History Readings

Conservatives agree that these cheaper plans create more risk. But they also create a sensitivity to price — and with it, a curb on cost growth — that’s rare in a system where third-party payment has made prices opaque, arbitrary and inflated.

for a society that pretty clearly spends far too much on health care, sticking with catastrophic coverage frees up money — thousands for individuals and families, billions for the government — to spend on something other than the insurance-medical complex.

This is why the law’s critics believe Obamacare might be a long-term failure even if it survives its launch troubles and works on its own terms for a while. It’s not about the good things the reform delivers: those are real enough. It’s about whether there are too many other goods, for too many people, that the law’s three “mores” end up crowding out.

The answer was a more modest approach — one that prizes diplomacy, puts limits on engagement and raises doubts about whether Mr. Obama would ever again use military force in a region convulsed by conflict.

Ms. Rice’s team asked the most basic questions: What are America’s core interests in the Middle East? How has the upheaval in the Arab world changed America’s position? What can Mr. Obama realistically hope to achieve? What lies outside his reach?

The blueprint drawn up on those summer weekends at the White House is a model of pragmatism — eschewing the use of force, except to respond to acts of aggression against the United States or its allies, disruption of oil supplies, terrorist networks or weapons of mass destruction. Tellingly, it does not designate the spread of democracy as a core interest.

Mr. Obama drove the process, officials said, asking for formal briefings in the Situation Room and shorter updates during his daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office. He gave his advisers a tight deadline of the United Nations’ speech last month and pushed them to develop certain themes, drawing from his own journey since the hopeful early days of the Arab Spring.

In May 2011, he said the United States would support democracy, human rights and free markets with all the “diplomatic, economic and strategic tools at our disposal.” But at the United Nations last month, he said, “we can rarely achieve these objectives through unilateral American action — particularly with military action.”

Tamara Cofman Wittes, the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. “The argument that we can’t make a decisive difference, so we’re not going to try, is wrongheaded.”

It was a tight group that included no one outside the White House, a stark contrast to Mr. Obama’s Afghanistan review in 2009, which involved dozens of officials from the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency. Ms. Rice said she briefed Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel over weekly lunches.

other goals appear to have been dictated as much as by personnel as by policy. After vigorous debate, the group decided to make the Middle East peace process a top priority — even after failing to broker an agreement during the administration’s first term — in part because Mr. Kerry had already thrown himself into the role of peacemaker.

China's newspaper industry is tightly controlled by a system of local censors carrying out party directives.

But there have been several high-profile rows over censorship.

Earlier this year staff at the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekly paper went on strike after a new-year editorial calling for reform was censored

Another contentious issue between the two countries is the dispute over a group of islands.

China has warned against Japanese nationalism in a region where Japan's colonial expansionism is still bitterly remembered.

"There are concerns that China is attempting to change the status quo by force, rather than by rule of law. But if China opts to take that path, then it won't be able to emerge peacefully," Mr Abe says.

On Saturday, China's defence ministry responded saying: "If Japan does resort to enforcement measures like shooting down aircraft, that is a serious provocation to us, an act of war.

The region has experienced frequent deadly clashes in recent years.

AFP news agency quotes officials as saying more than 4,000 police officers and soldiers have been killed in the past three decades in fighting with traffickers.

developers are turning 57th Street in Manhattan into “Billionaires’ Row,” with apartments selling for north of $90 million each.

Forbes’s list of the world’s billionaires has added more than 200 names since 2012 and is now at 1,426. The United States once again leads the list, with 442 billionaires.

Measure of America, a project of the Social Science Research Council, recently released a study finding that a staggering 5.8 million young people nationwide — one in seven of those ages 16 to 24 — are disconnected, meaning not employed or in school, “adrift at society’s margins,” as the group put it.

“In 2012, real median household income was 8.3 percent lower than in 2007, the year before the most recent recession.”

“During the first two years of the nation’s economic recovery, the mean net worth of households in the upper 7 percent of the wealth distribution rose by an estimated 28 percent, while the mean net worth of households in the lower 93 percent dropped by 4 percent.”

“The 1,168,354 homeless students enrolled by U.S. preschools and K-12 schools in the 2011-2012 school year is the highest number on record, and a 10 percent increase over the previous school year. The number of homeless children in public schools has increased 72 percent since the beginning of the recession.”

“These new poverty estimates released on Sept. 19, 2013, suggest that child poverty plateaued in the aftermath of the Great Recession, but there is no evidence of any reduction in child poverty even as we enter the fourth year of ‘recovery.’ ”

the number of households living on $2 or less in income per person per day in a given month increased from about 636,000 in 1996 to about 1.46 million households in early 2011, a percentage growth of 130 percent.”

“Cash assistance benefits for the nation’s poorest families with children fell again in purchasing power in 2013 and are now at least 20 percent below their 1996 levels in 37 states, after adjusting for inflation.”

The number of Americans now enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is near record highs, and yet both houses of Congress have passed bills to cut funding to the program. The Senate measure would cut about $4 billion, while the House measure would cut roughly ten times as much, dropping millions of Americans from the program.

cuts to domestic programs resulted in a decline in spending on critically needed infrastructure from 0.22 percent of gross domestic product in 2010 to 0.14 percent in 2012, and it’s still falling.

Harder to quantify — but unquestionably occurring — is the effect of the uncertainty and government by crisis on both consumers and business. During the 2011 debt ceiling drama and again this fall, consumer confidence, as measured by surveys, plunged and is currently at a nine-month low.

One-half of the chief executives in the latest Business Roundtable CEO Economic Outlook survey “indicated that the ongoing disagreement in Washington over the 2014 budget and debt ceiling is having a negative impact on their plans for hiring additional employees over the next six months.”

Macroeconomic Advisers recently estimated that since the end of 2009, the uncertainty created by the series of crises has shaved 0.3 percentage points per year off economic growth and raised the unemployment rate in 2013 by 0.6 percentage points, the equivalent of 900,000 lost jobs.

the practice of making key fiscal decisions a few months at a time, under the repeated threat of draconian consequences, should come to an end. Both business and consumers are reasonably entitled to be able to plan.

Second, we need to bring some sanity to fiscal policy. No one can doubt the need for significant, long-term reform. The growth in spending for Medicare, Social Security and other “entitlement” programs brings the distasteful prospect of continuing cuts in all other programs, higher taxes, growing deficits or some combination of them all.

But more immediately, because of the influence of conservative groups like the Tea Party, spending by the federal government on these other critical domestic programs has fallen by 10 percent (before adjusting for inflation!) in just two years

Without Congressional action, the forced sequester cuts will have an even greater effect as they are fully implemented in this fiscal year. It’s time that policy makers recognize the damage they are doing to the economy with their short-term thinking and imprudent fiscal decisions.

In his tweets, Mr Joseph gave a lacerating commentary on anything from policy to personal appearance.

, Mr Joseph joined Republican attacks on Mrs Clinton for perceived failings of her handling of last year's attack on the US diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.

The Daily Beast website broke the news of his sacking, describing it as a shock and saying Mr Joseph was "well known among policy wonks".

But it said that "inside the administration, there was little sympathy for the man who they feel had betrayed their confidence while taunting them all the while".

In an apology emailed to Politico, Mr Joseph said: "It has been a privilege to serve in this administration and I deeply regret violating the trust and confidence placed in me.

"What started out as an intended parody account of DC culture developed over time into a series of inappropriate and mean-spirited comments. I bear complete responsibility for this affair and I sincerely apologise to everyone I insulted."

The Greenland government hopes the mine will boost the economy, which is largely dependent on fishing and subsidies from Denmark.

"This is indeed a historic moment for Greenland," said Industry and Minerals Minister Jens-Erik Kirkegaard.

"the largest commercial project to date in Greenland" would boost employment and state revenues - in line with a pledge made by the governing Social Democrats to draw foreign companies to help tap Greenland's resources.

Environmentalists say they want reassurances that the exploitation of the deposits will not come at the cost of extensive environmental damage.

She said the Greenland government should insist that the mine be powered by hydroelectric power rather than diesel, and that there should be safeguards to deal with problems such as the dramatic increase in traffic.

After seizing power, Mr Rajoelina announced that there would be a new constitution and elections within 24 months.

The first round of this election was set to take place in July 2013 but was pushed back to August because Mr Ravalomanana's wife and former first lady, Lalao - and then Mr Rajoelina himself - decided to run, prompting donors to suspend financing for the poll.

Mr Robinson says that his electoral programme will draw heavily on a new version of Mr Ravalomanana's Madagascar Action Plan (MAP) to help rebuild society and also rejuvenate the ailing tourism industry.

The polls will be run by the Independent National Electoral Commission of the Transition (Cenit) - an independent electoral body funded by the United Nations.

Cenit says there are 7,697,382 registered voters and 20,115 polling stations in Madagascar, a country the size of France with a scattered population.

Calls were made for the bishop to resign after he was accused of lying under oath about his spending.

He was criticised for a first-class flight to India to visit the poor.

It was in Germany that Martin Luther launched the Reformation five centuries ago in response to what he said were excesses and abuses within the Church.

Pope Francis has also signalled his intention to clean up the Vatican's finances, appointing a commission to advise him on reforms.

Other countries would be "free to join this initiative," he said.

Mr Rompuy said intelligence gathering was a vital weapon against terrorism but it would be prejudiced by "a lack of trust".

The revelations were sourced to US whistleblower Edward Snowden. It is alleged that the NSA and UK spy centre GCHQ eavesdropped on three undersea cables with terminals in Italy.

“In a period where the whole Middle East is moving in the direction of chaos, having one area where the parties are trying to further stabilize their relationship is a positive development,” said Dore Gold, a longtime Israeli diplomat and president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. “The fact that they continue to talk means these are serious discussions. Where this goes, what’s the likely outcome, I think it’s really way too early to predict.”

In contrast to previous rounds of Israeli-Palestinian talks, little has leaked from the negotiating room.

Palestinians are split, with 47 percent supporting the resumption of negotiations and 49 percent opposed, according to a September survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research; 70 percent think they will not lead to an agreement. Sixty-one percent of Israeli Jews back the talks, according to the Israel Democracy Institute’s Peace Index published this month, but 81 percent see no real chance of a deal.

“For both sides the current situation is very, very comfortable,” Mr. Beilin said. “All of us are playing the game. Many meetings, very serious, good relationship, all issues are on the agenda, fighting the lunatics on both sides, and it’s beautiful. The only problem is that there will be an end to it in the coming months, and the admission of failure might be devastating.”

During the call, according to German officials, Ms. Rice insisted that Mr. Obama did not know about the monitoring of Ms. Merkel’s phone, and said it was not currently happening, and would not in the future. But according to American officials familiar with the call, Ms. Rice would not acknowledge that the monitoring took place, even though she did not dispute the evidence the Germans had provided to her, which stretched back into the administration of President George W. Bush.

In the past, Germany has pushed for an agreement similar to the understanding that the United States has with Britain and three other English-speaking allies that prohibits spying on one another.

Administration officials say the National Security Agency, in its push to build a global data-gathering network that can reach into any country, has rarely weighed the long-term political costs of some of its operations. Whether to make those kinds of reciprocal agreements with allies is among the questions two different administration reviews of N.S.A. spying practices hope to address.

The advisers are looking at a range of issues, from the collection of “metadata” about the calls and Web searches conducted by Americans to the surveillance of allies and their leaders.

Malala's courage has awoken Pakistan's silent majority who are no longer prepared to tolerate the threats and intimidations of the Pakistan Taliban,"

"We are going to educate 40 girls, and I invite all of you to support the Malala Fund," Malala said in a video that was played at the Women in the World summit in New York. "Let us turn the education of 40 girls into 40 million girls."

"She is the daughter of the whole world," her father told CNN. "The world owns her."