Health Care Cost Slowdown Persists In Spite of Projections →

We actually have data on this, since the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports spending through October (Table 2.4.5U, Line 168). Through the first 10 months of 2014 we are on track to see a 3.3 percent increase in spending compared to 2013, down slightly from the 3.5 percent increase last year. (This category accounts for about 70 percent of total spending.) That would suggest that 2014 is not fitting the pattern predicted by the Kaiser analysis, which should raise doubts about the extent to which a weak economy can explain a reduction in spending.

At Climate Talks in Lima, Not ‘Same as it Ever Was’? →

But perhaps most importantly, the economics have changed. The cost of wind power has declined 40percent since the Copenhagen summit and the cost of solar power 80 percent, making the switch to renewable energy seem more feasible. Meanwhile, the costs of inaction seem ever clearer, noted Glen Murray, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change for the province of Ontario, even if they are often overlooked.
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The real game changer could be the plan by China to launch a national carbon market in 2016-17. Much like in North America, although with more central guidance, China has been experimenting at the sub-national level, in seven provinces and cities – Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Hebei and Zhejiang. “The pilots are very successful,” said Minister Xie Zhenhua, the head of the Chinese delegation in Lima. “The signal of success is not carbon price, but the exploration of potential regulation and system on pilots that are in different developing levels.”

Islamic State Imposes Strict New Order in Mosul, and Deprivation Is a Result →

Six months after the Islamic State seized Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, its efforts to overhaul the school system reflect the limits of its progress toward building a self-governing caliphate on the land it controls in Iraq and Syria.
Although the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, presents itself as a liberating, governing force for the region’s Sunnis, it has largely failed to provide civilian services, instead focusing its limited manpower on social control.

The result has been a life of deprivation, fear and confusion for the city’s roughly one million remaining residents, according to interviews with 15 people, reached by phone inside Mosul, whose full identities have been withheld to prevent retribution.

Transparency in Troubled Seas →

China’s announcement of its first ADIZ was controversial for several reasons. First, China’s ADIZ includes multiple disputed territories—most prominently, the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu in China), which are administered by Japan, but also Ieodo (Suyan) Rock, which South Korea claims too. This led the ROK to expand its own ADIZ. Second, China made its declaration without consulting other states in the region, which is not illegal but does break with custom. Third, China declared that it would require all aircraft, including military aircraft, to identify themselves to Beijing, regardless of whether or not they were bound for China as opposed to passing through the zone in transit elsewhere. This led the United States to fly two B-52 nuclear-capable bombers through the ADIZ in a demonstration of military noncompliance. ADIZs generally increase transparency and reduce the risk of accidents, and Beijing insists that this one is no different. But last November, US and other officials insisted that these three unique features made the East China Sea ADIZ fundamentally destabilizing.

So what of China’s ADIZ one year on?