National News at a Glance

DeVos Proposes to Curtail Debt Relief for Defrauded Students

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos proposed Wednesday to curtail Obama administration loan forgiveness rules for students defrauded by for-profit colleges, requiring that student borrowers show they have fallen into hopeless financial straits or prove that their colleges knowingly deceived them. The DeVos proposal, set to go in force a year from now, would replace Obama-era policies that sought to ease access to loan forgiveness for students who were left saddled with debt after two for-profit college chains imploded in 2015 and 2016. Just one month before the Obama rules were to take effect, DeVos announced that she would block and rewrite them.

Yosemite National Park Evacuated Amid Threat From Fire

A nearby 38,000-acre wildfire turned one of the country’s most popular national parks into a virtual ghost town Wednesday afternoon. The closing is the largest in nearly three decades at the park. The Ferguson Fire, which is encroaching on Yosemite Valley, is just one of some 75 large fires stretching from Oklahoma to Alaska, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Nationwide, nearly 4 million acres have burned so far this year, about 11 percent more than the annual average at this time of year since 2008, according to the fire center. In Yosemite, lodging and camping reservations were canceled through Sunday.

A Watery Lake Is Detected on Mars, Raising the Potential for Alien Life

For the first time, scientists have found a large, watery lake beneath an ice cap on Mars. Because water is essential to life, the discovery offers an exciting new place to search for life-forms beyond Earth. Italian scientists working on the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission announced Wednesday that a 12-mile wide underground liquid pool — not just the momentary damp spots seen in the past — had been detected by radar measurements near the Martian south pole.

US and Europe Outline Deal to Ease Trade Feud

The United States and the European Union stepped back from the brink of a trade war Wednesday, after President Donald Trump said the Europeans agreed to work toward lower tariffs and other trade barriers, and to buy billions of dollars of U.S. soybeans and natural gas. The surprise announcement, made by Trump and the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, defused, for the moment, a trade battle that began with Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum exports and threatened to escalate to automobiles.

A Screeching Stop for Speed Cameras in New York City School Zones

At 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, hundreds of speed cameras around New York City effectively clicked off, their watch over motorists dangerously zooming through school zones ended indefinitely. The 2013 law that authorized the safety cameras was only temporary. And despite nearly universal praise, state legislators this year not only rejected calls to expand the program but ended their session last month without even issuing it an extension. It was the most recent and perhaps most baffling illustration of the political squabbling and stasis that have long characterized New York state politics.

New Alzheimer’s Drug Shows Big Promise in Early Trial Results

The long quest for a medication that works to treat Alzheimer’s reached a potentially promising milestone Wednesday. For the first time in a large clinical trial, a drug was able to both reduce the plaques in the brains of patients and slow the progression of dementia. More extensive trials will be needed to know if the drug is truly effective. But if the results, presented Wednesday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Chicago, are borne out, the drug may be the first to successfully attack both the brain changes and the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. The drug was developed by Eisai of Japan and Biogen of Cambridge, Massachusetts.