National News at a Glance

Fighting Wildfires No Longer Seasonal Work in California

Since 2012, according to California emergency management officials, there has not been a month without a wildfire burning — a stark contrast to previous decades, when fire officials saw the fall and winter as a time to regroup. The recent historic drought and rising temperatures have heightened an already serious risk for widespread fires in the state. Just this month, three firefighters have been killed on the front lines. Dry conditions and triple-digit temperatures have added fuel to the Carr Fire as it marched eastward and pushed into the outskirts of Redding. Gov. Jerry Brown set aside more than $440 million in the state budget for emergency wildfires.

Russian Hackers Appear to Shift Focus to U.S. Power Grid

State-sponsored Russian hackers appear far more interested this year in demonstrating that they can disrupt the U.S. electric utility grid than the midterm elections, according to U.S. intelligence officials and technology company executives. Despite attempts to infiltrate the online accounts of two Senate Democrats up for re-election, intelligence officials said they have seen little activity by Russian military hackers aimed at either major U.S. political figures or state voter registration systems. By comparison, according to intelligence officials and executives of the companies that oversee the world’s computer networks, there is surprisingly far more effort directed at implanting malware in the electrical grid.

Trump Claims Credit for an Economy He Calls the ‘Envy of the Entire World’

President Donald Trump exulted in data Friday that showed economic growth accelerated in the second quarter, reeling off a list of statistics to make a case, during a midterm election year, that his administration should get the credit for the humming economy. “Once again, we are the economic envy of the entire world,” Trump declared outside the South Portico of the White House, flanked by his top economic advisers. Economists have questioned whether growth can continue at such a pace, but Trump and his advisers argued it was more than a “one-time shot,” citing, among other factors, gains in business investment and productivity that they said resulted from deep cuts in corporate taxes.

Medicare Slashes Star Ratings for Staffing at 1 in 11 Nursing Homes

Medicare has lowered its star ratings for staffing levels in almost 1,400 of the nation’s nursing homes because they were either inadequately staffed with registered nurses or failed to provide payroll data that proved they had the required nursing coverage, federal records released this week show. Medicare only recently began collecting and publishing payroll data on the staffing of nursing homes as required by the Affordable Care Act of 2010. "It’s a real positive that they actually are taking the payroll-based system seriously, that they’re using it to punish those nursing homes that either aren’t reporting staffing or those that are below the federal limit,” said David Grabowski, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School.

As Affordable Housing Crisis Grows, HUD Sits on the Sidelines

The country is in the grips of an escalating housing affordability crisis. Millions of low-income Americans are paying 70 percent or more of their incomes for shelter, while rents continue to rise and construction of affordable rental apartments lags far behind the need. The Trump administration’s main policy response, unveiled this spring by Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development: a plan to triple rents for about 712,000 of the poorest tenants receiving federal housing aid and loosen the cap on rents on 4.5 million households enrolled in federal voucher and public housing programs nationwide. Carson has privately told aides that he views the shortage of affordable housing as regrettable but as essentially a local problem.

Prison Inmates in Idaho Hacked Service for $225,000 in Credit

Hundreds of prison inmates in Idaho found a way to add hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of credit to their personal accounts, officials discovered this month. Inmates use a service called JPay to communicate with the outside world; for example, by using secure tablets or kiosks to send emails or listen to music. The Idaho Department of Correction learned about the hacking July 2, and an investigation revealed that 364 inmates at five correctional facilities “had improperly credited their JPay accounts by $224,772.40,” Jeff Ray, the department’s spokesman, said in a statement. The inmates inflated their accounts by taking advantage of a quirk in the system that did not cost taxpayers money.