In a summer where brush fires have become a near-daily occurrence, firefighting officials said the multiple wildfires that raged across Central Texas on Sunday were the worst the region has seen all year.

Numerous wind-driven fires pushed fire departments to their limits and forced evacuations in Bastrop County, the Steiner Ranch subdivision, Pflugerville, Spicewood and other areas. Scores of residents were left wondering whether they had homes to return to as many of the fires continued to burn Sunday night.

The largest and most destructive fire was in Bastrop County, where a blaze burned 14,000 acres and grew to an estimated 16 miles long by the end of the day, said Mark Stanford, fire chief of the Texas Forest Service.

‘It’s catastrophic,’ Stanford said of the Bastrop County fire. ‘It’s a major natural disaster.’

Forest Service spokeswoman Lexi Maxwell said that fire began about 2 p.m. in the Circle D subdivision off Texas 71. It merged with another fire north of there that pushed south and crossed over Texas 21 and Texas 71, Maxwell said. Aerial units estimated that at least 300 homes had been damaged or destroyed by the fire.

Maxwell said another, unrelated fire was reported in the Colony subdivision in Bastrop County, […]

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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama sided with business interests against the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday and ordered a sudden halt to a plan to toughen the Bush administration’s limits on smog.

The smog rule was a top priority for the EPA and health and environmental groups because dirty air has been shown to contribute to early death, heart attacks and lung problems, including bronchitis and asthma.

It was one of 10 regulations targeted this week for elimination by House of Representatives Republican leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, but Obama beat him to it.

The EPA tightened the standard for ozone, the main component in smog, during the Bush administration in 2008. However, the agency’s scientific advisory board unanimously advised that the new standard wasn’t strong enough.

Obama said in a short written statement that he’d decided against making the smog rule stronger because it would put too big a burden on business in a tough economic time. He added that his commitment to protect public health and the environment was ‘unwavering’ and that his administration ‘will continue to vigorously oppose efforts to weaken EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act or dismantle the progress we have made.’

Minutes after the statement came out, the […]

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It used to be that D.C. architecture consisted of graceful Georgetown mansions, neoclassical federal buildings — and, of course, the monuments. When the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts was founded in 1910 to guide Washington’s architectural development, it reviewed designs such as those of the Lincoln Memorial and the Federal Triangle. Over the seven years I’ve served on the commission, however, an increasing amount of time is spent discussing security-improvement projects: screening facilities, hardened gatehouses, Delta barriers, perimeter fences, and seemingly endless rows of bollards. We used to mock an earlier generation that peppered the U.S. capital with Civil War generals on horseback; now I wonder what future generations will make of our architectural legacy of crash-resistant walls and blast-proof glass.

How did we become so insecure about our buildings? Although the 9/11 attacks loom large in the public’s imagination, the event that changed the way federal buildings in the United States are designed and used — perhaps forever — was a presidential directive issued six years prior to the attacks. Historically, U.S. presidents have shown little interest in architecture. You can count the exceptions on one hand: Franklin D. Roosevelt, who designed his own presidential library; Theodore Roosevelt, who had […]

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HONG KONG — – The bankruptcies of three American solar power companies in the last month, including Solyndra of California on Wednesday, have left China’s industry with a dominant sales position – almost three-fifths of the world’s production capacity – and rapidly declining costs.

Some American, Japanese and European solar companies still have a technological edge over Chinese rivals, but seldom a cost advantage, according to industry analysts.

Loans at very low rates from state-owned banks in Beijing, cheap or free land from local and provincial governments across China, huge economies of scale and other cost advantages have transformed China from a minor player in the solar power industry just a few years ago into the main producer of an increasingly competitive source of electricity.

‘The top-tier Chinese firms are kind of the benchmark now,

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The 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases, according to the latest research from Moody’s Analytics. That should come as no surprise. Our society has become more and more unequal.

When so much income goes to the top, the middle class doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without sinking ever more deeply into debt – which, as we’ve seen, ends badly. An economy so dependent on the spending of a few is also prone to great booms and busts. The rich splurge and speculate when their savings are doing well. But when the values of their assets tumble, they pull back. That can lead to wild gyrations. Sound familiar?

The economy won’t really bounce back until America’s surge toward inequality is reversed. Even if by some miracle President Obama gets support for a second big stimulus while Ben S. Bernanke’s Fed keeps interest rates near zero, neither will do the trick without a middle class capable of spending. Pump-priming works only when a well contains enough water.

Look back over the last hundred years and you’ll see the pattern. During periods when the very rich took home a much […]

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