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Ten Things You Need to Know for Monday – August 3, 2015

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Good Monday morning from Salt Lake City. 

The first GOP primary debate is coming this week. Biden may run for president next year. Relocating the prison to Salt Lake City might make the most economic sense.

The clock:

  • 8 days to the Utah municipal primary elections – (8/11/2015)
  • 92 days to the 2015 election – (11/3/2015)
  • 168 days to the 2016 Iowa Caucus (tentative) – (1/18/2016)
  • 175 days to the opening day of the 2016 Utah Legislature – (1/25/2016)
  • 176 days to the 2016 New Hampshire Primary – (1/26/2016)
  • 220 days to the final day of the 2016 Utah Legislature – (3/10/2016)
  • 330 days to the 2016 Utah primary election – (6/28/2016)
  • 463 days until the 2016 presidential election – (11/8/2016)

Monday's top-10 headlines:

  1. The first GOP primary debate is later this week. Republican presidential hopefuls are preparing to face off against Donald Trump [New York Times].
  2. Trump is trying to downplay expectations for the first debate on Thursday [ABC News].
  3. There are rumblings that Vice President Joe Biden may launch a bid for the White House in 2016 [Politico, MSNBC].
  4. Hillary Clinton releases eight years of tax returns. During that time, she and her husband paid more than $43 million in taxes [Washington Post].
  5. An analysis for the Prison Relocation Commission says Salt Lake City would be the most expensive site to build a new prison facility, but would be the cheapest place to operate the prison in the long-run [Tribune].
  6. Utah Republicans select Derrin Owens from Fountain Green to replace Rep. Jon Cox in the legislature [Utah Policy, Tribune, Deseret News].
  7. The Constitution Party wants a mediator to help them settle their lawsuit against the state over SB 54 [Deseret News, Fox 13].
  8. Forty-two inmates at the Utah State Prison have instigated a hunger strike to get gang leaders released from the maximum-security wing of the prison [Deseret News, Tribune].
  9. The National Park Service is trying to deal with a spike in the number of visitors to national parks inside Utah [Deseret News].
  10. Researchers discover on some days ozone levels over the Great Salt Lake are three-times higher than in neighboring cities [Tribune].

On this day in history:

  • 1492 – Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain, seeking a western route to India, with a convoy of three small ships – the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. They reached land on an island in the Caribbean in October).
  • 1914 – Germany declared war on France and invaded Belgium. The next day Britain declared war on Germany and World War I was underway.
  • 1948 – Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist, publicly accused former State Department official Alger Hiss of having been a part of a Communist underground, a charge Hiss denied.
  • 1981 – U.S. air traffic controllers went on strike. They were fired within one week.