10 things you need to know today: May 1, 2013

U.S. military guards move a detainee inside Guantanamo in 2010.

(Image credit: John Moore/Getty Images)

last updated 8 January 2015

1. OBAMA RENEWS PUSH TO CLOSE GUANTANAMO

President Obama said Tuesday that he was renewing his push to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, a goal he abandoned in the face of congressional opposition during his first term. Obama said the controversial facility is too expensive, and hurts America's international reputation and counterterrorism efforts. The remarks came after the U.S. sent dozens of Navy nurses and medics to help deal with a hunger strike that has spread to 100 of the 166 inmates. [New York Times]

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Investigators found ricin on a dust mask allegedly thrown into the garbage by a Mississippi man suspected of sending letters laced with the poison to President Obama and other officials, according to an FBI affidavit released Tuesday. A surveillance team reportedly watched suspect J. Everett Dutschke, who was arrested Saturday, leave a tae kwon do studio he once ran and discard the dust mask, latex gloves, and a coffee grinder — which can be used to extract ricin from castor beans. [Washington Post]

Federal regulators are making it easier for women to get the morning-after pill Plan B One-Step. The emergency contraceptive is currently sold at pharmacies, and is only available without a prescription to those over age 17. The Food and Drug Administration, under court order to lift the age restriction, decided Tuesday to allow stores to sell the product to anyone 15 or older, and to stock it on drugstore shelves next to women's health products and condoms. [Washington Times]

The death toll from the collapse of a factory complex in Bangladesh has risen above 400, and it could climb further. So far, 399 bodies have been pulled from the rubble. Another three people have died in hospitals. A senior army official said relatives had reported 149 people still missing. Thousands of people participating in May Day parades on Wednesday demanded the death penalty for the owner of the eight-story building, which housed several garment factories. [BBC News]

President Obama is preparing to send weapons to Syrian rebels, according to The Washington Post. A final decision on the move, which would mark a major policy shift, could come within weeks. The Obama administration has been ramping up non-lethal aid, including medicine, to the Syrian opposition, but the president has come under pressure to supply arms following reports that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces have used chemical weapons. [Washington Post]

Greek unions held a general strike to protest government austerity measures on Wednesday to mark May Day, the international Labor Day holiday. Thousands of people stayed home from work, shutting schools and tax offices and disrupting public transportation. It was the second mass strike this year to call for an end to the deep spending cuts and tax hikes imposed under the terms of a European bailout designed to save the debt-burdened nation from financial collapse. [New York Times]

A fight broke out in Venezuela's parliament on Tuesday over the country's recent disputed presidential election. Opposition lawmakers say supporters of President Nicolas Maduro ambushed and pummeled them. Maduro, the handpicked successor of late President Hugo Chavez, won a narrow victory, but supporters of opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski have called the results illegitimate. State TV cameras pointed to the ceiling during the scuffle. [CNN]

Unemployment hit another in a string of record highs in March, reaching 12.1 percent in the euro zone, according to Eurostat, the European Union's statistics office. The figures reflected a host of problems, including Spain's seventh straight quarter of contraction. Economists said the bad news suggested that the European Central Bank might be overly optimistic in predicting that the region will begin to recover this year. [Guardian]

IBM researchers have created the world's smallest movie by manipulating a few dozen carbon atoms on a copper surface into a stop-motion animation clip. The Guinness Book of World Records has certified the feat, which was accomplished by moving around the individual atoms with the tiny tip of a scanning tunneling microscope. A thousand frames of what you see in the clip, "A Boy and His Atom," would fit on the span of a single human hair. [BBC News]

Perhaps reports of the death of the celebrity sex tape were premature. Teen Mom reality TV star Farrah Abraham has reached a deal to sell the rights to a XXX tape she made with porn star James Deen to adult-industry powerhouse Vivid Entertainment for $1.5 million, according to Radar Online. Abraham, 21, reportedly made the professionally shot tape — which Vivid is calling Farrah Superstar: Backdoor Teen Mom — after attempts to sell another video, made with an ex-boyfriend, failed. [Radar Online]

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.

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