Article content TOMS RIVER, N.J. — Gov. Phil Murphy has asked the Biden administration to put more resources into an investigation of mysterious drone sightings that have been reported in New Jersey and nearby states. Recommended Videos Murphy, a Democrat, made the request in a letter Thursday, noting that state and local law enforcement remain “hamstrung” by existing laws and policies in their efforts to successfully counteract any nefarious activity of unmanned aircraft. He posted a copy of the letter on the social media platform X. “This leaves action surrounding the (drones) squarely on the shoulders of the federal government,” Murphy said. “More federal resources are needed to understand what is behind this activity.” Murphy and other officials have repeatedly stressed that there is no evidence that the aircraft pose a national security or a public safety threat, or have a foreign nexus. The Pentagon also has said they are not U.S. military drones. The drones have drawn intense public concern and curiosity since residents first reported seeing them last month. Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia said from four to 180 aircraft have been reported to authorities since Nov. 18, appearing from dusk till 11 p.m. The flying objects have been spotted near the Picatinny Arsenal, a U.S. military research and manufacturing facility, and over President-elect Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, but the number of reported sightings has grown greatly since then. Drones were also spotted in Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut and other parts of the Mid-Atlantic region. The FBI, Federal Aviation Administration and other state and federal agencies involved in the investigation have not corroborated any of the reported sightings with electronic detection, and reviews of available images appear to show many of the reported drones are actually manned aircraft. They also say there have been no confirmed sightings in restricted air space. It’s also possible that a single drone has been seen and reported more than once, officials said. Some federal lawmakers have called on the military to “shoot down” the drones. The drones also appear to avoid detection by traditional methods such as helicopter and radio, according to a state lawmaker who was briefed by the Department of Homeland Security. In one case, a medevac helicopter was unable to pick up a seriously injured car accident victim in Branchburg Township in Somerset County late last month due to drones hovering near the planned landing zone, according to NJ.com. The FAA said Thursday that it does not have a report on this incident. Drones are legal in New Jersey for recreational and commercial use but are subject to local and FAA regulations and flight restrictions. Operators must be FAA certified. Witnesses say the drones they think they have seen in New Jersey appear to be larger than those typically used by hobbyists.

LOWELL — On Friday, Dec. 6, Congresswoman Lori Trahan announced Chelmsford High School students Obinna Onyemauwa, Wilson Ochie and Kensmyth Taveras as the winners of the 3rd Congressional District’s annual Congressional App Challenge. Their app, “Ecosense,” was selected by a local judges from the pool of submissions from middle and high school students who participated in this year’s competition. “Every year, I continue to be amazed by the sheer talent, ingenuity, and technological expertise of students across the Third District who participate in the Congressional App Challenge. It’s truly inspiring to see our young people tackle global challenges using fresh, innovative solutions,” said Trahan. “I’m thrilled to announce this year’s winners, Obinna Onyemauwa, Wilson Ochie, and Kensmyth Taveras, who developed an app that teaches users about their community’s water quality levels and local ecosystems. Thank you to every student who participated in this year’s highly competitive challenge and made it a tough choice for our judges.” The “Ecosense” app provides data on nearby water stations and animal habitats, mapping geographic coordinates to locate species across the country. It tracks and records animals sighted, displays water quality statistics, and compares these to government safety standards. The app includes a collection of animal species names with timestamps for research accuracy and integrates AI-driven image recognition, using Yolo11 and Microsoft Azure, to identify animals captured in photos. Additionally, it pulls data from government databases and incorporates animations to enhance the user experience. “The impact this app has potential to do is vast, from helping local universities with their research, providing information on organism habitats & environmental water quality statistics to helping the everyday person learn about the changes happening to the earth & allowing them to make an informed decision on what they consume,” said Onyemauwa, Ochie and Taveras.Jimmy Carter, the 39th U.S. president who led the nation from 1977 to 1981, has died at the age of 100. The Carter Center announced Sunday that his father died at his home in Plains, Georgia, surrounded by family. His death comes about a year after his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, passed away. The Carter Center will provide updates about ceremonies and activities to honor the life of President Carter as they become available here and soon on the official Carter Family Tribute Site ( https://t.co/Tg5UZt7kPV ). Read our statement: https://t.co/CNBUBpffPz — The Carter Center (@CarterCenter) December 29, 2024 Despite receiving hospice care at the time, he attended the memorials for Rosalynn while sitting in a wheelchair, covered by a blanket. He was also wheeled outside on Oct. 1 to watch a military flyover in celebration of his 100th birthday. The Carter Center said in February 2023 that the former president and his family decided he would no longer seek medical treatment following several short hospital stays for an undisclosed illness. Carter became the longest-living president in 2019, surpassing George H.W. Bush, who died at age 94 in 2018. Carter also had a long post-presidency, living 43 years following his White House departure. RELATED STORY: Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: A love story for the ages Before becoming president Carter began his adult life in the military, getting a degree at the U.S. Naval Academy, and rose to the rank of lieutenant. He then studied reactor technology and nuclear physics at Union College and served as senior officer of the pre-commissioning crew on a nuclear submarine. Following the death of his father, Carter returned to Georgia to tend to his family's farm and related businesses. During this time, he became a community leader by serving on local boards. He used this experience to elevate him to his first elected office in 1962 in the Georgia Senate. After losing his first gubernatorial election in 1966, he won his second bid in 1970, becoming the state’s 76th governor. As a relative unknown nationally, Carter used the nation’s sour sentiment toward politics to win the Democratic nomination. He then bested sitting president Gerald Ford in November 1976 to win the presidency. Carter battles high inflation, energy crisis With the public eager for a change following the Watergate era, Carter took a more hands-on approach to governing. This, however, meant he became the public face of a number of issues facing the U.S. in the late 1970s, most notably America’s energy crisis. He signed the Department of Energy Organization Act, creating the first new cabinet role in government in over a decade. Carter advocated for alternative energy sources and even installed solar panels on the White House roof. During this time, the public rebuked attempts to ration energy. Amid rising energy costs, inflation soared nearly 9% annually during Carter's presidency. This led to a recession before the 1980 election. Carter also encountered the Iran Hostage Crisis in the final year of his presidency when 52 American citizens were captured. An attempt to rescue the Americans failed in April 1980, resulting in the death of eight service members. With compounding crises, Carter lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan in 1980 as he could only win six states. Carter’s impact after leaving the White House Carter returned to Georgia and opened the Carter Center, which is focused on national and international issues of public policy – namely conflict resolution. Carter and the Center have been involved in a number of international disputes, including in Syria, Israel, Mali and Sudan. The group has also worked to independently monitor elections and prevent elections from becoming violent. Carter and his wife were the most visible advocates for Habitat for Humanity. The organization that helps build and restore homes for low- and middle-income families has benefited from the Carters’ passion for the organization. Habitat for Humanity estimates Carter has worked alongside 104,000 volunteers in 14 countries to build 4,390 houses. “Like other Habitat volunteers, I have learned that our greatest blessings come when we are able to improve the lives of others, and this is especially true when those others are desperately poor or in need,” Carter said in a Q&A on the Habitat for Humanity website. Carter also continued teaching Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown well into his 90s. Attendees would line up for hours, coming from all parts of the U.S., to attend Carter’s classes. Carter is survived by his four children.Bears' Omier lands Big 12 Player of Week honor

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Raya Jalabi and Sarah Dadouch in Damascus Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Last Sunday, Abdel Rahman was serving a 15-year sentence in a cramped cell in Syria’s notorious Saydnaya prison, after an altercation with a corrupt police officer last year in Damascus. By Friday morning, he was in the ancient market of the old city selling the newly adopted green Syrian flag — the one anti-Assad rebels have flown during nearly 14 years of brutal civil conflict. At midday, he was able to listen to a sermon at the nearby mosque that called the deposed president Bashar al-Assad “a tyrant”. “How great is Syrians’ joy, how great is this victory!” declared the prime minister, who was giving the unprecedented sermon, his words roaring over the speakers outside the Umayyad mosque. The message was greeted with cheers. Euphoria and some disbelief was etched on the faces of the thousands of people who are still coming to terms with the fall of a dictatorship that ruled them with an iron fist for more than 50 years. Assad’s regime came to an abrupt end last Sunday when he fled to Moscow, following a lightning offensive by Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The group immediately started to free prisoners held in the country’s grim warren of prisons. But the regime’s grip was so brutal that when men broke through the doors of Rahman’s cell block, the inmates held back and initially refused to stream out. Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings. “We thought they were engaged in clashes and that they had come to use us as human shields,” he says, watching the stream of people leaving the mosque after Friday prayers chanting anti-Assad slogans. “I’m still in shock. I feel I’m in a movie.” The sense of triumphalism and relief that has swept Syria over the past few days, however, is also mixed with realism about the challenges now facing the country. The HTS rebels are taking over a state devastated by more than a decade of civil war. Many of the people who thronged to the Umayyad mosque in celebration delighted at the text message they received the previous night from a group calling itself “Free Syria”: “Syria has been reborn. Congratulations to our people. Congratulations to our country.” But they also know just how complex such a rebirth will be for the rebels who have descended on the capital from northwestern Idlib — the province governed in recent years by HTS. The Islamist group is assuming control of a complex, multi-ethnic country with institutions that have been hollowed out by corruption and patronage, an economy shattered by conflict and sanctions, and a palpable desire for revenge from some of the victims of Assad’s regime. “For the past 13 years, nothing has worked: no electricity, shortages of everything and the complete choking of society,” says a civil servant in the Damascus governorate. “[HTS] has to get to work and organise things now and stop this corruption or people will turn on them, fast.” From the Assad regime’s inception, corruption, repression and brutality reigned: they were tools that kept the minority Alawi rulers in power in a predominantly Sunni Muslim country. Paranoia and a thirst for absolute control meant that Bashar’s father Hafez, an air force pilot who seized full power in a 1970 coup, crafted a centralised presidential system with absolute authority over the state’s affairs. This created a bureaucratic system that fostered the public’s dependency on government jobs and allowed corruption at all levels of society to go unchecked. While not efficient, it worked — at least until 2011, when popular uprisings were brutally repressed by Bashar and morphed into a bloody civil war. That period ushered in a transformation of the state from an antiquated system operated by Assad’s Ba’athist party into a patchwork of broken institutions. The country’s hospitals are in disrepair, the lack of funding visible in their decaying walls and overburdened departments; its dilapidated hotels are frozen in time. The majority of cars filling the streets of Damascus date back to the 1970s and 1980s, because parts for newer cars have been harder to source and more expensive to import. Western sanctions targeting the Syrian state, the deposed president and his financiers mostly hit civilians, as the upper echelons of the regime found ways to circumvent restrictions. The new prime minister, Mohamed al-Bashir, announced that an interim government will lead the country until March, but has not outlined what comes next and the topic of nationwide elections has yet to be broached. HTS, the offshoot of a former affiliate of al-Qaeda designated a terrorist organisation by the US and others, is the most powerful of myriad armed groups in a country that is home to a diverse mix of religions and sects. Abu Mohammad al-Jolani runs the group as a strongman, and there are concerns that authoritarianism could descend on Damascus, whose residents are already wondering whether HTS will limit public displays of Christmas celebrations. Despite everything we lost, we are now free In a strategic move, Bashir invited Assad’s prime minister, cabinet and civil servants to be part of the process in order to facilitate a smooth transfer of power. On Tuesday, he gathered the outgoing ministers (or at least, those who showed up) with their rebel equivalents in the Assad government’s regular meeting room — a short but symbolic meeting to signal to a country so used to centralised power that the wheels of the state were turning. Bashir has promised to fight corruption, restore order and protect Syria’s plethora of minorities despite the new administration’s politically Islamist roots. The national oil company was ordered to resume operations within 24 hours of the rebel takeover, and instructed to continue sending electricity to coastal provinces not yet taken by the rebels. Government staff trickled back to ministries on Tuesday and Wednesday, and schools were ordered to reopen this Sunday. On Thursday night, the eve of the weekend in Syria, traffic returned to the streets as restaurants and parks teemed with people. “Despite everything we lost,” says Abu Mohammed, a 54-year-old resident of a poor Damascus suburb, “we are now free.” One of the critical challenges ahead is rebuilding the economy, which has been in freefall for several years. More than 90 per cent of Syrians now live below the poverty line and most households in the country receive less than 6 hours of electricity a day. Pantries are frequently bare amid shortages of essential goods, sky-high inflation and the crumbling Syrian pound. More than 80 per cent of the country’s oil products were imported from Iran, which backed Assad during the war, the deputy head of the national oil company Mustafa Hasawiyeh told the FT this week. While there were enough stores to last a month, he said, it was unclear where fuel would come from after that. Domestic manufacturing has been severely hampered, with factories destroyed and workers sent to war during the decade of civil conflict. This will take time to jump-start: much of the country still lies in bloodied ruins, its people haunted by the ghosts of their loved ones, killed or disappeared. Assad’s government haemorrhaged cash to fund military spending, public sector salaries and subsidised goods — the latter two an essential part of the basic social contract in the Ba'athist state. When the regime’s benefactors, Russia and Iran, came calling for long past due war debts, Assad parcelled off segments of the state’s resources to Moscow and Tehran, including phosphates extraction. Other debts his government never repaid, including to Moscow, leave HTS with an unknown mountain of debt and a complex geopolitical calculus about who to repay and how. The ruling family and their select cronies extended their dominance over the state in the twilight years of the civil war, operating “mafia-style” shakedowns on the business elite to line their pockets. This proved decisive in eroding Assad’s support among the mercantile elite. Syrian citizens say they were also being shaken down on a daily basis at checkpoints scattered throughout regime-held areas, many of them linked to the army’s Fourth Division — a notoriously brutal unit run by Bashar’s brother Maher. Those checkpoints have been unmanned since HTS took over, to the disbelief of many, as regime soldiers dropped their weapons, shed their uniforms and fled the rebel advance. Hours after Assad’s fall, the duty-free mall across the border from Lebanon, widely believed to be a Fourth Division revenue stream, was ransacked by looters. Hundreds of frenzied men, euphoric in their first few hours of relative freedom, carried out refrigerators, brand-new laptops and watches, calling it “justice” for years of torment. The Fourth Division was also the central node in several of the illicit revenue streams that helped keep the regime afloat: weapons, oil smuggling, alcohol and sales of the illegal amphetamine Captagon. Replacing this, as well as the entire state security apparatus, will be another key challenge facing HTS. An army of impoverished conscripts was not prepared to die for a dictator who had long ago decided to use them as cannon fodder. Instead, those men threw off their military fatigues and walked off the job. Within 48 hours of arriving in Damascus, HTS brought in traffic police from Idlib as well as government security forces. Two residents told the FT they had noticed a shift on the streets: people are obeying traffic lights again (in Assad’s Syria, stopping at a light was a sure-fire way of getting asked for a bribe by the traffic police). But there aren’t enough such individuals to secure the entire country, and reports of banditry on the highways connecting provinces have spread. There are also fears of retribution, from Jolani’s forces, but more so from the hundred of thousands of people who might be looking to settle scores. This is particularly true for families of the missing — untold thousands who were lost to Assad’s vast prison network. They descended on the country’s jails in a desperate search for their loved ones this week, with many coming away disappointed. In a nod to the mounting anger, Jolani said those involved with torture would face justice, while soldiers not involved would receive an amnesty. In a crowded stationery store in an affluent Damascus neighbourhood, where a printer spat out photocopies of the new Syrian flag to be sold for 40 US cents, the owner gleefully discussed the recent overhaul of the regime with customers. “But our question is, will they go after the criminals that [worked in prisons]?” he adds. “Will they hold accountable the people who tortured and killed our people?” Cartography by Steven Bernard and data visualisation by Keith Fray Comments have not been enabled for this article.Helena Capital football, , stands atop Class AA for the 13th time in program history. Wednesday at noon, Bruins players will ride atop a Helena fire truck to commemorate that victory. Departing from Capital High School, the route takes the team along N. Benton Ave. past Carroll College and into downtown Helena on N. Park Ave. and N. Last Chance Gulch. The return journey toward Capital will be along Hauser Blvd. past C.R. Anderson Middle School and down Henderson St. The date and time was chosen as to not conflict with winter sports practices and to take advantage of no school that day. Capital has now won two state football titles in three seasons and eight dating back to 2000.Palantir: Rule Of 40 Points To Sell

Glycated Albumin Assay Market New Trends, Size, Share, Top Companies, Industry Analysis, Advance Technology, Future Development & Forecast - 2028Amazon to donate $1 million to Trump's inauguration and strikes streaming deal as more Big Tech giants bend the knee Tech giants donate to Trump inauguration after being past targets of his ire Sign up for the latest with DailyMail.com's U.S. politics newsletter By SARAH EWALL-WICE, SENIOR U.S. POLITICAL REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM IN WASHINGTON, DC Published: 20:41, 13 December 2024 | Updated: 21:22, 13 December 2024 e-mail 2 View comments Some of the biggest companies and business leaders in the world are looking to start their standing with President-elect Donald Trump on the right foot as he prepares to take office in January with a series of meetings and donations. Amazon will be donating $1 million to the 78-year-old president-elect's inauguration and making another in-kind contribution by streaming the inauguration on Amazon Prime. The e-commerce giant's founder Jeff Bezos will also be meeting with Trump next week in person, the president-elect revealed on Thursday. Bezos is one of several billionaire tech company and business leaders that are shelling out big donations to the Trump inauguration ahead of the Republican taking over the White House on January 20. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, also made a $1 million donation to the Trump inauguration, the company confirmed after it was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. It comes as multiple tech giants including Amazon, Meta, Google and Apple have all been the target of Trump and GOP wrath in recent years. Amazon founding Jeff Bezos is set to meet with President-elect Donald Trump next week as the e-commerce giant donates $1 million for Trump's inauguration During his first term, Trump lashed out at Amazon on multiple occasions including targeting Bezos and complained about the coverage by the Washington Post, which is owned by the billionaire personally. The Amazon founder faced some public backlash in October after it was announced The Washington Post editorial board would not make an endorsement in the 2024 presidential election after it endorsed Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton in the last two presidential elections. Bezos defended the eleventh hour decision in an op-ed and claimed it was not part of 'some intentional strategy' but a 'principled decision' and 'the right one' in an effort to end the 'perception of bias.' But critics blasted the move as cowardly and questioned the timing of the decision which came just hours after Trump met with executives from Blue Origin, a space company also founded by Bezos. He denied there was any connection. Last week, Bezos said he was 'optimistic' about Trump's second term and backed plans to cut regulations while speaking at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit in New York. Amazon and Blue Origin have a series of contracts with the federal government worth billions. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaking in September 2024. Meta donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration and the pair had dinner together last month Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, had dinner with Trump last month at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The Facebook founder did not endorse either Trump or Harris in the 2024 presidential election, but he praised the president-elect after the assassination attempt in July, calling his raised fist after the shooting 'badass.' Zuckerberg has long been a target of Trump's ire online. He has called him 'Zuckerschmuck' and written 'Zuckerbucks' in posts, and the president-elect even threatened to imprison the Meta CEO for life in his book. In 2021, Trump was kicked off of Facebook and other social media accounts after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. That summer, Trump sued Facebook, Google's YouTube and Twitter claiming he was the victim of censorship. His Facebook and Instagram accounts were reinstated in 2023. Elon Musk restored his account on Twitter, now X, in November 2022. After the dinner last month, a spokesperson for Meta said Zuckerberg was 'grateful' to join the president-elect for dinner and meet with members of his team. Meta did not make donations to the Biden inauguration or Trumps first inauguration in 2017. Amazon contributed a much smaller roughly quarter of a million to Biden's inauguration in 2021, but it also streamed the event on Prime Video as well that year. Politics Share or comment on this article: Amazon to donate $1 million to Trump's inauguration and strikes streaming deal as more Big Tech giants bend the knee e-mail Add comment

AFL bombshell as legendary coach quitsJapan's education ministry has urged that school trips be planned for the off-season due to a recent labor shortage in transportation and accommodations amid a boom in inbound tourism, according to sources familiar with the matter. Schools tend to have their trips between May and June or from September to December, according to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Avoiding peak travel seasons would benefit schools as they would not need to suddenly change schedules due to the unavailability of charter buses or hotels. The ministry sent notices on Dec 12 to education boards and schools after the bus and travel industries requested its cooperation regarding the scheduling of school trips. "The recent acute labor shortage makes it difficult for schools to secure charter buses and accommodations," the ministry said in the notice, urging more flexible timing. The most popular travel season for junior high schools in fiscal 2023 was May, while that for high schools was October, according to a survey by the Japan School Tours Bureau, a nonprofit private organization. Many schools decide timing of their trips based on annual academic schedules and weather, with Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Okinawa prefectures among the favored destinations. There has been a shortage in bus driver availability since the government earlier this year restricted their working hours to improve conditions, with some schools opting for trains instead.Donald Trump has been filmed telling a young girl he would like to buy her hair “for millions”, after encountering her . At the wheel of a golf cart, the president-elect was struck by the child’s curls, held in place by a white cloth band. “I love that girl. I love her hair, I want her hair. I’d buy your hair, I’ll pay you millions,” he said before inviting her to sit alongside him in the cart. President Donald J Trump playing golf yesterday at Trump International Golf Club Palm Beach!! THE GREATEST! TRUMP-VANCE 2024! @trumpgolfpalmbeach 📸: @mashawbird... — Michael Solakiewicz (@michaelsolakie) — like many other things — has been the subject of some controversy. Author Michael Wolff said the president-elect’s orange-blond mop is genuine, although he did have “scalp reduction surgery”. It is a painful procedure which entails pulling portions of the scalp with hair together, eliminating a bald spot. The recent biopic of Mr Trump The Apprentice featured a scene depicting the operation. Details of the procedure were also disclosed by Mr Trump’s first wife, Ivana, in her divorce deposition. According to Harry Hurt III’s book, The Lost Tycoon, Mr Trump was less than pleased with the results. It is claimed that Mr Trump has had more procedures since, spending, according to an estimate by celebrity plastic surgeon Gary Motykie, $160,000 on maintaining his locks.

Thousands of Syrians celebrate in central Damascus during first Friday prayers since Assad's fall DAMASCUS (AP) — Thousands of Syrians have celebrated in Umayyad Square, the largest in Damascus, after the first Muslim Friday prayers following the ouster of President Bashar Assad. The leader of the insurgency that toppled Assad, Ahmad al-Sharaa, appeared in a video message in which he congratulated “the great Syrian people for the victory of the blessed revolution.” Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in the Turkish capital of Ankara that there was “broad agreement” between Turkey and the United States on what they would like to see in Syria. The top U.S. diplomat also called for an “inclusive and non-sectarian" interim government. American released from Syrian prison is flown out of the country, a US official says WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military has transported an American who was imprisoned in Syria for seven months out of the country. That's according to a U.S. official, who says Travis Timmerman was flown out on a U.S. military helicopter. Timmerman, 29, told The Associated Press he had gone to Syria on a Christian pilgrimage and was not ill-treated while in Palestine Branch, a notorious detention facility operated by Syrian intelligence. He said he was freed by “the liberators who came into the prison and knocked the door down (of his cell) with a hammer.” Nancy Pelosi hospitalized after she 'sustained an injury' from fall on official trip to Luxembourg WASHINGTON (AP) — Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been hospitalized after she “sustained an injury” during an official engagement in Luxembourg, according to a spokesman. Pelosi is 84. She was in Europe to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Her spokesman, Ian Krager, did not describe the nature of her injury or give any additional details, but a person familiar with the incident said that Pelosi tripped and fell while at an event with the other members of Congress. The person requested anonymity to discuss the fall because they were not authorized to speak about it publicly. Some in seafood industry see Trump as fishermen's friend, but tariffs could make for pricier fish PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump is likely to bring big changes to seafood, one of the oldest sectors of the U.S. economy. Some in the industry believe the returning president will be more responsive to its needs. Economic analysts paint a more complicated picture, as they fear Trump’s pending trade hostilities with major trading partners Canada and China could make an already pricy kind of protein more expensive. Conservationists also fear Trump’s emphasis on deregulation could jeopardize fish stocks already in peril. But many in the commercial fishing and seafood processing industries said they expect Trump to allow fishing in protected areas and crack down on offshore wind expansion. Russia targets Ukrainian infrastructure with a massive attack by cruise missiles and drones KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia has launched a massive aerial attack against Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russia fired 93 cruise and ballistic missiles and almost 200 drones in Friday's bombardments. He says it is one of the heaviest bombardments of the country’s energy sector since Russia’s full-scale invasion almost three years ago. He says Ukrainian defenses shot down 81 missiles, including 11 cruise missiles that were intercepted by F-16 warplanes provided by Western allies earlier this year. Zelenskyy renewed his plea for international unity against Russian President Vladimir Putin. But uncertainty surrounds how the war might unfold next year. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to end the war and has thrown into doubt whether vital U.S. military support for Kyiv will continue. Veteran Daniel Penny, acquitted in NYC subway chokehold, will join Trump's suite at football game FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A military veteran who choked an agitated New York subway rider and was acquitted of homicide this week has been invited by Vice President-elect JD Vance to join Donald Trump’s suite at the Army-Navy football game on Saturday. Daniel Penny was cleared of criminally negligent homicide in Jordan Neely’s 2023 death. A more serious manslaughter charge was dismissed last week. Vance served in the Marine Corps and had commented on the acquittal earlier this week. He said that “justice was done in this case” and Penny should never have been prosecuted. New Jersey governor wants more federal resources for probe into drone sightings TOMS RIVER, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has asked the Biden administration to put more resources into the ongoing investigation of mysterious drone sightings being reported in the state and other parts of the region. Murphy, a Democrat, made the request in a letter Thursday, noting that state and local law enforcement remain “hamstrung” by existing laws and policies in their efforts to successfully counteract any nefarious drone activity. Murphy and other officials say there is no evidence that the drones pose a national security or a public safety threat. A state lawmaker says up to 180 aircraft have been reported to authorities since Nov. 18. About 3 in 10 are highly confident in Trump on Cabinet, spending or military oversight: AP-NORC poll WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans may have elected Donald Trump to a second term in November, but that doesn’t mean they have high confidence in his ability to choose well-qualified people for his Cabinet or effectively manage government spending, the military and the White House. That's according to a new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. About half of U.S. adults are “not at all confident” in Trump’s ability to appoint well-qualified people for high-level government positions. Only about 3 in 10 are “extremely” or “very” confident that Trump will pick qualified people to serve in his administration. President Macron names centrist ally Bayrou as France's next prime minister PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron has named centrist ally François Bayrou as prime minister, after a historic parliamentary vote ousted the previous government last week. The 73-year-old is a crucial partner in Macron’s centrist alliance and has been a well-known figure in French politics for decades. His political experience is seen as key in efforts to restore stability as no single party holds a majority in the National Assembly. Bayrou was recently cleared in a case relating to embezzlement of European Parliament funds. His predecessor resigned last week following a no-confidence vote prompted by budget disputes in the parliament, leaving France without a functioning government. Macron vowed last week to remain in office until his term ends in 2027. Yankees to get closer Devin Williams from Brewers for Nestor Cortes, Caleb Durbin, AP source says NEW YORK (AP) — A person familiar with the trade tells The Associated Press that the New York Yankees have agreed to acquire All-Star closer Devin Williams from the Milwaukee Brewers for left-hander Nestor Cortes and infield prospect Caleb Durbin and cash. A 30-year-old right-hander, Williams is eligible for free agency after the 2025 season. He was diagnosed during spring training with two stress fractures in his back and didn’t make his season debut until July 28.3 Dividend Stocks to Double Up on Right Now

SEALSQ Regains Compliance with Nasdaq’s Minimum Bid Price RequirementLAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — Tyrese Hunter scored 17 of his 26 points after halftime to lead Memphis to a 99-97 overtime win against two-time defending national champion and second-ranked UConn on Monday in the first round of the Maui Invitational . Hunter shot 7 of 10 from 3-point range for the Tigers (5-0), who were 12 of 22 from beyond at the arc as a team. PJ Haggerty had 22 points and five assists, Colby Rogers had 19 points and Dain Dainja scored 14. Tarris Reed Jr. had 22 points and 11 rebounds off the bench for the Huskies (4-1). Alex Karaban had 19 points and six assists, and Jaylin Stewart scored 16. Memphis led by as many as 13 with about four minutes left in regulation, but UConn chipped away and eventually tied it on Solo Ball’s 3-pointer with 1.2 seconds remaining. Memphis: The Tigers ranked second nationally in field goal percentage going into the game and shot it at a 54.7% clip. UConn: The Huskies saw their string of 17 consecutive wins dating back to February come to an end. The teams were tied at 92 with less than a minute remaining in overtime when UConn coach Dan Hurley was assessed a technical foul for his displeasure with an over-the-back call against Liam McNeeley. PJ Carter hit four straight free throws — two for the tech and the other pair for the personal foul — to give Memphis a 96-92 lead with 40.3 seconds to play. UConn had three players foul out. Memphis attempted 40 free throws and made 29 of them. Memphis will play the winner of Colorado-Michigan State on Tuesday in the second round of the invitational. UConn will play the loser of that game in the consolation bracket.

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(The Center Square) – U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Arizona, blasted U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ur Jaddou for her agency approving illegal border crossers as sponsors for illegal border crossers. At a U.S. House Judiciary subcommittee hearing , Biggs also pointed out that the sponsors were found to be committing Social Security and other fraud under her watch. Biggs addressed rampant fraud in a program created by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for inadmissible citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, who don’t qualify for admission into the U.S. Under Mayorkas, they were flown into the country through a CHNV parole program, used a CBP One phone app to apply for entry, and were released into the country. Part of the process requires having a “supporter” fill out an application on behalf of the CHNV parolee. While Mayorkas claimed app user parolees and supporters were thoroughly vetted, multiple Office of Inspector General reports disproved this claim, expressing security risks at airports. In August, flights of CHNV illegal border crossers were temporarily suspended after a USCIS internal review found that tens of thousands of CHNV fraudulent applications were processed. Supporters used fake Social Security numbers and phone numbers and listed the same physical address on nearly 20,000 applications, according to the report, The Center Square reported . Biggs asked Jaddou if she disputed the fact that supporters used the same Social Security Number on CHNV applications, which “happened at least 3,200 times. The same phone number used at least 3,300 times. The same supporter email address was used on applications nearly 2,000 times.” Jaddou said she didn’t have the report in front of her and didn’t dispute it. “You don’t really want to admit there’s this much rampant fraud,” he said. Biggs next cited examples of fraud that weren’t fixed. “The same exact 184-word response was used on more than 1,800 applications by nearly 194 CHNV supporters,” he said. “More than 460 nonexistent zip codes were used on supported applications on behalf of more than 2,800 CHV aliens. You can dance around and say you don't have the report in front of you, but these are the facts. This program is rife with fraud.” As of Aug. 6, DHS had approved more than 80,000 CHNV supporters for the program who were in the U.S. on a temporary basis. More from this section USCIS approved 224 CHNV parolees who were already in the country illegally as sponsors for CHNV parolees that came after them, meaning illegal foreign nationals were sponsoring illegal foreign nationals. USCIS also approved 28,322 illegal foreign nationals shielded from deportation through Temporary Protected Status as CHVN supporters; “19,865 SLEs approved as CHNV supporters, 311 DACA recipients approved as CHNV supporters, 1,300-plus aliens in the U.S. on temporary visas approved as CHNV supporters, 64 refugees approved as CHNV supporters, 19,112 conditional permanent residents approved this season as CHNV supporters,” he said. “That is the program that you are administering. I'm not talking the aliens. I'm not getting into the violation of law of the U.S. code 1182, which states that the use of parole is supposed to be a case-by-case basis.” Biggs said the supporter application process was so rampant with fraud that it was temporarily shut down but wasn’t fixed. The fraud is “still ongoing. We're waiting for the next report to confirm that these things are still going on,” he said. In addition to the USCIS report, a U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security investigation found that "as of mid-October 2023, there were 1.6 million inadmissible aliens awaiting travel authorizations through the CHNV program” and DHS was using 50 airports worldwide to fly them in, The Center Square reported . None flown into the country have a legal basis to enter the U.S. before being paroled through the CHNV program, DHS documents the committee obtained state. "All individuals paroled into the United States are, by definition, inadmissible, including those paroled under the CHNV processes," one of the DHS documents states. The CHNV parole program was among more than a dozen that House Republicans identified as illegal and cited as reasons to impeach Mayorkas. According to the latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection data , more than 852,000 illegal foreign nationals were processed and released into the country through the CBP One App and more than 531,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans deemed inadmissible were released into the country through the CHNV parole program, as of October. Under the Biden administration, more than three million illegal border crossers were reported from CHNV countries, The Center Square reported . Many have been directly linked to violent crimes committed against Americans, The Center Square reported .After two grand final losses in the past three seasons, John Longmire is set to quit as Sydney Swans coach. Longmire, 53, is expected to confirm the news at a 1.30pm press conference, ending his 15-year coaching stint at the Swans. Senior assistant Dean Cox, who knocked back offers to join his old club West Coast after Adam Simpson was sacked, could be at the head of the queue to replace Longmire. The news comes with players back in pre-season training after the Swans were smashed by the Brisbane Lions in the AFL grand final. It was a fourth grand final loss for Longmire as coach, going down in 2014, 2016, 2022 and 2024. Longmire also tasted premiership success in 2012 among his 194 wins in 334 games in charge after taking over from Paul Roos. Longmire was contracted for the 2025 season but in the wake of the grand final humiliation, having finished the season on top of the ladder, questions were being asked about his ongoing tenure. The Swans will address the situation on Tuesday afternoon. More to come Originally published as Sydney Swans coach John Longmire quits after second grand final loss in three yearsFor Makenzie Gilkison, spelling is such a struggle that a word like rhinoceros might come out as "rineanswsaurs" or sarcastic as "srkastik." The 14-year-old from suburban Indianapolis can sound out words, but her dyslexia makes the process so draining that she often struggles with comprehension. "I just assumed I was stupid," she recalled of her early grade school years. But assistive technology powered by artificial intelligence has helped her keep up with classmates. Last year, Makenzie was named to the National Junior Honor Society. She credits a customized AI-powered chatbot, a word prediction program and other tools that can read for her. "I would have just probably given up if I didn't have them," she said. Artificial intelligence holds the promise of helping countless other students with a range of visual, speech, language and hearing impairments to execute tasks that come easily to others. Schools everywhere have been wrestling with how and where to incorporate AI, but many are fast-tracking applications for students with disabilities. Getting the latest technology into the hands of students with disabilities is a priority for the U.S. Education Department, which has told schools they must consider whether students need tools like text-to-speech and alternative communication devices. New rules from the Department of Justice also will require schools and other government entities to make apps and online content accessible to those with disabilities. There is concern about how to ensure students using it — including those with disabilities — are still learning. Students can use artificial intelligence to summarize jumbled thoughts into an outline, summarize complicated passages, or even translate Shakespeare into common English. And computer-generated voices that can read passages for visually impaired and dyslexic students are becoming less robotic and more natural. "I'm seeing that a lot of students are kind of exploring on their own, almost feeling like they've found a cheat code in a video game," said Alexis Reid, an educational therapist in the Boston area who works with students with learning disabilities. But in her view, it is far from cheating: "We're meeting students where they are." Ben Snyder, a 14-year-old freshman from Larchmont, New York, who was recently diagnosed with a learning disability, has been increasingly using AI to help with homework. "Sometimes in math, my teachers will explain a problem to me, but it just makes absolutely no sense," he said. "So if I plug that problem into AI, it'll give me multiple different ways of explaining how to do that." He likes a program called Question AI. Earlier in the day, he asked the program to help him write an outline for a book report — a task he completed in 15 minutes that otherwise would have taken him an hour and a half because of his struggles with writing and organization. But he does think using AI to write the whole report crosses a line. "That's just cheating," Ben said. Schools have been trying to balance the technology's benefits against the risk that it will do too much. If a special education plan sets reading growth as a goal, the student needs to improve that skill. AI can't do it for them, said Mary Lawson, general counsel at the Council of the Great City Schools. But the technology can help level the playing field for students with disabilities, said Paul Sanft, director of a Minnesota-based center where families can try out different assistive technology tools and borrow devices. "There are definitely going to be people who use some of these tools in nefarious ways. That's always going to happen," Sanft said. "But I don't think that's the biggest concern with people with disabilities, who are just trying to do something that they couldn't do before." Another risk is that AI will track students into less rigorous courses of study. And, because it is so good at identifying patterns, AI might be able to figure out a student has a disability. Having that disclosed by AI and not the student or their family could create ethical dilemmas, said Luis Pérez, the disability and digital inclusion lead at CAST, formerly the Center for Applied Specialized Technology. Schools are using the technology to help students who struggle academically, even if they do not qualify for special education services. In Iowa, a new law requires students deemed not proficient — about a quarter of them — to get an individualized reading plan. As part of that effort, the state's education department spent $3 million on an AI-driven personalized tutoring program. When students struggle, a digital avatar intervenes. More AI tools are coming soon. The U.S. National Science Foundation is funding AI research and development. One firm is developing tools to help children with speech and language difficulties. Called the National AI Institute for Exceptional Education, it is headquartered at the University of Buffalo, which did pioneering work on handwriting recognition that helped the U.S. Postal Service save hundreds of millions of dollars by automating processing. "We are able to solve the postal application with very high accuracy. When it comes to children's handwriting, we fail very badly," said Venu Govindaraju, the director of the institute. He sees it as an area that needs more work, along with speech-to-text technology, which isn't as good at understanding children's voices, particularly if there is a speech impediment. Sorting through the sheer number of programs developed by education technology companies can be a time-consuming challenge for schools. Richard Culatta, CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education, said the nonprofit launched an effort this fall to make it easier for districts to vet what they are buying and ensure it is accessible. Makenzie wishes some of the tools were easier to use. Sometimes a feature will inexplicably be turned off, and she will be without it for a week while the tech team investigates. The challenges can be so cumbersome that some students resist the technology entirely. But Makenzie's mother, Nadine Gilkison, who works as a technology integration supervisor at Franklin Township Community School Corporation in Indiana, said she sees more promise than downside. In September, her district rolled out chatbots to help special education students in high school. She said teachers, who sometimes struggled to provide students the help they needed, became emotional when they heard about the program. Until now, students were reliant on someone to help them, unable to move ahead on their own. "Now we don't need to wait anymore," she said.

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Wild Lights at the Zoo highlights holiday season: Newest animal, Rajah the tiger, joining Santa, The Grinch at annual event

By BILL BARROW, Associated Press PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Newly married and sworn as a Naval officer, Jimmy Carter left his tiny hometown in 1946 hoping to climb the ranks and see the world. Less than a decade later, the death of his father and namesake, a merchant farmer and local politician who went by “Mr. Earl,” prompted the submariner and his wife, Rosalynn, to return to the rural life of Plains, Georgia, they thought they’d escaped. The lieutenant never would be an admiral. Instead, he became commander in chief. Years after his presidency ended in humbling defeat, he would add a Nobel Peace Prize, awarded not for his White House accomplishments but “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.” The life of James Earl Carter Jr., the 39th and longest-lived U.S. president, ended Sunday at the age of 100 where it began: Plains, the town of 600 that fueled his political rise, welcomed him after his fall and sustained him during 40 years of service that redefined what it means to be a former president. With the stubborn confidence of an engineer and an optimism rooted in his Baptist faith, Carter described his motivations in politics and beyond in the same way: an almost missionary zeal to solve problems and improve lives. Carter was raised amid racism, abject poverty and hard rural living — realities that shaped both his deliberate politics and emphasis on human rights. “He always felt a responsibility to help people,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend of Carter’s in Plains. “And when he couldn’t make change wherever he was, he decided he had to go higher.” Carter’s path, a mix of happenstance and calculation , pitted moral imperatives against political pragmatism; and it defied typical labels of American politics, especially caricatures of one-term presidents as failures. “We shouldn’t judge presidents by how popular they are in their day. That’s a very narrow way of assessing them,” Carter biographer Jonathan Alter told the Associated Press. “We should judge them by how they changed the country and the world for the better. On that score, Jimmy Carter is not in the first rank of American presidents, but he stands up quite well.” Later in life, Carter conceded that many Americans, even those too young to remember his tenure, judged him ineffective for failing to contain inflation or interest rates, end the energy crisis or quickly bring home American hostages in Iran. He gained admirers instead for his work at The Carter Center — advocating globally for public health, human rights and democracy since 1982 — and the decades he and Rosalynn wore hardhats and swung hammers with Habitat for Humanity. Yet the common view that he was better after the Oval Office than in it annoyed Carter, and his allies relished him living long enough to see historians reassess his presidency. “He doesn’t quite fit in today’s terms” of a left-right, red-blue scoreboard, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who visited the former president multiple times during his own White House bid. At various points in his political career, Carter labeled himself “progressive” or “conservative” — sometimes both at once. His most ambitious health care bill failed — perhaps one of his biggest legislative disappointments — because it didn’t go far enough to suit liberals. Republicans, especially after his 1980 defeat, cast him as a left-wing cartoon. It would be easiest to classify Carter as a centrist, Buttigieg said, “but there’s also something radical about the depth of his commitment to looking after those who are left out of society and out of the economy.” Indeed, Carter’s legacy is stitched with complexities, contradictions and evolutions — personal and political. The self-styled peacemaker was a war-trained Naval Academy graduate who promised Democratic challenger Ted Kennedy that he’d “kick his ass.” But he campaigned with a call to treat everyone with “respect and compassion and with love.” Carter vowed to restore America’s virtue after the shame of Vietnam and Watergate, and his technocratic, good-government approach didn’t suit Republicans who tagged government itself as the problem. It also sometimes put Carter at odds with fellow Democrats. The result still was a notable legislative record, with wins on the environment, education, and mental health care. He dramatically expanded federally protected lands, began deregulating air travel, railroads and trucking, and he put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy. As a fiscal hawk, Carter added a relative pittance to the national debt, unlike successors from both parties. Carter nonetheless struggled to make his achievements resonate with the electorate he charmed in 1976. Quoting Bob Dylan and grinning enthusiastically, he had promised voters he would “never tell a lie.” Once in Washington, though, he led like a joyless engineer, insisting his ideas would become reality and he’d be rewarded politically if only he could convince enough people with facts and logic. This served him well at Camp David, where he brokered peace between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Epypt’s Anwar Sadat, an experience that later sparked the idea of The Carter Center in Atlanta. Carter’s tenacity helped the center grow to a global force that monitored elections across five continents, enabled his freelance diplomacy and sent public health experts across the developing world. The center’s wins were personal for Carter, who hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm parasite, and nearly did. As president, though, the approach fell short when he urged consumers beleaguered by energy costs to turn down their thermostats. Or when he tried to be the nation’s cheerleader, beseeching Americans to overcome a collective “crisis of confidence.” Republican Ronald Reagan exploited Carter’s lecturing tone with a belittling quip in their lone 1980 debate. “There you go again,” the former Hollywood actor said in response to a wonky answer from the sitting president. “The Great Communicator” outpaced Carter in all but six states. Carter later suggested he “tried to do too much, too soon” and mused that he was incompatible with Washington culture: media figures, lobbyists and Georgetown social elites who looked down on the Georgians and their inner circle as “country come to town.” Carter carefully navigated divides on race and class on his way to the Oval Office. Born Oct. 1, 1924 , Carter was raised in the mostly Black community of Archery, just outside Plains, by a progressive mother and white supremacist father. Their home had no running water or electricity but the future president still grew up with the relative advantages of a locally prominent, land-owning family in a system of Jim Crow segregation. He wrote of President Franklin Roosevelt’s towering presence and his family’s Democratic Party roots, but his father soured on FDR, and Jimmy Carter never campaigned or governed as a New Deal liberal. He offered himself as a small-town peanut farmer with an understated style, carrying his own luggage, bunking with supporters during his first presidential campaign and always using his nickname. And he began his political career in a whites-only Democratic Party. As private citizens, he and Rosalynn supported integration as early as the 1950s and believed it inevitable. Carter refused to join the White Citizens Council in Plains and spoke out in his Baptist church against denying Black people access to worship services. “This is not my house; this is not your house,” he said in a churchwide meeting, reminding fellow parishioners their sanctuary belonged to God. Yet as the appointed chairman of Sumter County schools he never pushed to desegregate, thinking it impractical after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board decision. And while presidential candidate Carter would hail the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed by fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson when Carter was a state senator, there is no record of Carter publicly supporting it at the time. Carter overcame a ballot-stuffing opponent to win his legislative seat, then lost the 1966 governor’s race to an arch-segregationist. He won four years later by avoiding explicit mentions of race and campaigning to the right of his rival, who he mocked as “Cufflinks Carl” — the insult of an ascendant politician who never saw himself as part the establishment. Carter’s rural and small-town coalition in 1970 would match any victorious Republican electoral map in 2024. Once elected, though, Carter shocked his white conservative supporters — and landed on the cover of Time magazine — by declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” Before making the jump to Washington, Carter befriended the family of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whom he’d never sought out as he eyed the governor’s office. Carter lamented his foot-dragging on school integration as a “mistake.” But he also met, conspicuously, with Alabama’s segregationist Gov. George Wallace to accept his primary rival’s endorsement ahead of the 1976 Democratic convention. “He very shrewdly took advantage of his own Southerness,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor and expert on Carter’s campaigns. A coalition of Black voters and white moderate Democrats ultimately made Carter the last Democratic presidential nominee to sweep the Deep South. Then, just as he did in Georgia, he used his power in office to appoint more non-whites than all his predecessors had, combined. He once acknowledged “the secret shame” of white Americans who didn’t fight segregation. But he also told Alter that doing more would have sacrificed his political viability – and thus everything he accomplished in office and after. King’s daughter, Bernice King, described Carter as wisely “strategic” in winning higher offices to enact change. “He was a leader of conscience,” she said in an interview. Rosalynn Carter, who died on Nov. 19 at the age of 96, was identified by both husband and wife as the “more political” of the pair; she sat in on Cabinet meetings and urged him to postpone certain priorities, like pressing the Senate to relinquish control of the Panama Canal. “Let that go until the second term,” she would sometimes say. The president, recalled her former aide Kathy Cade, retorted that he was “going to do what’s right” even if “it might cut short the time I have.” Rosalynn held firm, Cade said: “She’d remind him you have to win to govern.” Carter also was the first president to appoint multiple women as Cabinet officers. Yet by his own telling, his career sprouted from chauvinism in the Carters’ early marriage: He did not consult Rosalynn when deciding to move back to Plains in 1953 or before launching his state Senate bid a decade later. Many years later, he called it “inconceivable” that he didn’t confer with the woman he described as his “full partner,” at home, in government and at The Carter Center. “We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business, and it continued when Jimmy got involved in politics,” Rosalynn Carter told AP in 2021. So deep was their trust that when Carter remained tethered to the White House in 1980 as 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, it was Rosalynn who campaigned on her husband’s behalf. “I just loved it,” she said, despite the bitterness of defeat. Fair or not, the label of a disastrous presidency had leading Democrats keep their distance, at least publicly, for many years, but Carter managed to remain relevant, writing books and weighing in on societal challenges. He lamented widening wealth gaps and the influence of money in politics. He voted for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and later declared that America had devolved from fully functioning democracy to “oligarchy.” Yet looking ahead to 2020, with Sanders running again, Carter warned Democrats not to “move to a very liberal program,” lest they help re-elect President Donald Trump. Carter scolded the Republican for his serial lies and threats to democracy, and chided the U.S. establishment for misunderstanding Trump’s populist appeal. He delighted in yearly convocations with Emory University freshmen, often asking them to guess how much he’d raised in his two general election campaigns. “Zero,” he’d gesture with a smile, explaining the public financing system candidates now avoid so they can raise billions. Carter still remained quite practical in partnering with wealthy corporations and foundations to advance Carter Center programs. Carter recognized that economic woes and the Iran crisis doomed his presidency, but offered no apologies for appointing Paul Volcker as the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate hikes would not curb inflation until Reagan’s presidency. He was proud of getting all the hostages home without starting a shooting war, even though Tehran would not free them until Reagan’s Inauguration Day. “Carter didn’t look at it” as a failure, Alter emphasized. “He said, ‘They came home safely.’ And that’s what he wanted.” Well into their 90s, the Carters greeted visitors at Plains’ Maranatha Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School and where he will have his last funeral before being buried on family property alongside Rosalynn . Carter, who made the congregation’s collection plates in his woodworking shop, still garnered headlines there, calling for women’s rights within religious institutions, many of which, he said, “subjugate” women in church and society. Carter was not one to dwell on regrets. “I am at peace with the accomplishments, regret the unrealized goals and utilize my former political position to enhance everything we do,” he wrote around his 90th birthday. The politician who had supposedly hated Washington politics also enjoyed hosting Democratic presidential contenders as public pilgrimages to Plains became advantageous again. Carter sat with Buttigieg for the final time March 1, 2020, hours before the Indiana mayor ended his campaign and endorsed eventual winner Joe Biden. “He asked me how I thought the campaign was going,” Buttigieg said, recalling that Carter flashed his signature grin and nodded along as the young candidate, born a year after Carter left office, “put the best face” on the walloping he endured the day before in South Carolina. Never breaking his smile, the 95-year-old host fired back, “I think you ought to drop out.” “So matter of fact,” Buttigieg said with a laugh. “It was somehow encouraging.” Carter had lived enough, won plenty and lost enough to take the long view. “He talked a lot about coming from nowhere,” Buttigieg said, not just to attain the presidency but to leverage “all of the instruments you have in life” and “make the world more peaceful.” In his farewell address as president, Carter said as much to the country that had embraced and rejected him. “The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language,” he declared. “Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.” Carter pledged to remain engaged with and for them as he returned “home to the South where I was born and raised,” home to Plains, where that young lieutenant had indeed become “a fellow citizen of the world.” —- Bill Barrow, based in Atlanta, has covered national politics including multiple presidential campaigns for the AP since 2012.