Former US president Jimmy Carter, appearing fully recovered from dehydration suffered while helping to build a home for a charity in Canada, was on Friday released from an overnight hospital stay and addressed the project’s closing ceremony.
Carter, 92, collapsed on Thursday while working at the Winnipeg construction site for Habitat for Humanity, which promotes affordable home ownership, and was taken to St Boniface General Hospital for medical treatment and tests.
By Friday morning, Carter was smiling as he returned to the building site to help start the project’s last day.
Photo: The Canadian Press via AP
Hours later, he and his wife, Rosalynn, 89, attended closing ceremonies at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Manitoba’s capital, receiving a rousing ovation from the crowd.
Dressed in blue jeans, a T-shirt and lightweight jacket, a relaxed, fit-looking Carter climbed a short flight of steps to the stage to salute the organization’s members for their contributions.
“I look upon all the volunteers, in a very sincere way, as human rights heroes, and I thank you for it,” he said, joking that his “bringing attention to this Habitat project was completely unintentional.”
The former first lady told the crowd that her husband received a clean bill of health after an extensive battery of tests during his brief hospitalization, including from one test designed to detect heart damage.
The results showed “there has never been any kind of damage at all to Jimmy Carter’s heart,” she said. “I knew he had a good heart.”
Thursday’s health scare generated an outpouring of support for Carter, a US Democrat who served in the White House from January 1977 to January 1981 and has lived longer after his term in office than any other president in US history.
A high point of his presidency was Carter’s role in brokering the 1978 Camp David Accords that ushered in peace between Israel and Egypt.
However, having left office profoundly unpopular, he is widely regarded as a better former president than he was a president, and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his humanitarian work.
Carter disclosed in August 2015 that he had been diagnosed with a form of skin cancer called melanoma that had spread to his brain and elsewhere, and had been spotted during liver surgery.
However, months later Carter told the Maranatha Baptist Church, where he teaches Sunday school in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, that his latest brain scan showed no sign of the disease.
Carter was in Canada for a project to build 150 new homes for needy families, celebrating the country’s 150th independence anniversary.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese