Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:

The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tennessee, on jobs growth in June:

Unemployment in the United States fell in June to 6.1 percent from 6.3 percent in May, the lowest rate since the fall of 2008. That’s when financial giant Lehman Brothers collapsed, taking with it in house-of-cards fashion other Wall Street firms and a good chunk of the auto industry, along with a lot of other luckless companies.

That prompted an unprecedented government bailout that pumped billions of dollars into banks and businesses and continues even to this day, in much-diminished form, through the Federal Reserve’s bond buying program. Now, thanks to the robust economic recovery, that program may be nearing its end.

The economy added 288,000 jobs last month and 2.5 million jobs in the last 12, the fastest annual growth since 2006. According to The Associated Press, the 200,000-plus monthly job gains over the past five months have been the best stretch since the 1990s tech boom ”“ although we must hope this growth comes to a better ending than the subsequent tech bust.

Job gains were spread across the economy ”“ factories, retailers, financial firms, restaurants and bars all added substantially to their payrolls. And employment got a boost from another surprising quarter ”“ government hiring, which began to tail off in 2007 and began shedding employees every year from 2009 to 2013. Public-sector hiring has increased by 54,000 jobs so far this year, good news for hollowed-out local and state governments.

The first-quarter 2.9 percent decline in gross domestic product is increasingly looking like a weather-related anomaly. Economists polled by the British newspaper The Guardian seemed to agree that the world’s largest economy is in good shape with strong underlying momentum.

There are two other anomalies that are perhaps cause for worry. Wage growth has remained at an anemic 2 percent a year during the recovery, well below the historical average of 3.5 percent. The U.S. economy depends heavily on consumer spending and 2 percent a year is not going to do much to help that. Some think wages will pick up along with the economy, a view that seems to have not yet caught on with employers.

The other anomaly is that workforce participation ”“ the number of Americans working or actively looking for work ”“ is stuck at a low of just over 62 percent. The problem is no longer purely economic; the jobs are there, and employers are hiring. It might be structural: workers stuck in the wrong place or with the wrong skills. Or it could be societal: Older workers who lost their jobs and are content to scrape along until retirement age and Social Security or desperate workers who are willing to work off the books.

A booming economy solves all kinds of problems and ultimately these may be two of them.

Tampa (Fla.) Tribune on terrorism’s mystery man:

For years, it seemed that we all knew everything we needed to know about Osama bin Laden, including, importantly, what he looked like. We want to know what our foe looks like.

And, at least in simple terms, we understood Osama’s goal was to punish the United States and other Westerners (and their values) for representing what he perceived as a threat to his religious, cultural and political beliefs.

But until recently we knew next to nothing about the man behind today’s most dangerous threat to global peace, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

His organization claims to have recruited fighters from Britain, France, Germany and other European countries, as well as the United States, the Arab world and the Caucasus. This is no longer a local group with a grudge.

Baghdadi, who last week called on all the world’s Muslims to pledge their allegiance to him, is not yet a household name. There are few photographs of him, so it was big news last weekend when a video purportedly showing him leading prayers in Mosul surfaced. Iraq security forces are analyzing the tapes.

Baghdadi may be a shadowy figure. But given the way ISIL is destroying everything in its path ”“ everything the United States and its allies tried, at such a high cost, to create in Iraq, namely a well-functioning democracy with well-trained and disciplined security forces ”“ surely his name should become as familiar as that of any previous international terrorist leader.

Until recently, this new symbol of Islamist extremism did not appear to covet attention. There were no propaganda videos designed to glorify him and his cause. He remained a man of mystery. Compared to bin Laden, he was certainly publicity-shy.

But with his military success in both Syria and Iraq, Baghdadi has become more notorious.

The Guardian, a British newspaper, recently offered its own analysis of this obscure figure who is responsible for so much violence. The newspaper reported that Baghdadi was born in 1971 into a religious family in the city of Samarra ”“ that’s about 80 miles north of Baghdad ”“ and earned a doctorate in education from the University of Baghdad. “There are competing versions of how he came to jihad,” the Guardian reported. “One version suggests that he was already a militant jihadist during the time of Saddam Hussein.”

But another version in circulation describes how, after the American-led invasion in 2003, he was drawn into the emerging al-Qaida in Iraq under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He helped smuggle foreign fighters into Iraq and later became the “emir” of Rawa, near the Syrian border.

In Rawa, the Guardian reported, Baghdadi presided over a sharia (Islamic law) court and became notorious for his brutality, including publicly executing those suspected of having helped the American-led coalition forces.

The same sort of brutality has become all too common in those parts of Syria where his forces have gained control. They joined the Syrian rebels trying to end the corrupt regime of President Assad, but their brutal tactics have drawn heavy criticism and driven a wedge between the two groups.

Baghdadi preached and taught at various mosques and apparently led several smaller militant groups before he was promoted to a more prominent role in the Islamic State and the Levant, the Guardian reported.

And by now, while there remains a certain mystique surrounding him, a mystique that was enhanced by his organization’s stunning capture of Mosul and its advance toward Baghdad itself, as the Guardian notes, there is “no mystery about what Baghdadi wants.”

It is his belief that all Muslims should live under one Islamic state ruled by sharia law, and he believes he made the first step toward that by declaring the creation of a caliphate spanning Syria and Iraq.

While he may remain obscure to the rest of us, Washington believes his record and agenda are frightening enough that the government has placed a $10 million bounty on his head.

And he, in turn, has severely complicated already-fragile American foreign policy. The United States certainly will be reluctant to send troops back to Iraq to help the inept government that’s running things now, but neither Washington nor America’s allies can afford to let Baghdadi and his jihadist followers destabilize the entire region.

In a very real sense, Baghdadi is a more dangerous threat to American and European security than even bin Laden was because, for all the evil he represented, bin Laden never ruled over a broad geographic area the way Baghdadi will if his merciless mission is not repelled.

To describe him as the new bin Laden is to grossly understate the threat he represents. We’d better get to know him a lot better than we do now.

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