DALLAS — In 2025, most Texans will no longer be required to have their vehicles inspected . But you’ll still have to pay the fee. Drivers in 17 counties, however, will still face annual tests because of emissions requirements. Those counties are Brazoria, Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, El Paso, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Johnson, Kaufman, Montgomery, Parker, Rockwall, Tarrant, Travis and Williamson. Those who support the change argued the inspections were a costly waste of time that modern vehicles make obsolete. Those who want to keep inspections argue they help keep drivers safe by flagging vehicles with problems. It turns out that a few years ago, the state actually sponsored a study that concluded vehicle inspections were not only highly effective but should likely be expanded. That study’s author recently joined Y’all-itics and told the Jasons he’s surprised lawmakers dumped the program. Dr. Michael Murphy says when inspections temporarily went away a few years ago, bad things happened. “I will just say this, during the pandemic, when vehicle safety inspection stations were closed for a period of time, the number of defect vehicle fatalities, type A and Type B injuries, increased,” Dr. Murphy said. Dr. Murphy says he hopes law enforcement will continue to document crashes that involved vehicles with defects to see if those numbers rise once again. And he stresses that just because the state won’t require an inspection, drivers can still get their vehicles checked out on their own. Dr. Murphy says when they were talking to people for the study, there was one group in particular that didn’t think inspections were necessary. “The people in our survey that said they didn't think the inspection program was needed were primarily males. And in the comment section, they said, I, blankety-blank, know how to take care of my car. I own eight vehicles, motorcycles, pickup trucks, cars, I know how to take care of them,” he said. “And I understand that. I'd like to be that mechanically sharp. But what they weren't considering is not everyone is like that. Not everyone has the physical ability to do a vehicle inspection.”FIUGGI, Italy (AP) — Foreign ministers from the world’s leading industrialized nations expressed cautious optimism Monday about possible progress on a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. The top diplomats met for the final time before a new U.S. administration takes office with wars raging in the Mideast and Ukraine. “Knock on wood,” Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said as he opened the Group of Seven meeting outside Rome. “We are perhaps close to a ceasefire in Lebanon," he said. "Let's hope it's true and that there's no backing down at the last-minute.” A ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon was foremost on the agenda of the G7 meeting in Fiuggi, outside Rome, that gathered ministers from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, in the last G7 encounter of the Biden administration. For the first time, the G7 ministers were joined by their counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, the so-called “Arab Quintet,” as well as the Secretary General of the Arab League. “Everyone favors a ceasefire in both scenarios,” Tajani told reporters, adding that Italy had offered to take on an even greater peacekeeping role in Lebanon to oversee any ceasefire deal. As the ministers arrived in Italy, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Mike Herzog, told Israeli Army Radio on Monday a ceasefire deal to end fighting between Israel and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah could be reached “within days.” Several Arab ministers reiterated calls for a ceasefire in both Lebanon and Gaza during a G7-affiliated conference in Rome. “We need a ceasefire, a permanent ceasefire. That will stop the killings and stop the destruction and restore a sense of normalcy to life,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told the conference. Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, for his part, reaffirmed that Cairo would host a minister-level conference next Monday on mobilizing international aid for Gaza. The so-called “Quintet” has been working with the U.S. to finalize a “day after” plan for Gaza. There is some urgency to make progress before the Trump administration takes over in January. President-elect Donald Trump is expected to pursue a policy that strongly favors Israel over the aspirations of the Palestinians. Tajani added another item to the G7 agenda last week after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense minister and Hamas’ military chief. Italy is a founding member of the court and hosted the 1998 Rome conference that gave birth to it. But Italy’s right-wing government has been a strong supporter of Israel after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, while also providing humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza. The Italian government has taken a cautious line, reaffirming its support and respect for the court but expressing concern that the warrants were politically motivated. The United States, Israel's closest ally, has called the warrants “outrageous.” Tajani acknowledged consensus hadn't been reached among the G7 members but hoped for agreement to have a unified position. He noted that all sides need Netanyahu to make any deal. “We can also not agree with how his government has led the reaction after the massacre of Oct. 7, but now we have to deal with Netanyahu to arrive at peace in Lebanon, peace in Palestine,” Tajani said. Nathalie Tocci, director of the Rome-based Institute for International Affairs think tank, warned that inserting the ICC warrant into the G7 agenda was risky, since the U.S. is the lone member that is not a signatory to the court and yet tends to dictate the G7 line. “If Italy and the other (five G7) signatories of the ICC are unable to maintain the line on international law, they will not only erode it anyway but will be acting against our interests,” Tocci wrote in La Stampa daily this weekend, recalling Italy’s recourse to international law in demanding protection for Italian U.N. peacekeepers who have come under fire in southern Lebanon. The other major talking point of the G7 meeting is Ukraine , and tensions have only heightened since Russia attacked Ukraine last week with an experimental, hypersonic ballistic missile that escalated the nearly 33-month-old war. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the strike was retaliation for Kyiv’s use of U.S. and British longer-range missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory. The G7 has been at the forefront of providing military and economic support for Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022 and G7 members are particularly concerned about how a Trump administration will change the U.S. approach. Trump has criticized the billions of dollars that the Biden administration has poured into Ukraine and has said he could end the war in 24 hours, comments that appear to suggest he would press Ukraine to surrender territory that Russia now occupies. “It’s hugely important that this G7, that all colleagues across the G7 continue to stand with Ukraine for as long as it lasts,” British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said as he arrived. He announced new sanctions on vessels of Russia's “shadow fleet” of ships that are evading sanctions to export Russian oil. “And we are confident that Ukraine can have the funds and the military equipment and kit to get through 2025,” Lammy said. The G7 foreign ministers’ meeting, the second of the Italian presidency after ministers gathered in Capri in April , is being held in the medieval town of Fiuggi southeast of Rome, best known for its thermal spas. On Monday, which coincides with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, ministers were attending the inauguration of a red bench meant to symbolize Italy’s focus on fighting gender-based violence. Over the weekend, tens of thousands of people marched in Rome to protest gender-based violence , which in Italy so far this year has claimed the lives of 99 women, according to a report last week by the Eures think tank.
Democrats plan to elect new party leader just days after Trump's inauguration
Pride, bragging rights and more than $115M at stake when final college playoff rankings come outJimmy Carter, the self-effacing peanut farmer, humanitarian and former navy lieutenant who helped Canada avert a nuclear catastrophe before ascending to the highest political office in the United States, died Sunday at his home in Georgia. He was 100, making him the longest-lived U.S. president in American history. Concern for Carter's health had become a recurring theme in recent years. He was successfully treated for brain cancer in 2015, then suffered a number of falls, including one in 2019 that resulted in a broken hip. Alarm spiked in February 2023, however, when the Carter Center — the philanthropic organization he and his wife Rosalynn founded in 1982 — announced he would enter hospice care at his modest, three-bedroom house in Plains, Ga. Rosalynn Carter, a mental health advocate whose role as presidential spouse helped to define the modern first lady, predeceased her husband in November 2023 — a death at 96 that triggered a remembrance to rival his. "Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished," the former president said in a statement after she died. "As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me." Conventional wisdom saw his single White House term as middling. But Carter's altruistic work ethic, faith-filled benevolence and famous disdain for the financial trappings of high office only endeared him to generations after he left politics in 1981. "The trite phrase has been, 'Jimmy Carter has been the best former president in the history of the United States,'" said Gordon Giffin, a former U.S. ambassador to Canada who sits on the Carter Center's board of trustees. "That grated on him, because it distinguished his service as president from his service — and I literally mean service — as a former president." His relentless advocacy for human rights, a term Carter popularized long before it became part of the political lexicon, included helping to build homes for the poor across the U.S. and in 14 other countries, including Canada, well into his 90s. He devoted the resources of the Carter Center to tackling Guinea worm, a parasite that afflicted an estimated 3.5 million people in the developing world in the early 1980s and is today all but eradicated, with just 13 cases reported in 2022. And he was a tireless champion of ending armed conflict and promoting democratic elections in the wake of the Cold War, with his centre monitoring 113 such votes in 39 different countries — and offering conflict-resolution expertise when democracy receded. Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, nearly a quarter-century after his seminal work on the Camp David Accords helped pave the way for a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979, the first of its kind. "His presidency got sidelined in the historic evaluation too quickly, and now people are revisiting it," Giffin said. "I think his standing in history as president will grow." A lifelong Democrat who never officially visited Canada as president, Carter was nonetheless a pioneer of sorts when it came to Canada-U.S. relations and a close friend to the two Canadian prime ministers he served alongside. One of them, former Progressive Conservative leader Joe Clark, once called Carter a "pretty good Canadian" — a testament to the former commander-in-chief's authenticity and centre-left politics, which always resonated north of the Canada-U.S. border. The pair were reunited in 2017 at a panel discussion in Atlanta hosted by the Canadian American Business Council, and seemed to delight in teasing the host when she described Clark as a "conservative" and Carter as a "progressive." "I'm a Progressive Conservative — that's very important," Clark corrected her. Piped up Carter: "I'm a conservative progressive." In 2012, the Carters visited Kingston, Ont., to receive an honorary degree from Queen's University. Instead of a fancy hotel, they stayed with Arthur Milnes, a former speech writer, journalist and political scholar who'd long since become a close friend. "He became my hero, believe it or not, probably when I was about 12," said Milnes, whose parents had come of age during the Cold War and lived in perpetual fear of the ever-present nuclear threat until Carter took over the White House in 1977. "My mother never discussed politics, with one exception — and that was when Jimmy Carter was in the White House. She'd say, 'Art, Jimmy Carter is a good and decent man,'" Milnes recalled. "They always said, both of them, that for the first time since the 1950s, they felt safe, knowing that it was this special man from rural Georgia, Jimmy Carter, who had his finger on the proverbial button." While Richard Nixon and Pierre Trudeau appeared to share a mutual antipathy during their shared time in office, Carter got along famously with the prime minister. Indeed, it was at the express request of the Trudeau family that Carter attended the former prime minister's funeral in 2000, Giffin said. "The message I got back was the family would appreciate it if Jimmy Carter could come," said Giffin, who was the U.S. envoy in Ottawa at the time. "So he did come. He was at the Trudeau funeral. And to me, that said a lot about not only the relationship he had with Trudeau, but the relationship he had in the Canada-U.S. dynamic." It was at that funeral in Montreal that Carter — "much to my frustration," Giffin allowed — spent more than two hours in a holding room with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, a meeting that resulted in Carter visiting Cuba in 2002, the first former president to do so. But it was long before Carter ever entered politics that he established a permanent bond with Canada — one forged in the radioactive aftermath of what might otherwise have become the country's worst nuclear calamity. In 1952, Carter was a 28-year-old U.S. navy lieutenant, a submariner with a budding expertise in nuclear power, when he and his crew were dispatched to help control a partial meltdown at the experimental Chalk River Laboratories northwest of Ottawa. In his 2016 book "A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety," Carter described working in teams of three, first practising on a mock-up of the reactor, then on the real thing, in short 90-second bursts to avoid absorbing more than the maximum allowable dose of radiation. "The limit on radiation absorption in the early 1950s was approximately 1,000 times higher than it is 60 years later," he wrote. "There were a lot of jokes about the effects of radioactivity, mostly about the prospect of being sterilized, and we had to monitor our urine until all our bodies returned to the normal range." That, Carter would later acknowledge in interviews, took him about six months. Carter and Clark were both in office during the so-called "Canadian Caper," a top-secret operation to spirit a group of U.S. diplomats out of Iran following the fall of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979. The elaborate ploy, which involved passing the group off as a Canadian science-fiction film crew, was documented in the Oscar-winning 2012 Ben Affleck film "Argo." Carter didn't think much of the film. "The movie that was made, 'Argo,' was very distorted. They hardly mentioned the Canadian role in this very heroic, courageous event," he said during the CABC event. He described the true events of that escapade as "one of the greatest examples of a personal application of national friendship I have ever known." To the end, Carter was an innately humble and understated man, said Giffin — a rare commodity in any world leader, much less in one from the United States. "People underestimate who Jimmy Carter is because he leads with his humanity," he said. "I read an account the other day that said the Secret Service vehicles that are parked outside his house are worth more than the house. How many former presidents have done that?" This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec, 29, 2024. James McCarten, The Canadian PressPride, bragging rights and more than $115M at stake when final college playoff rankings come out
Palantir and 3 More Stocks That Can ‘Join the AI Party’Atmos Energy Corp. stock underperforms Thursday when compared to competitors
