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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.blackjack picture 。

Croatia’s incumbent president wins most votes at polls but still faces runoff

This photo shows bank ATM machines in Seoul, Dec. 25. Yonhap The ceiling on bank deposits guaranteed in case of bankruptcies will be raised from 50 million won ($34,000) to 100 million won sometime next year, the financial regulator said Monday. Last week, the National Assembly passed a bill on doubling the ceiling of bank deposits protected by law, which has been in place since 2001, to better reflect the growth of the country's economy. The revision will take effect within one year of promulgation. An alternative trading system (ATS) is also expected to set sail during the first half of next year for greater efficiency and convenience in the trading of securities, according to the Financial Services Commission (FSC). Should the country's first ATS be put in place, the country's stock exchange sector may undergo an overhaul. Currently, the Korea Exchange, launched in 1956, is the country's only national operator of the stock market. The regulator plans to resume stock short selling on March 31 after establishing a platform to monitor short selling that can help identify illegal transactions. Korea imposed a temporary ban on stock short selling in November 2023 after a series of naked short selling allegations were detected at several global investment banks in the country. The ban was originally set to be lifted before the start of July but has been extended until March 30. Short selling has been a contentious political issue in Korea, with retail investors often blaming the practice for driving stocks lower. (Yonhap)

Published 5:27 pm Thursday, November 21, 2024 By austinsubmitted David L. Schubert, 82 David Lee Schubert, age 82, of Austin, Minnesota, passed away on Sunday, November 17, 2024, at Mayo Clinic Hospital Rochester, Saint Marys Campus. Dave was born February 3, 1942, in Owatonna, Minnesota, to Reuben and Florence (Kotz) Schubert. When he was seven, the family moved to Austin, where he grew up and attended Catholic schools. In March 1976, Dave married Rose Klapperich at Crane Community Chapel in Austin and together had two children. Throughout his life, Dave worked a variety of jobs, retiring after 15 years from Akkerman in Brownsdale. He belonged to the Moose Club, where he served one term as a governor. He was also a member of Eagles Clubs and enjoyed going to Stag on Monday nights. In his free time, Dave loved woodworking, camping at Hope Oak Knoll and Brookside campgrounds, enjoying classic country music, and engaging in games like horseshoes, cribbage, and huckley buck. His fun-loving spirit and love for karaoke at Hope Oak Knoll Campground added joy to those around him. Dave also loved watching NASCAR and participating in NASCAR pools. Survivors include his wife, Rose Schubert; two children, Sara (Andy) Erkeneff and Jeff (Brenda) Schubert; four grandchildren, Braden, Kaylen (Zach), Morgan, and Ethan; one great-grandchild, Paisley; brother, Jim (Kathy) Schubert; sisters, Jean Ingvaldson, Sandy (Curt) Rayman, and Debbie (Willy) Dickenson; sisters-in-law, Judi Schubert and Dory (Leonard) Fravel; brothers-in-law, Owen (Leola) Klapperich, and Reid (Barb) Klapperich; and many nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents, Reuben and Florence Schubert; brother, Robert “Bob” Schubert; in-laws, Lawrence and Esther Klapperich; and brother-in-law, Barry Klapperich. A memorial service for Dave will be held at 12:00 noon on Saturday, November 30, 2024, at Worlein-Hoff Funeral Home in Austin. The visitation will take place from 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. prior to the service. A private interment will be held in Grandview Cemetery, Austin. Worlein-Hoff Funeral Homes are assisting the family with arrangements. Condolences may be expressed to the family online at www.worlein.com.A lack of rules to help keep aging drivers — and you — safer on the streets causes serious, even fatal, consequences, Scripps News Cleveland found in a recent investigative report. So-called "mature drivers" (55+) were the most common variable in Ohio motor vehicle crashes over the last six years. State records show mature drivers were involved in 525,290 crashes between Jan. 1, 2019, and Nov. 12, 2024. The number of crashes involving mature drivers was higher than youth-related crashes and speed-related crashes. Despite those numbers, Ohio and other states have no special provisions to ensure older drivers are safe behind the wheel. Ignoring the risk "We really, as a society, mostly ignore it," said Sharona Hoffman , Case Western Reserve University, School of Law, and author of "Aging with a Plan: How a Little Thought Today Can Vastly Improve Your Tomorrow," which provides resources to help middle-aged and older adults deal with all aspects of aging, including driving. "There is not a good legal framework that tries to identify unsafe driving and address it," she said. Ohio is one of 13 states that does not have any regulations aimed at aging drivers on the roadways, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association. Other states have only enacted minor provisions, including more frequent license renewals and vision tests and requiring drivers to renew their licenses in person instead of by mail. Nevada and Washington D.C. require a doctor's note for drivers over 70. Only Illinois requires drivers to take another road test after they turn 75. Hoffman said driving decisions are mostly left to families. "Doctors often don’t get involved in that and so it’s up to families, and that can be extremely difficult," she said. Hoffman said older drivers often "don't want to hear they are a hazard," and families are often reluctant to engage in difficult conversations with loved ones about driving. At the same time, more older Americans are driving. The most recent Federal Highway Administration estimate is that there are over 34 million licensed drivers who are 70 or older in the U.S. 'If I wasn't there...' Even serious incidents can have little or no impact on an aging driver's license. Over the summer, Newburgh Heights Patrol Officer Russ Veverka was working his regular overnight shift on Interstate 77 when one car caught his attention. The driver was headed northbound in the southbound lane. At the same time, several vehicles were approaching from the opposite direction. "The one thing I’m not going to have is another vehicle hit head-on with another vehicle in front of me," he said. "I don’t think I could handle that at all." So from a grassy knoll near the Harvard Avenue bridge, Officer Veverka activated his overhead lights and drove onto the highway, blocking a lane. The driver saw him and stopped. The driver turned out to be a 65-year-old man who had been reported as a missing endangered adult earlier that day. A 4-year-old relative was standing in the backseat with no restraints. "Seeing that, my heart wanted to drop," Veverka said. The driver appeared confused and kept saying he was on Interstate 480. He had been driving around with the little boy for hours. After stopping the wrong-way driver, Veverka submitted form 2308 to the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles to request the driver take a road test. "That's the best we can do right now," Veverka said. But when Scripps News Cleveland reached out to the driver's wife, she told us nothing had changed. She said her husband is still driving, including picking up the 4-year-old boy from daycare. Jackson Township tragedy "We all have family members that we think, 'Eh, maybe they shouldn't be driving," said Jackson Township Fire Chief Tim Berczik. His department recently started outreach efforts to older drivers after reviewing the city's crashes over the last year. He found mature drivers were involved in eight fatalities in the city of approximately 44,000 residents, including a crash that killed a 69-year-old grandfather in October. Berczik said an 81-year-old woman crashed into Angello's 2 Go pizza shop when she accidentally hit the gas pedal instead of the brake pedal in her car. His staff is now showing older drivers how to stay safer in their vehicles, including proper seat and mirror placement. They also encourage anyone with concerns to be retested. "We're not talking in any way about, 'We need to take car keys away from senior folks,'" he said. "Make it a group decision that maybe we don't drive as much." He said mature drivers can limit the distances they drive, stop driving at night, or stick to familiar areas to keep themselves and others safer on the roads. 'Life is for the young..." Handing over your keys carries its own consequences. "We live in a society where our autonomy often depends on driving," Hoffman said. "They won’t be able to go to doctor’s appointments as easily, and they can become socially isolated, which is catastrophic for anyone, but especially older people." "If you are lonely, if you are not engaging with other people, that is a sure recipe for cognitive decline and other physical and mental health problems," she said. In a recent law review article, "Patient Autonomy, Public Safety, and Drivers with Cognitive Decline ," Hoffman and her co-author recommended doctors be required to send patients diagnosed with cognitive decline and other conditions for road tests. Right now, medical professionals are only encouraged to notify the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles about their concerns about a patient's driving. However, Scripps News Cleveland found only 18% of those drivers lost their licenses. Hoffman also said law enforcement officers should be trained to identify cognitive decline and report problem drivers. "I've had relatives who've driven into mailboxes, lamp posts, and parked cars and each time they have just gotten a warning or a ticket," she said. 76-year-old Brook Park resident Rose Ramsey said she isn't as confident in her driving skills as she used to be. "Once in a blue moon, I kind of forget the route that I was going," she said. "I'm planning on going a certain place and then I just kind of have to let the car lead the way." When she is worried about taking the wheel, she relies on her husband of 56 years, Kenneth. "I have my own chauffeur," she said. She supports requiring drivers to be retested as they get older. "John Q. Public and myself needs to be safe," she said. Ramsey said she knows that means she and her husband will eventually have to give up their own car keys. She admits it will not be easy. "I know it would be very difficult for us and yet I do understand that time is coming," she said. "Life is for the young, isn't it?" What should you do? If you're concerned about a loved one's driving abilities, Hoffman and Berczik both recommend the following: Be compassionate during your conversation Be a passenger so you can observe their driving skills Be proactive by involving their doctor, encouraging your loved one to get retested and/or set limits on when and how they drive This story was originally published by Sarah Buduson at Scripps News Cleveland .

Walter Bibikow/DigitalVision via Getty Images Introduction What will 2025 look like? I don't know. And, as I've mentioned in prior articles, that uncertainty doesn't concern me much. As silly as that might sound coming from someone who tries to Test Drive iREIT© on Alpha For FREE (for 2 Weeks) Join iREIT on Alpha today to get the most in-depth research that includes REITs, mREITs, Preferreds, BDCs, MLPs, ETFs, and other income alternatives. 438 testimonials and most are 5 stars. Nothing to lose with our FREE 2-week trial . And this offer includes a 2-Week FREE TRIAL plus Brad Thomas' FREE book . Leo Nelissen is an analyst focusing on major economic developments related to supply chains, infrastructure, and commodities. He is a contributing author for iREIT®+HOYA Capital . As a member of the iREIT®+HOYA Capital team, Leo aims to provide insightful analysis and actionable investment ideas, with a particular emphasis on dividend growth opportunities. Learn More . Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have a beneficial long position in the shares of TPL, LB, REXR, CME either through stock ownership, options, or other derivatives. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.