Carter Center

Many days, the sheer weight of Iszurette Hunter's clinical depression becomes more than she can lift. She clings to her bed in her South Los Angeles home. Important obligations slide away, including keeping appointments with doctors who are trying to control her asthma and high blood pressure. "I don't have no desire," she explains. As the nation seeks to extend healthcare coverage to millions of new and in many cases chronically ill patients, one of the great parallel challenges to controlling costs and improving delivery of care will be managing the mental health problems of people like Hunter.

One disgruntled forward and one desperate team. That perfect hockey storm resulted in the struggling Kings' acquiring center Jeff Carter from the Columbus Blue Jackets on Thursday in exchange for defenseman Jack Johnson and a first-round draft choice in 2012 or 2013. If the Kings do not make the playoffs this season, the pick slides to next year. The deal reunites the 27-year-old Carter, a former 46-goal scorer, with Mike Richards, his close friend and former teammate in Philadelphia.

A longtime aide to former President Carter has resigned from the Carter Center think tank, calling the former president's new book on Israel and the Arabs one-sided and filled with errors. Kenneth Stein, the Carter Center's first executive director and founder of its Middle East program, sent a letter to Carter and others bluntly criticizing the book.

Former President Carter on Friday left the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, after negotiating the release of an American who had been imprisoned since January for illegally entering the secretive country, officials said. Carter went to North Korea this week seeking the release of Boston native Aijalon Mahli Gomes, a former English teacher in South Korea who was sentenced to eight years in prison for entering the North from China in January. North Korea's state-run media reported in July that Gomes had tried to commit suicide.

Fourteen members of an advisory board to President Carter's human rights organization resigned Thursday to protest his new book, which has been attacked as unfairly critical of Israel and riddled with inaccuracies. The resignations at the Carter Center are the latest backlash against the book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," which has drawn fire from Jewish groups and fellow Democrats, and led to the resignation last month of Kenneth W. Stein, a center fellow and a longtime Carter advisor.

The private foundation that built the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library near Simi Valley has finished paying for the bricks and mortar and is now focused on developing a public policy think tank to carry the torch of Reagan-style conservatism. The final $2-million payment on the $57-million hilltop complex was delivered earlier this month, said John J. Midgley, executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.

Immediately after former President Jimmy Carter is scheduled to deliver his Nobel Peace Prize speech in Oslo on Dec. 10, a publishing house will start shipping a book version of it to bookstores. "America is preparing for war, but we hunger for peace," said Alice E. Mayhew, editorial director of Simon & Schuster in a statement. "President Carter's speech couldn't be more timely."

President Clinton on Monday praised former President Carter as a man of peace who used his retirement from politics to help poor people at home and promote democracy abroad. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, each received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a ceremony at the Georgia headquarters of the Carter Center, a human rights organization that sends observers to monitor elections worldwide.

Jimmy Carter--peanut farmer, former governor, 39th U.S. president and delegate from Georgia--will be honored by Democrats today as their senior statesman. Born: Oct. 1, 1924, in Plains, Ga. Education: bachelor of science degree, U.S. Naval Academy. Family: wife, Rosalynn; sons, John, 53, James, 50, and Donnel, 47; daughter, Amy, 32. * PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS 1976: elected with Sen. Walter F. Mondale, defeating President Ford and Sen. Bob Dole. 1980: defeated by Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

Former President Jimmy Carter has written a new book on the Middle East with a title he hopes will not be as controversial as the last one, which was called "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." Carter, 84, said that "We Can Bring Peace to the Holy Land" will be published in January, just after the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. "I was going to call it 'Yes, We Can.' My wife talked me out of it," Carter joked toward the end of a panel discussion on human rights at the Carter Center in Atlanta this week.

On Monday, the results of the April 11-15 elections in Sudan were announced: The ruling party's President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir won 68% of the vote. Despite being opposed in advance and severely condemned by many critics, these elections will permit this war-torn nation to move toward a permanent peace and strengthen its quest for true democracy. Among the more than 75 challenged or troubled elections monitored by the Carter Center, the Sudanese vote was by far the most complex and difficult.

Health workers are on the verge of eradicating Guinea worm disease in what would be just the second time in history that a disease has been wiped from the planet, the Carter Center said Friday. Cheap interventions such as hygiene education, using larvicides to kill the worm and distributing inexpensive cloths to help filter parasites from drinking water have cut the infection rate by 99%, the center said. Fewer than 5,000 cases of Guinea worm disease, also known as dracunculiasis, remain in Mali, Niger, Ghana, Nigeria, Sudan and Ethiopia, the Atlanta-based center said.

Former President Jimmy Carter has written a new book on the Middle East with a title he hopes will not be as controversial as the last one, which was called "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." Carter, 84, said that "We Can Bring Peace to the Holy Land" will be published in January, just after the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. "I was going to call it 'Yes, We Can.' My wife talked me out of it," Carter joked toward the end of a panel discussion on human rights at the Carter Center in Atlanta this week.

I wasn't a regular watcher of "The Price Is Right," but I've always been an admirer of Bob Barker and probably for all the same reasons felt by so many others who bemoan his departure from the airwaves ["This Career? Priceless," by Martin Miller, June 10]. But now that the show is behind him I would like to float a serious suggestion for Mr. Barker to use his prodigious deal-making skills for the benefit of world peace. Since the current administration took power, how many deals, calling out to be made, have soured, backfired or just withered on the vine: North Korea, Russia, Iraq, Iran, Gaza and the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria.

A former executive director of the Carter Center whose resignation from the institution has been a focal point of the furor over former President Jimmy Carter's new Middle East book said his decision to step down was a matter of "intellectual honesty." In his first detailed public comments since his resignation last month, Kenneth W.

Fourteen members of an advisory board to President Carter's human rights organization resigned Thursday to protest his new book, which has been attacked as unfairly critical of Israel and riddled with inaccuracies. The resignations at the Carter Center are the latest backlash against the book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," which has drawn fire from Jewish groups and fellow Democrats, and led to the resignation last month of Kenneth W. Stein, a center fellow and a longtime Carter advisor.

Health workers are on the verge of eradicating Guinea worm disease in what would be just the second time in history that a disease has been wiped from the planet, the Carter Center said Friday. Cheap interventions such as hygiene education, using larvicides to kill the worm and distributing inexpensive cloths to help filter parasites from drinking water have cut the infection rate by 99%, the center said. Fewer than 5,000 cases of Guinea worm disease, also known as dracunculiasis, remain in Mali, Niger, Ghana, Nigeria, Sudan and Ethiopia, the Atlanta-based center said.

Charles Kirbo, 79, veteran advisor to former President Jimmy Carter. The former chief executive called Kirbo his "closest friend" and said, "Without his wisdom, sound judgment and guidance, I never would have been a state senator, governor or president of the United States." An attorney, Kirbo first helped Carter in 1962 by arguing a vote-tampering case that put Carter in the Georgia Senate.

Harsh allegations over President Carter's new book on Israel and the Palestinians came into sharper focus Thursday when a former top aide to Carter said the book appeared to contain maps that were "unusually similar" to those in an earlier book. Kenneth W.