10 things you need to know today: January 29, 2018

(Image credit: TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images)

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1. Lawmakers warn Trump immigration demands could sink deal
2. Bruno Mars sweeps the top Grammy Awards
3. 11 killed in militant attack on Kabul military academy
4. French climber rescued, Polish partner out of reach on 'Killer Mountain'
5. Israeli leaders protest Poland bill to deflect blame for Nazi crimes
6. Police: Jealous gunman kills 4 outside Pennsylvania car wash
7. Trump administration considers creating a super-fast 5G network
8. Florida governor suspends mayor facing corruption charges
9. Top Putin critic arrested as thousands protest elections
10. Beetle Bailey creator Mort Walker dies at 94

published 29 January 2018

1. Lawmakers warn Trump immigration demands could sink deal

Lawmakers in both parties on Sunday indicated that President Trump's demand to sharply cut back legal immigration could prevent a deal on immigration, and they recommended focusing more narrowly on boosting border security and restoring protections for young undocumented immigrants known as "DREAMers." The White House plan, unveiled last week, would offer a path to citizenship for 1.8 million DREAMers in exchange for deep cuts to family immigration visas and $25 billion for border security, including Trump's proposed wall. Democrats say the White House offer uses DREAMers as "ransom" to push through policies favored by "anti-immigration hard-liners" and "white supremacists."

R&B artist Bruno Mars swept the top categories at Sunday night's Grammy Awards, winning Album of the Year ("24K Magic"), Record of the Year ("24K Magic"), and Song of the Year ("That's What I Like"). He took home six Grammys in all. Kendrick Lamar also won big with five awards, including Best Rap Album. The late actress and author Carrie Fisher posthumously won a prize for the Best Spoken Word Album for her audiobook recording of The Princess Diarist, a memoir taken from her diary entries during the shooting of the first Star Wars film, in which she played Princess Leia. The book came out just five weeks before she died in December 2016. Another noteworthy moment came when former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton read from Michael Wolff's controversial book Fire and Fury about President Trump's White House.

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Militants on Monday killed 11 Afghan soldiers in a raid against a military academy in Kabul as a wave of violence by Islamist extremists continued in Afghanistan. It was the fourth major attack in nine days, coming just after suicide bombers killed more than 100 people when they detonated ambulances full of explosives in a busy Kabul neighborhood. Last week, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack on the office of the aid group Save the Children in the eastern city of Jalalabad, which left six people dead. The U.S. has been increasing assistance to Afghan security forces, including air strikes against the Taliban and other groups.

An elite team of Polish mountain climbers rescued a French climber, Elisabeth Revol, on Sunday from Pakistan's Nanga Parbata, a Himalayan peak also known as "Killer Mountain." Harsh weather conditions on the mountain, the ninth highest in the world, prevented the rescuers from trying to get to Revol's climbing partner, Tomek Mackiewicz of Poland, who was stricken with acute mountain sickness caused by the lack of oxygen at high altitude. He also was suffering from snow blindness and frostbite. Revol had left him sheltered in a tent to descend on her own and get help. The two are believed to have reached the 26,600-foot summit, which would make them the second team ever to make it in the treacherous winter season.

Israeli leaders on Sunday denounced a bill recently passed by the lower house of Poland's Parliament seeking to make it illegal to blame the country for Nazi crimes committed there during World War II. The senate and president still must approve the measure for it to become law. About 1 million people, the vast majority of them Jews, were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp in Poland, between 1940 and 1945. "The law's intent is by no means to whitewash history, but to safeguard it and the truth about the Holocaust," said Piotr Kozlowski, deputy Polish Ambassador to Israel. Yair Lapid, the leader of an Israeli centrist opposition party, said the Polish legislation "tries to deny Polish complicity in the Holocaust."

A man armed with an AR-15 assault-style rifle and two other guns shot and killed four people outside a Pennsylvania car wash early Sunday. The alleged attacker, Tim Smith, apparently shot himself after the killings, and is not expected to survive. Police said the gunman was driven by jealousy, having broken up with one of the victims, 25-year-old Chelsie Cline, days earlier. She was having an affair with another victim, Will Porterfield, 27. "I was told my husband was cheating on me with (one of the victims), and that she had broken up with her previous boyfriend two days ago, and he went crazy and shot them all," said Porterfield's wife, Jenna Porterfield, 24.

Trump administration national security officials are considering building a super-fast, national 5G mobile network in what would be an unprecedented federal takeover of part of a wireless infrastructure that has always been held by private providers, Axios reported Sunday, citing "sensitive documents" it obtained. The move to centralize and build the nationwide 5G network would be a way to guard against potential economic and cyber security threats from China. An alternative would be for private wireless providers to build their own competing 5G networks, but the documents said that would take longer and cost more. Reuters reported that the proposal was being discussed by low-level officials, and would not be presented to President Trump for six to eight months.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) has suspended longtime Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper (D), who was arrested on public corruption charges. Cooper, 57, is accused of meeting with undercover agents posing as wealthy land developers and offering illegal campaign donations in exchange for her promise to get their development project approved by the city commission. She posted $12,000 bond on Thursday and vowed to fight the charges, which include three felonies. "I have dedicated my time and energy to focus on performing all of my duties with utmost integrity," she said. Her lawyer said the prosecution's case relied on the word of a now-fallen lawyer who pleaded guilty to a federal money-laundering charge in an unrelated case.

Thousands of Russians took to the streets of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other cities on Sunday to protest restrictions by Russian President Vladimir Putin's government against opposition candidates in the upcoming March 18 presidential election. Alexei Navalny , who called for the protests, was arrested en route to the Moscow demonstration; he was released Sunday night while prosecutors reportedly prepared charges against him for his role organizing unauthorized protests. Navalny wants people to boycott the election, which Putin is all but guaranteed to win, and demonstrators braved frigid weather to support his call. "As long as I've been alive, Putin has always been in," a 19-year-old protester said. "I'm tired of nothing being changed."

Mort Walker, the comic strip artist who created Beetle Bailey, died over the weekend at his home in Stamford, Connecticut. He was 94. Walker drew the strip, about a loafing Army private, for 68 years, the longest such daily run ever, according to syndicator King Features. Beetle Bailey originally was a slow-moving college student named Spider, but Walker turned him into an Army private with the onset of the Korean War. The Tokyo edition of Stars & Stripes banned the strip for fear it would encourage real service members to become slackers, but that only gave it free publicity that sent circulation soaring. In the 1970s, Walker added a black character, Lt. Flap, stoking the strip's popularity again. His sons plan to continue the comic.

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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.