10 things you need to know today: September 16, 2015

A woman looks at a vehicle swept away during a flash flood in Hildale, Utah.

(Image credit: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Jump to category:

1. Hungary closes main migrant land route to Europe
2. Carson gains on Trump in poll ahead of GOP debate
3. Blue Origin announces Florida rocket project
4. HP cutting up to 30,000 more jobs
5. Analysts back up claims military cooked ISIS intel
6. Senate Democrats block another vote on the Iran nuclear deal
7. Utah flash flood death toll rises
8. Mississippi college murder suspect left apology note before suicide
9. Parched Southern California gets day of record rain
10. Facebook works on "dislike" button

published 16 September 2015

1. Hungary closes main migrant land route to Europe

Hungary on Tuesday shut down the main land route for migrants trying to reach the European Union from the Middle East and Africa, sending small groups of migrants seeking another path through Croatia on Wednesday. Germany led an emergency push to force EU nations to take in mandatory quotas of refugees, but the effort collapsed after one of Chancellor Angela Merkel's ministers demanded financial penalties against countries that don't do their share. Slovakia said fining countries for not honoring their quota would spell the "end of the EU."

As Republican presidential candidates head into their second big debate Wednesday, Ben Carson pulled nearly even with frontrunner Donald Trump in a New York Times/CBS News poll of Republican primary voters released Tuesday. Carson, a political novice and the only African-American candidate in the contest, was favored by 23 percent of the GOP primary and caucus voters polled, up from just 6 percent in the last CBS poll. Trump inched up to 27 percent from 24 percent in the last poll. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush fell from 13 percent to 6 percent.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Private space-flight company Blue Origin, which was started by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, announced Tuesday that it would build rockets in Florida and launch them into orbit from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Blue Origin is leasing Launch Complex 36 at the base, the scene of historic launches including Surveyor 1, the first craft to make a soft landing on the moon. The $200 million project will create 330 jobs in the latest effort to revive Florida's Space Coast, which suffered economically when NASA shut down its space shuttle program in 2011.

Computer-maker Hewlett-Packard said Tuesday that it will cut up to another 30,000 jobs as part of a restructuring in response to falling demand. The cuts will come in the new Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a collection of divisions handling software, consulting, and data analysis that is splitting off from the company's personal computer business. HP has already slashed 50,000 jobs over the past several years.

Intelligence analysts have given investigators documents they say back up their claim that senior military officers manipulated reports to exaggerate progress in the war against the Islamic State. The Pentagon's inspector general is looking into the accusations that senior officials at United States Central Command, or Centcom, which oversees anti-ISIS operations in Iraq and Syria, changed conclusions about topics ranging from the readiness of Iraqi security forces to the success of airstrikes. "The senior intelligence officers are flipping everything on its head," an anonymous analyst told The New York Times.

Senate Democrats on Tuesday blocked a vote to reject the Iran nuclear deal for a second time. Republicans needed 60 votes to advance the resolution, but they fell short — as they did on Thursday — mustering only 56 votes. Majority Leader Mitch McConnel (R-Ky.) scheduled another vote for Thursday on barring President Obama from lifting sanctions unless Tehran recognizes Israel, as Republicans use their defeat to pile up political points to be used in campaign debates.

The death toll from a flash flood at the Utah-Arizona border rose on Tuesday as authorities found more bodies, bringing the total to 12 dead. Two of the bodies were found in Arizona about two and a half miles downstream from where a "large wall of water and debris" swept away a van and an SUV carrying three women and 13 children, authorities said. There were three survivors. One person remains missing. To the north, in Zion National Park, three people died exploring canyons, and four were missing.

The Mississippi college instructor suspected of fatally shooting his live-in girlfriend and a Delta State University colleague left behind a note apologizing, before killing himself, investigators said Tuesday. "I am so very sorry," said the handwritten note signed by the late suspect, Shannon Lamb. "I wish I could take it back." Lamb went on to say that he loved his girlfriend, Amy Prentiss, whose body was found at the home they shared in Gautier, Mississippi, 300 miles away from Delta State.

A storm dumped 2.38 inches of rain on drought-ravaged Southern California on Tuesday, breaking a record for rainfall for the date. The downpour made the 24-hour period the second wettest on record for September, National Weather Service meteorologist Robbie Munroe said. The storm cut off power to thousands of customers and caused rush-hour traffic jams. Rescue crews pulled three people and a dog out of trees on the Los Angeles River.

Facebook is working on adding a "dislike" button, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday. The social network's users have been asking for years whether Facebook would create a negative counterpart to its "like" button. The company has resisted, but is finally caving to popular demand. "It's important to give people more options than just 'like' to help express empathy and sympathy," Zuckerberg said. "Not every moment is a good moment."

Explore More

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.