With  Sen.-Elect Thom Tillis heading to Washington and leaving his North Carolina House Speakership behind, a new leadership team will take their seats in the House in January. John Locke Foundation Vice President for Outreach, Becki Gray, offers a profile of the new leaders, including Speaker-Designee Tim Moore of Cleveland County, Majority Leader Mike Hager of Rutherford County, and Marilyn Avila of Wake County. Then we turn to continuing efforts to improve North Carolina’s unemployment benefits system. As the N.C. Division of Employment Security has worked to pay down the state’s debt to the federal government for unemployment benefits, officials also have boosted efforts to limit waste, fraud, and abuse in the unemployment program. State legislators recently discussed efforts to deal with misuse of unemployment benefits. Then we turn to veterans’ issues. North Carolina has major military installations, and state government has worked to develop “military-friendly” policies. But that hasn’t translated into a coherent program of services targeting veterans. The General Assembly’s Program Evaluation Division recently produced a report calling for efforts to improve veterans’ programs. That’s followed by a look at global warming alarmism. Global-warming alarmists like to talk about carbon pollution, but that concept is a myth. That’s the assessment of Dr. William Happer, professor of physics at Princeton University and a vocal critic of climate alarmists. Happer recently shared his concerns about climate alarmism during a visit to North Carolina. And finally, we look at the state of North Carolina’s air quality. Environmentalists have often said the air is dirty and that more regulation is needed. But at the end of this year’s ozone season, the report is very, very good. John Locke Foundation Vice President for Research, Roy Cordato, reviews the data.