10 things you need to know today: February 11, 2016

Yard signs for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie sit in a hallway in Iowa City, Iowa.

(Image credit: AP Photo/ Charlie Neibergall)

Jump to category:

1. Christie and Fiorina suspend presidential campaigns
2. Rancher Cliven Bundy arrested as FBI surrounds wildlife refuge occupiers
3. Justice Department files civil rights suit against Ferguson
4. Stock futures dive as oil prices fall and investors digest Yellen's remarks
5. Ex-L.A. sheriff pleads guilty to lying to FBI
6. Ex-priest charged with 1960 murder
7. Female suicide bombers kill 60 in Nigeria
8. North Korea seizes joint industrial complex after South Korea closes it
9. Senate unanimously approves North Korea sanctions
10. Sirhan Sirhan, RFK's assassin, denied parole for 15th time

last updated 11 February 2016

1. Christie and Fiorina suspend presidential campaigns

Both Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination on Wednesday, after finishing far back in the New Hampshire primary. Christie, the blunt-spoken governor of New Jersey, was credited with deflating a surging Sen. Marco Rubio in the last GOP debate, but that didn't help him at the polls. He finished sixth. Fiorina finished in seventh place with just 4 percent of the vote. The former Hewlett-Packard CEO delivered several strong debate performances, but couldn't build enough momentum to become a contender.

The FBI arrested Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy at the Portland airport on Wednesday night as agents surrounded the last four armed anti-government militants occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters in Oregon. Bundy's sons Ammon and Ryan started the protest. Cliven Bundy said he was on his way to the refuge when he was arrested. The armed holdouts said they were prepared to leave on Thursday.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

The Justice Department filed a civil rights lawsuit against Ferguson, Missouri, on Wednesday to force the city to enact police and court reforms. The move came after the Ferguson City Council approved the plan Tuesday night, but asked for several changes, including extended deadlines and a limit on costs to local government. The Justice Department investigated Ferguson's policing after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen, Michael Brown, by a white officer, and found evidence of racial bias in the system.

U.S. stock futures plunged ahead of the opening bell on Thursday as oil prices fell again. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, and Nasdaq indexes all fell by nearly 2 percent as U.S. crude oil futures fell below $27 a barrel. Shares in Europe and Hong Kong fell even more sharply. The sell-off came after Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen told lawmakers on Wednesday that the central bank was proceeding more cautiously with plans to slowly raise interest rates as it assesses the risk a global downturn poses to the U.S. economy.

Retired Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca pleaded guilty Wednesday to lying to federal authorities during a corruption investigation. Baca stepped down in 2014 during the scandal, which resulted in charges against others in his department for beating inmates and trying to hinder an FBI investigation. In his plea agreement, Baca said he ordered deputies to try to intimidate an FBI agent by doing everything "but put handcuffs on her." Under the deal, prosecutors won't seek a prison term of more than six months.

A former priest, John Feit, has been arrested in Arizona and charged with the 1960 murder of a Texas beauty queen. The woman, 25-year-old Irene Garza, was last seen going to confession at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, where Feit — then 27 — was serving as a visiting priest. Feit heard Garza's confession. Her body was later found in a McAllen, Texas, irrigation canal. Another woman then came forward and said Feit had attacked her three weeks earlier, but the jury deadlocked in her case and he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.

Two female suicide bombers killed more than 60 people at a camp for people displaced by the Islamist group Boko Haram's insurgency in Nigeria, emergency officials said Wednesday. The woman reportedly detonated their devices in the middle of the camp, after sneaking in. A third alleged bomber reportedly backed out after realizing that her mother and siblings were in the camp. The suspect said Boko Haram had sent them to attack the camp, and that more bombers were on the way.

North Korea on Thursday declared an industrial complex it jointly operated with South Korea to be a military zone. A day earlier, South Korea suspended work at the Kaesong Industrial Complex just inside the North's border in retaliation for Pyongyang's recent rocket launch and nuclear weapons test. North Korea called that "a declaration of war." Pyongyang vowed to kick out South Koreans and seize the assets of the 124 South Korean companies that employ 54,000 North Korean workers at the complex, which was built as a symbol of reconciliation.

The California parole panel on Wednesday denied parole to Robert F. Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, for the 15th time. "This crime impacted the nation, and I daresay it impacted the world," Commissioner Brian Roberts said. "It was a political assassination of a viable Democratic presidential candidate." Sirhan, 71, repeated his assertion that he did not remember shooting Kennedy in 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. A Kennedy confidante who was wounded, Paul Schrade, pleaded for Sirhan's release, saying he believed an unidentified second shooter killed Kennedy.

Explore More

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.