In brief: Email wasn’t about Benghazi attack, White House says

WASHINGTON – The White House on Wednesday denied that a staff member’s email three days after the deadly attack on the U.S. mission at Benghazi, Libya, was actually about the attack. Critics have branded the electronic missive as evidence that the Obama administration sought to deceive the public about the true circumstances surrounding the deaths of four Americans during the final months of the 2012 presidential campaign.

“It was explicitly not about Benghazi,” press secretary Jay Carney told journalists during his daily briefing at the White House. “It was about the overall situation in the region, the Muslim world, where you saw protests outside of embassy facilities across the region, including in Cairo, Sanaa, Khartoum and Tunis.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has called the email a “smoking gun” that “shows political operatives in the White House working to create a political narrative at odds with the facts.”

The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans died in the attack on Sept. 11, 2012.

Winds at fire ease; evacuations lifted

RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. – Gusty winds that whipped a Southern California wildfire over 1,000 acres of foothills east of Los Angeles eased at sunset Wednesday and mandatory evacuation orders were canceled for 1,650 homes.

But people in some northern neighborhoods of Rancho Cucamonga were urged to leave voluntarily if they felt threatened, and the winds still were too high to permit aircraft to battle the flames, said Chon Bribiescas, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.

The blaze erupted around 8 a.m. in the foothills of the San Bernardino National Forest and by afternoon had burned 1,000 acres of brush.

Crews retrieve body of pilot

RICHMOND, Calif. – Crews recovered the body of a pilot along with his plane’s fuselage Wednesday, days after the aircraft crashed into San Francisco Bay following a collision with another small plane that managed to land safely.

A marine salvage company retrieved the single-engine plane. The body of the pilot could be seen in the wreckage of the Cessna 210, which plunged into the water Sunday.

National Transportation Safety Board lead investigator Howard Plagens said the midair collision occurred when the pilot of a vintage Hawker Sea Fury TMK 20 pulled up to the left side of his traveling companion flying the Cessna.