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Fmr. US President Jimmy Carter turns 100

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Jimmy Carter celebrates his 100th birthday on Tuesday, making him the first US president to reach the milestone.

Carter, a Democrat who served in the White House from 1977 to 1981, has spent the past 19 months in hospice care in his home state of Georgia.

But the former peanut farmer, who first entered politics in the 1960s as a state senator, is “emotionally engaged and still having experiences and laughing, loving,” his grandson, Jason, said in September.

And the centenarian still has political ambitions: “I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris” in November’s election, the humanitarian and Nobel Prize recipient said, according to his grandson.

To honour the occasion, volunteers with Habitat for Humanity – the housing charity Carter has worked with for 40 years – are building 30 homes in Minnesota this week.

There will also be events in Plains, the former Georgia governor’s hometown, to celebrate the occasion on Tuesday. There will be a flyover of military jets and 100 new citizens will have naturalisation ceremonies in his honour.

It comes after a star-studded concert was held in Atlanta, Georgia, earlier this month to celebrate the 39th president’s milestone birthday and to raise funds for The Carter Center.

“It was an incredible evening, full of good music and heartfelt tributes, and it made history as the first-ever 100th birthday celebration for a living American president,” Carter said at the time.

The concert, which raised more than $1.2m (£900,000) and also featured recorded messages from other presidents, will air on Georgia Public Broadcasting on Tuesday. Dozens of musical acts performed at the event and thousands attended.

The former president will be watching the broadcast on Tuesday, his family said.

Carter, who was not able to attend the concert in person, made a rare public appearance in November 2023 when he attended a memorial service for his wife Rosalynn who died aged 96 earlier that month.

Their 77-year marriage remains the longest of any first couple.

When Carter first entered hospice care in Plains, Georgia, in February 2023, some relatives reportedly felt he only had a matter of days left to live.

“It’s a gift,” Josh Carter, another of his grandsons, said of the last few months in a recent interview with the New York Times. “It’s a gift that I didn’t know we were going to get.”

Others say Carter’s story has also raised awareness of the benefits of hospice care. “We are all rooting for Jimmy Carter,” Barbara Pearce, the CEO of Connecticut Hospice, told the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

“He has done more for us than we could ever do for ourselves by pointing out that it’s a reasonable choice to make,” she said. “He’s given everybody permission to consider [hospice care] as a reasonable option that doesn’t shorten their life, but does increase their comfort and fulfilment.”

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Last hospital in North Gaza governorate evacuated after Israeli order

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The last hospital providing health services in the North Gaza governorate is out of service after the Israeli military ordered its immediate evacuation, the facility’s director has said.

Dr Mohammed Salha told the BBC patients were evacuated from al-Awda hospital in Jabalia on Thursday evening after “two weeks of siege”, and there was now “no health facility working in the north”.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is yet to respond to enquiries.

It comes as efforts continue to secure a ceasefire. Hamas says it is “thoroughly reviewing” a US plan, which the White House has said has been “signed off” by Israel.US President Donald Trump said on Friday he believed a deal was “very close”. But Hamas has said the plan does not satisfy its core demands including Israel’s commitment to ending the war.

The deal would reportedly involve a 60-day pause in fighting, with Hamas releasing 28 hostages – alive and dead – in the first week, with the remaining 30 hostages freed once a permanent ceasefire is in place. More than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners would be released, while humanitarian aid would be sent to Gaza via the United Nations and other agencies.

Israel has continued its military operation in the territory – at least 72 people were killed in strikes over the past 24 hours, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said on Friday.

On Thursday evening, the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of areas including the al-Awda hospital, saying there was terrorist activity in the region which warranted the IDF to “expand its offensive activity”.

(BBC News)

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India says over 1,000 nationals deported by US since January

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More than a thousand Indians have “come back or [been] deported” from the United States since January, India’s foreign ministry has said.

Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that around 62% of them came on commercial flights, without providing more details.

This comes in the wake of President Donald Trump’s campaign against undocumented migrants to the US. Trump had earlier said that India “will do what’s right” on the deportation of illegal migrants.

In February, the US had deported more than hundred Indians on a US military flight, with reports saying some of them were brought back shackled.

“We have close cooperation between India and the United States on migration issues,” Mr Jaiswal said during the ministry’s weekly briefing, adding that India verifies nationalities before “we take them back”.

In total, the US is said to have identified about 18,000 Indian nationals it believes entered the country illegally.

Earlier this month, the US Embassy in India issued a warning that overstaying in the US could lead to deportation or a permanent ban on entry in the country, even for those who entered legally.

Mr Jaiswal also spoke about the Trump administration’s updated policy on student visas which is likely to impact Indian students planning to enrol in US universities.

The US had announced on Thursday that it had halted the scheduling of new visa interviews for foreign students as it considered expanding the screening of their social media activities.

“While we note that issuance of a visa is a sovereign function, we hope that the application of Indian students will be considered on merit, and they will be able to join their academic programs on time,” Mr Jaiswal said.

Mr Jaiswal also said that 330,000 Indians students had gone to the US for studies in 2023-24 – which makes India the largest source of international students in the country.

On Thursday, expanding its new visa policy, the US further announced that it was working to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields”.

(BBC News)

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US trade court blocks Trump tariffs

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A US federal court has blocked President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, in a major blow to a key part of his economic policies.

The Court of International Trade rules that the emergency law invoked by the White House does not give the president unilateral authority to impose tariffs on nearly every country.

It also blocks the separate levies the US imposed on China, Mexico and Canada.

Within minutes the Trump administration lodged an appeal, saying: “It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency”.

So there will be no change at the border just yet, business reporter Katie Silver writes – as the decision goes through the appeals process.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of five small businesses that import goods from abroad.

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