Foreign News
US ex-President Jimmy Carter’s wife Rosalynn dies aged 96
Former US First Lady Rosalynn Carter, the wife of ex-President Jimmy Carter, has died at the age of 96.
The Carter Center confirmed in a statement that she died peacefully with her family by her side.
On Friday, it was reported that she had entered a hospice care home in the state of Georgia, and was spending time with her 99-year-old husband, who has been in hospice care since February. Mrs Carter was diagnosed with dementia in May.
The longest-married first couple marked their 77th wedding anniversary in July. “Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” said Mr Carter in the statement.
She married President Carter on 7 July 1946 and they went on to have four children.
The Carters’ son, Chip, described her as a loving mother, extraordinary first lady and “a great humanitarian in her own right. She will be sorely missed not only by our family but by the many people who have better mental health care and access to resources for caregiving today.”
She is also survived by 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren, after losing a grandson in 2015.
When her husband began his political career in the 1960s – first as Georgia state senator, governor, and later president – Mrs Carter was focused on raising mental health awareness and reducing the stigma attached to people with mental illnesses.
As first lady of Georgia she was a member of a governor’s commission to improve services for the mentally ill, and as US First Lady she became honorary chair of the President’s Commission on Mental Health, which was key to the passage of a 1980 act that helped fund local mental health centres.
After leaving Washington she and her husband founded the Carter Center in 1982, through which she continued her advocacy work for mental health, early childhood immunisation, and other humanitarian causes.
The couple were also key figures in the Habitat For Humanity charity, helping build homes for families in need.
They received recognition for their humanitarian work in 2002 when Mr Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
In a 2013 interview with US TV network C-SPAN, he said: “I hope our legacy continues, more than just as first lady, because the Carter Center has been an integral part of our lives. And our motto is waging peace, fighting disease and building hope. And I hope that I have contributed something to mental health issues and help improve a little bit the lives of people living with mental illnesses.”
“She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”
Mrs Carter was born Eleanor Rosalynn Smith on 18 August 1927.
(BBC)
US President Donald Trump’s administration has exempted smartphones, computers and some other electronic devices from “reciprocal” tariffs, including the 125% levies imposed on Chinese imports.
US Customs and Border Patrol published a notice late on Friday explaining the goods would be excluded from Trump’s 10% global tariff on most countries and the much larger Chinese import tax.
The move comes after concerns from US tech companies that the price of gadgets could skyrocket, as many of them are made in China.
This is the first significant reprieve of any kind in Trump’s tariffs on China, with one trade analyst describing it as a “game-changer scenario”.
[BBC]
A notorious bandit kingpin and 100 of his suspected followers have been killed in a joint military operation in north-west Nigeria, authorities say.
Gwaska Dankarami was said to have been a high-value target who reportedly served as second-in-command to an Islamic State-linked leader.
The alleged gang leader had been hiding in the Munumu Forest, with authorities reporting that several other criminal hideouts were also destroyed across the state on Friday.
His apparent death comes after bandits kidnapped 43 villagers and killed four others in a deadly attack on a village called Maigora in the northern Katsina State earlier this week.
The police had said that it deployed security forces in pursuit of the kidnappers.
However, this is not the first time Dankarami’s death has been reported.
In 2022, the Nigerian Airforce claimed to have killed him in a similar operation.
The Katsina State commissioner for internal security and home affairs, Nasir Mua’zu, said the killing was a significant milestone in the fight against banditry in the state.
“It is expedient to state that this successful mission has significantly disrupted the criminal networks that have long terrorised communities across Faskari, Kankara, Bakori, Malumfashi, and Kafur,” Mua’zu added.
Security forces said they had also recovered and destroyed two machine guns and locally fabricated shotguns.
In a separate operation on Thursday, security forces killed six bandits, including their commander, while several other bandits escaped with bullet wounds.
Seven motorcycles were also intercepted and recovered during the intelligence-led operation.
Katsina, the home state of former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, has witnessed sporadic attacks by bandits and kidnappers that have claimed many lives.
The state governor, Malam Dikko Umaru Radda, has expressed the government’s determination to eliminate criminals and ensure every forest is thoroughly monitored to protect residents.
The authorities said that the operations are part of a broader effort to restore stability in the state and the north-west region of Nigeria, which has witnessed repeated banditry attacks.
[BBC]
At least three suspected rebel fighters and one Indian soldier have been killed in separate firefights in Indian administered Kashmir less than a week after Interior Minister Amit Shah visited the disputed territory.
The Indian army said on Saturday that Indian soldiers killed three fighters in a gun battle that began on Wednesday in a remote forest in Kishtwar in southern Kashmir.
Senior Indian army official Brigadier JBS Rathi said troops had displayed “great tactical acumen”.
“In the gun battle, three terrorists were neutralised,” he told reporters on Saturday in a commonly used term for rebels opposed to Indian rule in Kashmir.
Weapons and “war-like stores” were recovered from the site, the army’s White Knight Corps posted on social media platform X.
A soldier was killed in a separate incident late on Friday night in Sunderbani district along the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border that cuts Indian-administered Kashmir into two.
The White Knight Corps said on X troops had “foiled an infiltration attempt” there.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan since their independence in 1947, with both claiming the territory in full but governing only part of it.
India has an estimated 500,000 soldiers deployed in the territory after an armed uprising against Indian rule in the late 1980s.
Thousands of people, most of them Kashmir civilians, have been killed as rebel groups have fought Indian forces, seeking independence for Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan.
In 2019, a report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights accused India of human rights violations in Kashmir and called for a commission of inquiry into the allegations. The report came nearly a year after the then UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Husseincalled for an international investigation into abuses in the Muslim-majority region.
Last month, four police officers and two suspected rebels were killed in the region in a clash that also wounded several police officers.
The territory has simmered in anger since 2019 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi ended the region’s semi-autonomy and drastically curbed dissent, civil liberties and media freedoms while intensifying military operations.
Thousands of additional troops, including special forces, were deployed across southern mountainous areas last year following a series of deadly rebel attacks that killed more than 50 soldiers over three years.
India regularly blames Pakistan for pushing rebels across the LoC to launch attacks on Indian forces.
[Aljazeera]
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