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MUTARE, Zimbabwe, Oct. 14 (UPI) -- Famine on a scale never before seen in Zimbabwe is quickly and quietly overtaking the country, aid workers said. Emaciated children are dying a rate that is overwhelming rural hospitals and is even spreading to sections of the urban middle classes as a result of an economic catastrophe brought about by President Robert Mugabe's policies, The Times of London reported Tuesday. The newspaper said that an undercover 600-mile journey through Zimababwe's Manicaland province revealed exhausted food reserves and widespread instances of kwashiorkor, marasmus and pellagra -- diseases brought about by hunger. About 5 million...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Former President Jimmy Carter said on Friday the "atrocious economic policies" of the Bush administration had caused the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Carter told reporters on a stopover in Brussels that "profligate spending," massive borrowing and dramatic tax cuts since President George W. Bush took office in 2001 were behind the market turmoil and economic crisis.

<p>Jimmy Carter became our 39th president at the young age of 52. He was a one-term governor from Plains, GA, where he managed the family peanut farm and taught Sunday school. He was also a graduate of the Naval Academy and served seven years in the Navy, leaving as a lieutenant.</p>

The roots of today's mortgage-based financial crisis can be traced back to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which Jimmy Carter signed in 1977. Seeking to address complaints from anti-poverty activists and housing advocates about banks allegedly discriminating against minority borrowers and "redlining" inner-city neighborhoods, the CRA decreed that banks had "an affirmative obligation" to meet the credit needs of victims of discrimination in borrowing. To add a government stick to the process, the CRA decreed that federal banking regulators would consider how well banks were doing in meeting the goal of more multiculturalism in loaning when considering requests by banks...

The Subprime home mortgage collapse...a Primer. It's ALL about the CRA of 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 - This required banks to offer credit throughout their entire market area for “underserved” populations and small businesses. The CRA gave incentives to help low income borrowers become “home owners”. Liberals call this group “low income borrowers”. Conservatives call them a RISK!The CRA was passed by the Carter administration. In 1995 the Clinton administration authorized subprime loans under the CRA. Democrats added these provisions for the securitization of subprime loans and then ENFORCED the lending to high risk individuals. By 2000,...

It may be political poison for U.S. government officials to talk to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but the taboo does not extend to NPR. NPR’s Steve Inskeep interviewed the controversial leader this afternoon in New York and pulled no punches. Ahmadinejad is in the United States to address the United Nation’s General Assembly, which is meeting this week. In an often heated conversation, according to the transcript, Inskeep confronts Ahmadinejad on Israel, “wiping countries off the map and chopping off hands” — and the Beatles and Led Zeppelin. Ahmadinejad, for his part, denies that Iran has provoked the United States,...

The Clinton administration has turned the Community Reinvestment Act, a once-obscure and lightly enforced banking regulation law, into one of the most powerful mandates shaping American cities—and, as Senate Banking Committee chairman Phil Gramm memorably put it, a vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks. Under its provisions, U.S. banks have committed nearly $1 trillion for inner-city and low-income mortgages and real estate development projects, most of it funneled through a nationwide network of left-wing community groups, intent, in some cases, on teaching their low-income clients that the financial system is their enemy and, implicitly, that government, rather than their...

It is long been traditional for living ex-presidents to be invited to address their party’s quadrennial convention during presidential election years. The fact that Jimmy Carter was not invited to give the traditional address was no accident. Nor is it true, as Jimmy Carter has falsely claimed, that it was he who made the decision not to speak to the convention. The Democratic Party, and its leaders, made a deliberate decision not to invite Jimmy Carter precisely because they so fundamentally disagree with the bigotry toward Israel and its Jewish supporters that he displayed both in his mendacious book Palestine:...

Jimmy Carter, Unwitting Crusader for Islamofascism   written by Ken on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 #fullpost{display:inline;}Not since Neville Chamberlain has the world seen as wreckless an appeaser as Jimmy Carter. During the Jimmy Carter nightmare in the 70's, Iran took 52 American's hostage for 444 days and had the most powerful nation on Earth on its knees. Not until a real President, Ronald Reagan, came to office did Iran take the US serious enough to release all American Hostages. Since then we have had to live with Iran as a rogue Islamic state thanks to the peanut farmer, turn...

PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - Panama has ruled out hosting a U.S. military base to replace one in Ecuador which is being reclaimed by the Quito government, a senior Panamanian official said on Friday. Panama -- along with Peru and Colombia -- had been tipped as a possible site to replace the Manta air base in western Ecuador, a key strategic asset in Washington's campaign to stop Latin American cocaine from reaching the United States.

Former US President Jimmy Carter urged Washington to establish friendly ties with Tehran, reiterating the need for his country to resume trade relations with Iran, which he described as a "rational" nation. Speaking at the Hay Festival yesterday, Carter also suggested the US should provide nuclear power technology and fuel to Iran as a show of goodwill. "What happens if, in three years' time, Iran has a nuclear weapon," Carter asked. "I'm not sure that is going to happen, but if it does, what do we do? They are rational people like all of us in this room. Do they...

JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - Thousands of foreigners sought refuge at crowded community centres and police stations in Johannesburg on Monday as the death toll from a wave of xenophobic violence rose to at least 22. Mobs roaming through poor townships around South Africa's economic capital have killed and beaten up immigrants over the past week, with Zimbabweans and other Africans reporting purges by armed locals looking for foreigners. The violence erupted in Alexandra township early last week when two people were killed in an attack, and police said Monday that the number dead had risen to 22 with more than 250...

The United States registered an official protest with Israel against its ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, for calling former U.S. President Jimmy Carter an "enemy of Israel" prior to Carter's recent visit to the region. A senior Foreign Ministry source said Saturday that the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv asked that Gillerman be made aware of the U.S. administration's dissatisfaction with the disrespectful comments about the former U.S. President.

Recent talks between former president Jimmy Carter and a militant leader failed to make much of a difference in Gaza, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said Wednesday. Carter's meeting with exiled Hamas militant leader Khaled Meshaal, which drew anger from both the U.S. and Israel, did not produce a cease fire or prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel, al-Malki told Agence France-Presse. "The only thing he achieved was permission on the part of Khaled Meshaal of Hamas to deliver a letter from a detained Israeli soldier to his family. Nothing else," al-Malki told AFP. Also on Wednesday, Carter stopped just...

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday accused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of not telling the truth about warnings she said her department gave Carter not to speak to Hamas before a Middle East trip. The State Department has said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East, issued the warning before Carter, a veteran of Middle East diplomacy, went on his trip last week. Rice said in Kuwait on Tuesday: "We counseled President Carter against going to the region and particularly against having contact with Hamas." "President Carter...

The decision of the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award former President Jimmy Carter the Nobel Peace Prize for 2002 requires some serious review. The Committee stated that it was honoring the former president "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." But history tells a different story - that of a political neophyte president who, when it came to conducting domestic and foreign affairs, was way out of his depth. According to Michael Schoenfeld of Commentary, who reviewed Carter's book Living Faith,...

Former US president defends meetings with Hamas terrorists, tells university students in Egypt sanctions imposed on Gaza Strip are 'criminal atrocity' after meeting in private with Hamas leaders. 'For every Israeli killed,' says Carter, 'between 30 to 40 Palestinians are killed because of the extreme military capability of Israel' News agencies Published: 04.18.08, 00:27 / Israel News Former US President Jimmy Carter called the blockade of Gaza a crime and an atrocity on Thursday and said US attempts to undermine the Islamist movement Hamas had been counterproductive. Speaking at the American University in Cairo after talks with Hamas leaders from,...

Former U.S. President Carter looks on during his meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, not pictured, at the Presidential palace in Cairo, Egypt, Thursday, April 17, 2008. Hamas says a delegation from Gaza has entered Egypt for a meeting with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. The Islamic militant party, which rules the Gaza Strip, announced Wednesday two of its Gaza leaders, Mahmoud Zahar and Said Siyam, are going to meet Carter in Cairo either Wednesday or Thursday. Palestinian fighters protest in the Palestinian refugee camp of al-Beddawi near Tripoli in north Lebanon, against the Israeli violence in Gaza. Jimmy Carter...

JERUSALEM — A U.S. lawmaker introduced legislation Wednesday to strip former President Jimmy Carter's Georgia-based scholarly institution of taxpayer support because of Carter's plans to meet with the top leaders of the Palestinian terror group Hamas.

PHILADELPHIA, (AP) -- Sen. Barack Obama on Wednesday criticized former President Jimmy Carter for meeting with leaders of the Islamic terrorist group Hamas as he tried to reassure Jewish voters that his candidacy isn't a threat to them or U.S. support for Israel. The Democratic presidential candidate's comments, made to a group of Jewish leaders here, were his first on Carter's controversial meeting scheduled this week in Egypt. Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting John McCain called on Obama to repudiate Carter in a speech to The Associated Press Monday. Obama told the Jewish group he had a "fundamental disagreement" with Carter, who...