For most municipal governments right now, times are good. Sales tax revenues are way up, and property values are also reaching new highs — thereby increasing municipal revenues. This stands of course in stark contrast to the brutal Great Recession a decade ago, when collapsing home values, unemployment and plunging sales tax revenues forced cities and counties to make painful cost-cutting decisions.

(Reuters) - A team of engineers that worked on self-driving cars and helped invent Google Street View wants to help people guard their homes against intruders using the same style of facial recognition that unlocks smart phones.

Friday’s magnitude 7.2 earthquake in the Mexican state of Oaxaca was another opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of an earthquake early-warning system, which in some seismic events, can send an alert ahead to cities before damaging waves can reach them. That means that in a place like Mexico City, which is built atop the weak soils of a former lakebed, people there had an approximately 1-minute warning to move outdoors and away from buildings or take shelter in a sturdy location before the shaking started.

BISHOP, Calif. (AP) —
A wind-driven wildfire in rural central California threatened hundreds of buildings Monday, including a historic railroad station, but officials said they made some gains after the flames exploded in size.

The blaze scorched 3½ square miles of chaparral bush and shrub oak in the small town of Bishop on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada that is popular for hiking, fishing, climbing and hunting.

Officials ended most evacuations that were ordered near the town but warned that strong winds were expected in the area and urged residents to remain vigilant.

Right now, somewhere in the United States, a cyberattack is happening. In fact, many cyberattacks are likely happening—which is why cybercrime damage costs are estimated to hit $6 trillion annually by 2021. Risk management professionals and executives are not only challenged by the volume of cyberthreats, but by their growing complexity as well.

Ransomware attacks, for example, were predicted to exceed $5 billion in 2017—up more than fifteen-fold from 2015—as organizations grapple with how to not only prevent these attacks but mitigate the financial losses and downtime they cause. Yet despite the trends, more than half (52%) of organizations that suffered successful cyberattacks in 2016 indicated in a Cybersecurity Ventures report that they would not make any changes to their security in 2017. And even for those that do update their cybersecurity plans, cyberattacks have become an inevitability for most organizations. As a result, developing a complete response plan for cyberattacks is essential to protecting your business and customers.

(TNS) - As flags were being lowered to half-staff after Wednesday’s Parkland, Florida, school shooting, school administrators here were fielding telephone calls from concerned parents.

“I’m fed up with school shootings,” said Carl Murphy, an Eastmont parent who called The Wenatchee World after talking to his child’s school principal. “I want to know why anyone can walk into a school and cause whatever harm they choose.”

Similar calls and emails from parents worried about school security in the wake of the shooting that killed 17, prompted both Wenatchee and Eastmont superintendents to post letters of assurance to community and staff members.

(Bloomberg) --Malicious cyber activity cost the U.S. economy between $57 billion and $109 billion in 2016, the White House said Friday.

The estimate comes in a Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) report on the impact of cyber attacks on U.S. government and industry. The report details the range of threats that U.S. entities face from actors, including corporations and countries such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

California would beef up dam inspections under legislation sent to Gov. Jerry Brown, a year after a near disaster prompted the evacuation of nearly 200,000 residents living downstream from the tallest U.S. dam.

The Assembly unanimously gave final approval to the bill requiring annual inspections for dams deemed to be high hazards.

The opioid epidemic has cost the U.S. more than a trillion dollars since 2001, according to a new study, and may exceed another $500 billion over the next three years.

The report by Altarum, a nonprofit group that studies the health economy, examined CDC mortality data through June of last year. The greatest financial cost of the opioid epidemic, according to the report, is in lost earnings and productivity losses to employers. Early deaths and substance abuse disorders also take a toll on local, state and federal government through lost tax revenue.

The U.S. is being ravaged by its worst flu season in years. The intensity of the current outbreak has surprised experts and the infection rate stands at about eight percent, as bad as the swine flu epidemic nine years ago. Back then, 60.8 million Americans contracted the virus of which 274,304 were hospitalized and 12,469 died. As bad as that outbreak was, the 2014-2015 flu season was far more lethal with 710,000 people hospitalized and 56,000 dying, according to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Worryingly, the rate of hospitalizations is the highest the CDC has ever recorded at this point in the U.S. flu season.