Climate change, and the consistently hotter and drier weather that comes with it, is largely the cause of the recent “sharp increase” in the number and intensity of wildfires, NASA officials said Friday. Read more»

The obesity rate for low-income Arizona preschoolers remained level from 2008 to 2011 after growing sharply in previous years, according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study. Read more»

Arizona got a B on a recent national report card that graded states for their efforts to improve financial literacy in high schools. Read more»

Arizona students who rely on federal student loans to go to college can breathe easy – at least for now. Read more»

The director of Arizona’s Department of Economic Security told a House subcommittee Wednesday that money’s not the problem when it comes to the welfare system – the system is. Read more»

Arizona children entering third grade this year are the first who will have to prove that they can read at an acceptable level or face being held back. The Department of Education estimates that the law will force about 1,500 children to repeat third grade next year. Another 17,000 third graders are at risk of being held back Read more»

More than 420,000 Arizonans will get health insurance rebates under Obamacare, the White House said Thursday, as President Barack Obama went on the offensive for his beleaguered health-care plan. The announcement came one day after House Republicans and a handful of Democrats – including three from Arizona – voted to delay the law’s mandates until 2015. Read more»

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Marvel Enterprises Inc. no longer has to pay royalties to the Tucson inventor of a Spider-Man web-shooter, after the patent on the toy expired. A reluctant panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court‘s ruling against Stephen Kimble in a published opinion. Read more» 1

For a couple of hours last week, it looked like the Senate would give Alex Miller a chance to relax. Miller, an ASU senior, faces the possibility that she will have to pay an extra $1,000 this year for her college loan, after a July 1 deadline to keep loan rates from doubling passed without congressional action. Read more»

Defense Department furloughs that took effect Monday will mean about a 20 percent reduction in pay for the rest of this fiscal year for the roughly 8,400 department civilian employees in Arizona. The furloughs do not affect active military, but most civilian defense workers will lose 11 days of pay between now and Sept. 30 because of sequestration. Read more»

Almost half of Arizona’s general revenues came from federal funds in fiscal 2011, the third-highest share in the nation, according to a recent report from the Tax Foundation. 45.7 percent of Arizona’s general revenue came from federal aid, lower than only Mississippi and Louisiana, and well above the national average of 36 percent. Read more»

The Supreme Court’s rulings on same-sex marriage are not likely to have a direct effect on states that ban gay marriage, like Arizona, where both sides said they now expect the fight to resume. Read more»

Protestor numbers are likely to explode Wednesday, when rulings are expected on the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and woman, and California’s Proposition 8, which overturned a law in that state that had legalized same-sex marriages. Read more»

The House on Tuesday voted to ban most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, capping a week of controversy with passionate debate over the measure before approving it largely on party lines. Read more»

House Republicans tried to distance themselves from Rep. Trent Franks’ controversial comments over an abortion bill by quietly amending it to include language that the Glendale Republican had tried to block, experts said. Franks caused a furor last week when he said that “estimates of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low” as he argued against a rape-or-incest exception to his bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks. Read more»