weekend. this during the busiest shopping day of the year. emily has the latest from los angeles. reporter: as shoppers rush into stores for deals, so are mobs of thieves, grabbing and going. police call them flash mob theft, a surge in crime plaguing businesses in their robust time of year. is it changing the way your family members are shopping? definitely. smell my mother s generation. they didn t want go out at all to shop. reporter: more crime, high-end handbags snatched in los angeles. at home depot a different target, look closely, nearly ten people running out with sledge hammers and crowbars. they had the sledge hammers ready to hit people trying to stop them. reporter: california home to three of the top ten worst cities for organized retail crime according to a report from one trade group. los angeles taking the number one spot. it s trying to get their hands on as much product as they can, specifically during a supply chain crisis.
cnbc this week. for our employees, these are traumatic experiences and they happen more and more across the country. reporter: at least ten people have been arrested in the l.a. area this week and 12 more near san francisco face charges. but dozens remain at large leaving shoppers and stores on edge. california is home to three of the top ten worse cities for organized retail crime. that s according to a 2020 report from one trade group. los angeles claiming the number one spot. alex? that s a dubious honor. thanks so much. truth and no consequences could the big lie go unpunished? new comments from the chair of the house intel committee. tel c. vicks vapostick. it goes on clear and dries quickly. no mess. just the soothing vicks vapor for the whole family. introducing new vicks vapostick. at fidelity, your dedicated advisor
outsized influence and unchecked power. after all, they can determine how or whether your posts, business, or information show up in search engines. throttle down your post or remove followers on select platforms. they can ban or remove your videos without warning they can even silence you altogether. there was mostly a muted response from the tech titans in response to the trump lawsuit today, but one trade group called the suit frivolous adding that users, even u.s. presidents, have to abide by the rules they agreed to. yes indeed, now experts say that trump s lawsuit will to overcome another obstacle, including social media giants unit control of the platforms as well as the fine print of user agreements, including the venues and avenues for legal challenges. it is a battle for free speech, a battle for private enterprise, and public use all hanging in the balance. shannon. shannon: all right, kevin, that is a critical topic.
shameful politics with sequestration at the cost of hard working american families. as i have often said, this is simply no way to run a government. stephanie elam is at los angeles international airport. stephanie, how bad has it been out there and what has been the cost? reporter: well, jake, early on this week we saw flights that are being diverted, that were supposed to land at l.a.x., but because of runways aren t all open, they were being diverted to ontario. there have been some bad days. today, not so bad. overall, people wondered how much has this cost? the government had to do what they had to do because of sequestration. but some industries out there say the cost was just way larger than they were getting at first estimates. one trade group, the airlines for america, put the airline industry losses at $30 million over just the last five days. another group, the u.s. travel association, estimated that the airline and travel industry that their losses would have been more
predicted. we didn t match the year s best in early january. the first week of this month saw 462,000 people file for unemployment benefits for the first time. following week that dropped to 457,000 and for the week ending march 20, that figure hit 442,000. if it had hit 420,000 the economists would have concluded employers are hiring again. now in the last two years during the third week in march 2008 we saw 36 ,000 first time jobless claims. by last year at this time that number had nearly doubled to 657,000. this morning as i say we see this figure dropping below 450,000. one bright spot, manufacturing. caterpillar the world s largest maker of construction equipment is hiring 500 workers in south carolina. the head of one trade group told fox news among small businesses the really small ones with fewer than 20 employees that have been hiring over the last six to