Wildifre burns homes, forces evacuations
BEAUMONT, Calif. – A growing wildfire chewed through a rugged Southern California mountain range on Thursday, damaging buildings, threatening as many as 600 homes and forcing about 1,500 people to flee.
A thousand firefighters, 13 helicopters and six air tankers battled the flames as they pushed eastward along the San Jacinto Mountains, a desert range 90 miles east of Los Angeles, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The fire was estimated at 15½ square miles Thursday, growing about 6 square miles overnight, with 10 percent containment. “Unfortunately the size of this fire continues to take away any progress that we’re making,” Berlant said.
Fire officials estimated 15 structures burned but could not say how many of them were houses. A civilian with what was described as body burns was flown to a hospital, he said. Four firefighters suffered unspecified injuries.
Applications decline for new jobless benefits
WASHINGTON – Americans who have a job may take comfort in knowing that companies are laying off fewer people than at any time since before the Great Recession.
Applications for U.S. unemployment benefits over the last four weeks dropped to a seasonally adjusted 335,500, the Labor Department said Thursday.
That’s the lowest level since November 2007, which was one month before the recession began.
But while most companies have stopped cutting jobs, many remain reluctant to hire. That’s bad news for the 11.5 million Americans who are unemployed and a major reason the unemployment rate is still so high four years after the recession officially ended.
“We have seen a disconnect between the level of hiring and firing,” said Bricklin Dwyer, an economist at BNP Paribas.
Unemployment applications are a proxy for layoffs. At the depths of the recession, in March 2009, weekly claims surged to 670,000. They have fallen steadily ever since and are now half that level.
The number of first-time applications did rise slightly last week, to a seasonally adjusted 330,000.
Intelligence chiefs say privacy is big concern
NEW YORK – The heads of the nation’s three top intelligence agencies said Thursday they strive to protect Americans’ privacy in an evolving era of cybersecurity threats, electronic surveillance and concerns about government data-monitoring.
Since former government contract systems analyst Edward Snowden leaked classified documents in May about the National Security Agency’s data-gathering, lawmakers and average Americans have re-engaged in debate about the boundaries between preventing terrorism and preserving Americans’ privacy rights.
Speaking at a cybersecurity conference, CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director Robert Mueller and the NSA director, Gen. Keith Alexander, didn’t directly address the agency’s programs that sweep up swaths of data on phone and Internet use, including hundreds of millions of Americans’ phone records.
The intelligence agency officials spoke largely about malicious software attacks and other electronic intrusions.
Associated Press and USA TODAY
