10 things you need to know today: May 4, 2016

Ted Cruz walks off stage at a campaign event

(Image credit: AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

Jump to category:

1. Cruz ends presidential campaign after Trump wins Indiana primary
2. Sanders beats Clinton in Indiana
3. Wildfire forces evacuation of entire Canadian city of 80,000
4. U.S. Navy SEAL killed in Iraq identified
5. Ex-NY Assembly leader Sheldon Silver gets 12 years in prison for corruption
6. Terror group releases beheading video of Canadian hostage
7. Obama to name first national monument honoring gay-rights movement
8. Georgia governor vetoes 'campus carry' legislation
9. Medical errors are No. 3 killer in U.S., study finds
10. Hamilton wins record 16 Tony nominations

published 4 May 2016

1. Cruz ends presidential campaign after Trump wins Indiana primary

Ted Cruz dropped out of the presidential race on Tuesday night after Donald Trump decisively won the Republican primary in Indiana and became the party's presumptive nominee. Ohio Gov. John Kasich said he would continue campaigning until Trump gets enough delegates to win the nomination outright. In what became his last day on the trail, Cruz called Trump a "serial philanderer," "pathological liar," and a "narcissist." The rant came after Trump repeated a tabloid report linking Cruz's father to the late president John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination.

Bernie Sanders won the Indiana Democratic primary on Tuesday, beating party frontrunner Hillary Clinton 52 percent to 48 percent. Clinton has more than 90 percent of the delegates she needs to clinch the nomination, and her campaign is now focusing on beating presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump in the general election. Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, said Trump "seeks to bully and divide us," but Clinton will unite the country. Sanders vowed to stay in the race, saying, "I know that the Clinton campaign thinks this campaign is over. They're wrong."

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.

Canadian authorities ordered the entire city of Fort McMurray evacuated on Tuesday as a wildfire burned through suburbs toward downtown. In all, 80,000 people were told to flee, making it the largest fire evacuation in Alberta province history. Roads were clogged with people trying to leave after hot, dry conditions and a wind shift cause the fire to spread suddenly, consuming an entire neighborhood. "It's a nasty, ugly fire and it hasn't shown any forgiveness," fire Chief Darby Allen said.

Authorities and relatives on Tuesday identified the Navy SEAL killed by Islamic State fire in Iraq as Charles Keating IV. "He is our family hero in every sense of the word," cousin Elizabeth Ann Keating said. Keating was a grandson of the late Charles H. Keating Jr., a financier at the center of the Savings and Loan crisis in the 1980s and early '90s. Keating was the third U.S. serviceman killed in combat since the U.S. sent troops to help advise local forces fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria in mid-2014.

A judge sentenced former New York State Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver to 12 years in prison on Tuesday for corruption. Judge Valerie Caproni also ordered Silver, 72, to hand over $4 million he got through twin corruption schemes, and pay a $1.75 million fine. Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, told the court he was "truly, truly sorry" for letting down his constituents, family, and colleagues. Assistant U.S. Attorney Carrie Cohen had called for a stiff sentence, saying, "There's no excuse, just pure greed."

Muslim extremists in the Philippines have released a video showing the beheading of a Canadian hostage, John Ridsdel, a U.S. group that monitors terrorist websites reported Tuesday. Ridsdel, 68, was kidnapped in September by members of the Abu Sayyaf militant group, along with fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad, and Filipina Marites Flor. Abu Sayyaf demanded a large ransom. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last week Canada would never pay ransom to terrorists because that would endanger Canadians around the world.

President Obama is preparing to declare the first U.S. national monument recognizing the struggle for gay rights, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. The designated area would include the Greenwich Village neighborhood where riots broke out after police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar. The event was a pivotal point at the beginning of the gay liberation movement. Federal officials will solicit feedback to the proposal in a May 9 meeting. Obama could declare the monument as soon as June, LGBT Pride Month.

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) on Tuesday vetoed controversial legislation that would have let college students carry concealed guns on campuses. The "campus carry" proposal imposed some restrictions, but critics said it would have made the jobs of campus police harder. Supporters said letting law-abiding students carry weapons would have made campuses safer. "It is highly questionable that such would be the result," Deal said.

Medical errors are America's third leading cause of death, behind heart disease and cancer, according to a study released Tuesday. Errors cause at least 250,000 deaths per year, the report said. "People don't just die from heart attacks and bacteria, they die from system-wide failings and poorly coordinated care," said the study's lead author, Dr. Martin Makary of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "It's medical care gone awry." The toll amounts to about 10 percent of U.S. deaths each year.

Hamilton, the hip-hop musical about the nation's Founding Fathers, received a record 16 Tony Award nominations on Tuesday. The show is one of Broadway's most successful in years, and now it is up for awards in every category in theater production — acting, writing, directing, dance, music, and design. "It's unbelievable — it's absolutely humbling and incredible," said the show’s creator and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, who has won a Pulitzer and a MacArthur Foundation genius grant.

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.