Trip to North Korea: Jimmy Carter

Former President Jimmy Carter is planning to travel to North Korea, perhaps as soon as April, the State Department said Thursday.

The department has been “made aware of the trip,” spokesman Mark Toner said, declining to offer any other details.

Carter’s spokeswoman did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for more information about the former president’s travel plans.

The confirmation came on the heels of a Wednesday report from South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency that a trip was in the works and that former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Irish President Mary Robinson and former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland may join Carter in his travels.

Officials in Seoul are paying close attention to the trip, South Korean foreign ministry spokesman Cho Byung-Jae said Thursday. “All the communications currently under way for the visit are purely private talks … and the U.S. government also said his trip would be a personal visit.

Carter has traveled to the secretive communist country before. He visited Pyongyang in 1994 as an envoy for then-President Bill Clinton and helped defuse tensions over North Korea’s nuclear program. He also traveled there last summer to negotiate for the release of Aijalon Mahli Gomes, an American teacher who entered the country in 2009 on a humanitarian and religious mission.

In November, Carter wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post urging the Obama administration to “consider responding” to Pyongyang’s deadly shelling of a South Korean island.

AOL Radio

It's been a while since we've heard the phrase "You've Got Mail," but AOL has been chugging away in the tech world, trying to keep up, trying to stay as relevant as they once were back in the '90s when everyone had an AOL account and used AIM. Since acquiring the Huffington Post and laying off 200 American employees, AOL is revamping its image and content, starting with AOL Radio.

If you're wondering why you should care about AOL or even the radio, read on.

They're turning AOL Radio into a music sharing, social media hybrid in which you can share with friends what you're listening to, much like you would update your status on Facebook. It's a music app that has launched with T-Mobile and Android phones users can listen to streaming radio, comment on it, "like" it, send it to friends, etc. without having to exit the app.

The app is called "Play" and iPhone users fear not it will be ready for you soon. It has cool features like MP3 of the day and right now you can listen to live music streaming from the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas.

I love the concept of sharing music, but I don't think I'd be gung ho enough about it to really share with friends what I'm listening to. Sharing musical experience, dissing what your friend's listening to, or liking what your boyfriend just downloaded is this for the younger kids? I would have relished this app back in high school when finding new artists and new songs was the cool thing to do, but now I'm just a little too lazy to care to share what radio station I built.

AOL and CEO Tim Armstrong are on the fast track to turn the company around, and AOL Radio is just the beginning. I'm sure we'll see major changes in content and technology as the company makes an about-face.

Amazing Facts

PencilThe first kind of PENCIL was a bunch of GRAPHITE sticks held together by string. Then someone decided it would be better to push the graphite into the inside of a hollow wooden stick.

JOSEPH RECHENDORFER was the first person to think of putting a piece of rubber onto the top of a pencil which makes it real easy to rub out mistakes.

Did you know that the average lead pencil can draw a line that is almost 35 miles long or you can write almost 50,000 words in English with just one pencil? Amazing fact! Now imagine an eraser that could match it !!!

AirplaneThis is what an old airplane looked like. The Wright Brothers invented one of the first airplanes. It was called the Kitty Hawk.

BicycleDid you know the first bicycle that was made in 1817 by Baron von Drais didn't have any pedals? People walked it along.

BalloonsDid you know the first toy balloon, made of vulcanized rubber, was thought of by someone in the J.G.Ingram company in London, England in 1847.

9 Pin Bowling9 pin bowling was made up in Germany during the Medieval ages.