Free Republic

Like some horror movie that just won’t end, Jimmy Carter’s love affair with North Korea keeps rolling along. Now on his third pilgrimage to the Kim dynasty’s totalitarian state, Carter arrived Tuesday in Pyongyang, with a trio of fellow ex-leaders in tow, from Finland, Ireland and Norway. From Pyongyang, he’s now blogging away, under the down-home caption, “Jimmy Carter’s blog from North Korea.” At least, I assume it’s really Jimmy Carter writing this cant, though it reads like copy fresh out of Pyongyang’s own propaganda mill. There’s an attempt at cracker-barrel diplomacy, in which Carter enthuses about the “warm and...

JERUSALEM - Hamas bombers attacked an Israeli-Gaza border crossing under the cover of fog Saturday, detonating two jeeps made to look like Israeli military vehicles and packed with hundreds of pounds of explosives. The twin blasts, just hours before the Jewish Passover holiday, wounded 13 Israeli soldiers in what Hamas said was an attempt to break the nearly yearlong blockade of the territory. Four Hamas assailants died, Israeli officials said. Meanwhile, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter met with senior Hamas leaders in Damascus, Syria, for a second day to hear their views, defying U.S. and Israeli warnings that doing so...

KATHMANDU (AFP) — Former US president Jimmy Carter met the leaders of Nepal's former Maoist rebels Tuesday, even though the group remains classified by Washington as a foreign "terrorist" organisation. Carter, whose democracy and human rights organisation is monitoring this Thursday's landmark elections in the Himalayan nation, was given assurances by the Maoists that the polls would be peaceful. "President Carter wanted to know about the election situation and expressed his concern over whether it will be free and fair," Baburam Bhattarai, the Maoists' second-in-command, told reporters after the meeting. "We assured him that the elections will be held in...