10 things you need to know today: September 15, 2014

(Image credit: (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall))

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1. Arab nations offer to hit ISIS with airstrikes
2. Hillary Clinton's Iowa trip jumpstarts campaign talk
3. White House says it didn't threaten to prosecute slain journalists' families
4. Post-truce fighting intensifies in Ukraine
5. European agency picks spot where Rosetta probe will land on comet
6. Sweden's prime minister quits after election loss
7. Hurricane Odile slams into Mexico's Cabo San Lucas
8. Liberia sacks 10 officials for not returning home to fight Ebola
9. Actress detained after police allegedly mistake her for a prostitute
10. U.S. basketball team wins world basketball championship... again

last updated 27 January 2015

1. Arab nations offer to hit ISIS with airstrikes

Several Arab governments have committed to carrying out airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Obama administration officials said Sunday. The offers came during Secretary of State John Kerry's week-long trip to the Middle East to drum up support for the expanded fight against the Sunni extremist group. British Prime Minister David Cameron, calling ISIS militants "monsters" for beheading a British aid worker, pledged to support the U.S. effort against ISIS.

Hillary Clinton returned to Iowa — a crucial early primary-season prize — on Sunday, renewing speculation about the possibility that she plans to make a second run for president. The former secretary of State's husband, former president Bill Clinton, joined her at an annual steak fry fundraiser held by Sen. Tom Harkin, the state's powerful Democratic senator, who is retiring after four decades in Congress. "I'm back!" Hillary told supporters. "It's true. I am thinking about it."

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The White House on Sunday denied threatening to prosecute the families of two murdered journalists if they paid ransom to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria to win their freedom. U.S. law prohibits ransom payments to terrorists. White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said on Fox News Sunday that officials merely "made it clear what the law was." Relatives of the murdered journalists — James Foley and Steven Sotloff — said officials threatened legal action if they tried to free them on their own.

Clashes between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian separatist rebels killed six people in the contested city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. It was the heaviest fighting since a long-term truce took effect 10 days earlier. "It's not a cease-fire, it's full-on fighting," a rebel fighter said. The two sides have shelled each other daily since the cease-fire started, but the exchanges of fire have been far less intense than earlier battles. Each side has blamed the other for violating the peace deal.

The European Space Agency on Monday announced the spot where the Philae lander from its Rosetta spacecraft will put down on the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, 250 million miles from Earth. The site was picked from a list of five sites deemed to be suitable for the risky Nov. 11 landing. Rosetta reached the three-mile-wide "ice mountain" after a 10-year journey. Its spider-like Philae robot will harpoon the surface and lower itself down slowly on a mission to learn more about comets.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt announced Sunday that he would resign after his center-right coalition lost a parliamentary election to opposition Social Democrats. With nearly all of the votes counted, the left-leaning bloc led by Social Democrat Stefan Lofven was ahead with 44 percent of the vote, compared to 39 percent for Reinfeldt's coalition, which had been in power for eight years.

Hurricane Odile hit Mexico's southern Baja California peninsula overnight with top sustained winds of 125 mph. The storm, which weakened over the Pacific before landfall, made a direct hit on the resort city of Cabo San Lucas, dumping more than six months' rain in one hour. Authorities evacuated coastal areas, moving people into 18 hotels set up as shelters for 30,000 tourists and locals. California storm chaser Josh Morgerman said his hotel's lobby "exploded in a heap of rubble."

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has fired 10 senior officials — including six assistant ministers and two deputy ministers — for failing to return from abroad to help with the government's efforts to contain an Ebola outbreak that has killed at least 1,100 people in the West African nation. The officials had been ordered to return in August. In Sierra Leone, a fourth top doctor died on Saturday. She was the 135th health-care worker in the region to die after being stricken while treating Ebola patients.

Django Unchained actress Daniele Watts, who is African-American, posted on Facebook that Los Angeles police officers briefly handcuffed her after they mistook her for a prostitute because she had kissed her white boyfriend, celebrity chef Brian James Lucas, in public. A police spokesman said Sunday the officers were responding to a complaint that a white man and a black woman were engaged in a sex act in a Mercedes near the gate of the CBS Studio Center in Studio City. Watts said she and Lucas were just "showing affection, fully clothed."

The U.S. men's basketball team trounced Serbia on Sunday, 129-92, to defend its Basketball World Cup title. The U.S. team, playing without NBA superstars such as LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, won their games through the tournament by an average 32.5 points. Their closest game was a 21-point win over Turkey. The U.S. team now has won 63 straight games — including 45 in tournament play — qualifying for an automatic spot in the 2016 Olympics in Brazil.

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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.