10 things you need to know today: February 13, 2016

(Image credit: L'Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo/Associated Press)

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1. Pope and Russian Orthodox Church leader meet for first time
2. Poll: Donald Trump clocks wide lead in South Carolina ahead of GOP primary
3. Michigan governor to testify before Congress over Flint crisis
4. Russia: West started new Cold War
5. Jim Gilmore ends long-shot GOP presidential campaign
6. 2 teenage students killed in Arizona high school shooting
7. Donald Trump threatens to sue Ted Cruz 'for not being a natural born citizen'
8. 6 remaining GOP candidates to face off in South Carolina
9. Mother of Columbine shooter Dylan Klebold speaks out
10. Mets reliever permanently banned from Major League Baseball for PED use

published 13 February 2016

1. Pope and Russian Orthodox Church leader meet for first time

Pope Francis and the head of the Russian Orthodox church, Patriarch Kirill, met Friday at José Martí International Airport in Havana. The meeting is the first in history for the leaders of the Eastern Orthodox and Western factions of Christianity. The leaders had a conversation and then signed a joint declaration on religious unity, which calls for peace in Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine.

Donald Trump is cruising into the final week ahead of South Carolina's Republican presidential primary with a comfortable 17-point lead. A poll by Opinion Savvy out Friday indicates Trump's chances of repeating his New Hampshire victory in the Palmetto State are strong in the upcoming Feb. 20 primary, with 36 percent support to second-place Sen. Ted Cruz's 19 percent. The poll's margin of error is 3.5 percentage points.

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Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) will testify before a congressional committee on the Flint water crisis, his office said Friday. In the hearing, which has not yet been scheduled, Snyder is expected to speak to what has happened in the city since it switched to lead pipes for tap water in 2014 and what reforms he recommends. On Thursday, Snyder had called U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and asked to testify.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev criticized the West for worsening relations with his nation over conflict in Syria. "NATO's attitude toward Russia remains unfriendly and opaque, and one could go so far as to say we have slid back to a new Cold War," he said at a high-level security conference Saturday. "Sometimes I wonder if it is the year 2016 or 1962." Medvedev disputed a widely held belief that Russian planes have bombed civilians in Syria.

Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore announced the suspension of his campaign for president Friday. The long-shot Republican candidate's decision comes after dismal performances in both the New Hampshire primary and Iowa caucus. In Iowa, Gilmore received an almost impossibly tiny 12 votes in the entire state. Gilmore's fellow Republican candidates Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina also dropped out of the race earlier this week after poor showings in New Hampshire.

Two students, both 15-year-old girls, were shot and killed at Independence High School in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, Arizona, on Friday morning. The shooting reportedly occurred just before 8 a.m. in an isolated part of campus, prompting a campus-wide lockdown. Though an official could not confirm if one of the girls killed themselves, she said that a weapon was found near the bodies and that police are not searching for any suspects.

Donald Trump threatened fellow GOP presidential contender Ted Cruz with a lawsuit Friday over Cruz's eligibility to run for president: "If Ted Cruz doesn't clean up his act, stop cheating, & doing negative ads, I have standing to sue him for not being a natural born citizen," he tweeted. Most legal experts agree that Cruz, who was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father, is a natural born citizen eligible to run for office.

The six remaining Republican presidential hopefuls will face off in a debate Saturday night in Greenville, South Carolina. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, and John Kasich will take the stage for the last time before the Feb. 20 primary in South Carolina and the Feb. 23 caucus in Nevada. The debate will air on CBS from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET. John Dickerson, Major Garrett, and Kimberley Strassel are set to moderate.

The mother of Dylan Klebold, one of two boys who killed 13 people at Columbine High School in 1999, gave her first televised interview Friday. Speaking to ABC's Diane Sawyer, Sue Klebold said she missed warning signs her son was depressed. "I think we like to believe that our love and our understanding is protective, and that 'if anything were wrong with my kids, I would know,' but I didn't know, and I wasn't able to stop him from hurting other people," she said.

On Friday, New York Mets relief pitcher Jenrry Mejía made Major League Baseball history by becoming the first player to be permanently banned from the league for using performance-enhancing drugs. This marks Mejía's third positive test for PED use in a single calendar year, after he failed a drug test in April 2015 and then another three months later. Mejía can apply for reinstatement to the MLB in one year.

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Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.