10 things you need to know today: September 1, 2016

Donald Trump meets with Mexico&#039;s President Enrique Pena Nieto

(Image credit: REUTERS/Henry Romero)

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1. Donald Trump spells out his immigration policy after Mexico trip
2. Brazil's Senate removes President Rousseff from office
3. Clinton says Trump 'failed his first foreign trip' in Mexico
4. Russia claims its airstrike killed ISIS spokesman, U.S. has doubts
5. Supreme Court denies request to reinstate North Carolina voting rules
6. Scientists report what could be the oldest fossils ever discovered
7. 5 die after 2 small planes crash in midair over Alaska
8. Florida braces for Tropical Storm Hermine
9. Scheduled airline service to Cuba resumes with JetBlue flight
10. Netflix announces second season of Stranger Things

published 1 September 2016

1. Donald Trump spells out his immigration policy after Mexico trip

Donald Trump on Wednesday outlined a hardline 10-point immigration plan that would result in swift deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants, but not all of the estimated 11 million now in the U.S. illegally, as he once advocated. Earlier in the day, the Republican presidential nominee met with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto in a hastily arranged and — in Mexico — controversial trip. Trump said he and Peña Nieto discussed his plan to build a wall on the border but not his vow to make Mexico pay for it. Peña Nieto tweeted that he made it clear to Trump "that Mexico will not pay for the wall," and called Trump's policies a "huge threat."

Brazil's Senate ousted President Dilma Rousseff on Wednesday in a 61 to 20 impeachment vote. Rousseff was charged with fudging the national budget to hide the country's economic troubles. Former Vice President Michel Temer, in power provisionally since Rousseff's suspension in May, was sworn in to finish Rousseff's term after the vote. Rousseff called the impeachment "a coup," and her supporters protested in the streets. Rousseff's fall ended 13 years of Worker's Party rule that saw Brazil's economy boom, but produced corruption scandals that eroded public trust in government. "We deserved better," writer Mentor Muniz Neto said.

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Hillary Clinton criticized Donald Trump's short visit to Mexico on Wednesday, saying her rival in the presidential race "just failed his first foreign test." Clinton, the Democratic nominee, hammered Trump over conflicting accounts he and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto had regarding their discussion of his vow to build a wall on the border and make Mexico pay for it. It takes "more than a photo op, it takes consistency and reliability," said Clinton, calling attention to her diplomatic experience as secretary of state. "You don't build a coalition by insulting our friends or acting like a loose cannon. You do it by putting in the slow, hard work of building relationships."

Russia said Wednesday that one of its airstrikes had killed Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani in Syria, whose death was announced a day earlier by an ISIS news outlet, but the U.S. said there was no evidence to support the claim. The U.S. is looking into whether an American strike near the divided city of Aleppo killed al-Adnani, a high-ranking ISIS leader also responsible for operations abroad. Russia has been trying to show that it is focusing on targeting terrorists in Syria rather than simply backing President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday denied North Carolina's request to reinstate its controversial voting rights law. The court, still down a justice following the February death of conservative stalwart Antonin Scalia, split 4-4, leaving in place a lower court ruling that struck down the law. The law, passed by North Carolina's Republican-led legislature, tightened voter I.D. requirements and cut back early voting. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said the law "targeted African-Americans with almost surgical precision."

Australian geologists examining a newly exposed outcropping in Greenland have found what could be the oldest signs of life on Earth, according to findings published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The remnants of microbial mats, found after the disappearance of snow that long covered the rocks, are 3.7 billion years old. If the discovery is confirmed, it will push the fossil record more than 200 million years deeper into the planet's history than the earliest previous discoveries.

Two small commercial planes crashed in midair over western Alaska on Wednesday, killing all five people on the two aircrafts. A Hageland Aviation Cessna 208 Caravan flown by pilot Harry Wrase was flying with two passengers when it collided with a Renfro's Alaska Adventures Piper PA-18 Super Cub flown by Zach Justin Babat, who was taking a passenger on a hunting trip. An Alaska National Guard helicopter with two medics flew to the scene, but the would-be rescuers found no survivors.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) declared a state of emergency on Wednesday as his state prepared for Tropical Storm Hermine, which is expected to reach hurricane strength by the time it reaches the state's Gulf Coast on Thursday afternoon. Forecasters issued a hurricane watch and tropical storm warning stretching from the state's panhandle to near Tampa, and warned that the storm was likely to dump heavy rains up the East Coast after crossing northern Florida. In Hawaii, Hurricane Madeline was downgraded to a tropical storm as it skirted the state's Big Island.

JetBlue Flight 387 touched down in Santa Clara, Cuba, on Wednesday about an hour after taking off from Fort Lauderdale, marking a resumption of scheduled commercial airline service between the U.S. and its former Cold War foe for the first time in more than 50 years. "Today's actions are the result of months of work by airlines, cities, the U.S. government, and many others toward delivering on President Obama's promise to reengage with Cuba," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. Eight carriers will launch service to Havana, Cuba's capital, as early as this fall.

Netflix confirmed Wednesday that Stranger Things, its enormously popular original series, will return in 2017 for a nine-episode second season. The streaming video service released a cryptic trailer offering few details, other than that the next season will pick up in the fall of 1984, about a year after the end of the action in the first, eight-episode season of the nostalgic science-fiction adventure, which features a group of middle-school children reminiscent of the kids in The Goonies, Stand by Me, E.T., and other classic films.

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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.