, the Paralympic-style sporting competition set up by Harry in 2014 for injured and sick military personnel and veterans. Netflix also released the documentary series Live To Lead and the controversial six-part Harry & Meghan documentary in December 2022. Harry and Meghan moved to the US in 2020 after stepping down from royal duties.Atlantic Liberal caucus calls for Trudeau’s resignation in letterAMMO Deadline: POWW Investors Have Opportunity to Lead AMMO, Inc. Securities Fraud LawsuitNext U.S. ambassador Hoekstra 'easier to do business' with: former envoy