10 things you need to know today: May 6, 2016

Paul Ryan refuses to support Donald Trump

(Image credit: AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

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1. Ryan and Romney distance themselves from Trump
2. Rare party congress opens in North Korea
3. 28 killed in strikes on Syrian refugee camp
4. Canada airlifts 8,000 fire evacuees from temporary shelter camps
5. Turkish prime minister resigns under pressure from president
6. North Carolina officials defy Justice Department on bathroom law
7. FDA to regulate e-cigarettes and ban sales to children
8. Obama commutes sentences of 58 prisoners
9. Court paper says Joe Paterno knew of Sandusky sex abuse in 1976
10. SpaceX makes second successful rocket landing on floating pad

published 6 May 2016

1. Ryan and Romney distance themselves from Trump

House Speaker Paul Ryan, the GOP's 2012 vice presidential nominee, said Thursday that he was "just not ready" to endorse presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Mitt Romney, the party's 2012 presidential nominee, reportedly plans to skip the GOP's July convention — an unusual one-two snub for a new party standard bearer. Trump responded by saying he was "not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda," but hoped he and Ryan could work together on "what is best for the American people."

North Korea opened its first party congress in 36 years on Friday. Foreign analysts expect the isolated communist nation's leader, Kim Jong Un, to use the rare gathering to cement his authority and reemphasize his so-called byungjin strategy of enhancing the nation's nuclear arsenal and fixing its devastated economy. The state-run Korean Central News Agency on Friday said a "powerful nuclear deterrent" would "boost the revolutionary will of the people" to rebuild the economy.

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Airstrikes killed 28 people in a camp housing Syrian war refugees near the Turkish border on Thursday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based monitoring group. An activist from a nearby town said two strikes hit the camp, where people had taken refuge after fleeing fighting in Aleppo and Palmyra. Syrian or Russian forces are suspected to have launched the strikes. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said there was "no justification" for targeting the camp. The United Nations called the attack a possible war crime.

Canadian authorities on Thursday began airlifting 8,000 people from oil-sands work camps, where they had sought refuge after fleeing a massive wildfire that forced the evacuation of the entire city of Fort McMurray, some 80,000 people. Government officials hope that a highway to the south will become safe on Friday so they can move another 17,000 people in danger of becoming trapped by the flames. The blaze now covers more than 300 square miles. It has disrupted Canada's oil production and is expected to be the costliest disaster in the nation's history.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced Thursday that he would step down. Reports of tensions between Davutoglu and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been circulating for weeks. Davutoglu has remained publicly loyal to Erdogan, but he reportedly has been pushing back privately against Erdogan's recent moves to expand his power, such as jailing journalists and crushing anti-government protests. After being forced out by Erdogan, Davutoglu said, "My loyalty to him will last until the end."

North Carolina lawmakers on Thursday said they would not meet a Monday deadline to "remedy" a bathroom law the Justice Department has deemed to be in violation of the Civil Rights Act. The law requires people to use public restrooms corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate. Federal authorities say that amounts to discrimination against transgender people. "We're not going to get bullied by the Obama administration to take action prior to Monday's date," House Speaker Tim Moore said.

The Food and Drug Administration will start regulating electronic cigarettes, premium hand-rolled cigars, hookahs, and pipe tobacco just as it does tobacco products, the Obama administration announced Thursday. The new rules, which take effect in 90 days, will prohibit teens under the age of 18 from buying e-cigarettes. Manufacturers will have to submit currently unregulated tobacco products for approval if they were introduced after February 2007, when the now $3 billion e-cigarette industry was virtually non-existent.

President Obama has commuted the sentences of 58 federal prisoners, the White House announced Thursday. Eighteen of the 58 were serving life sentences, mostly for nonviolent drug-related charges. The majority of the prisoners are set to be freed Sept. 2, though some will be released early next year. It was Obama's second round of commutations this year. He cut short the sentences of 61 inmates in March, and his total now stands at 306, more than double the total commutations of the last six presidents combined.

A court document made public Thursday said late Penn State football coach Joe Paterno was told about sexual abuse allegations against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky as far back as 1976. Sandusky was sentenced in 2012 to 30 to 60 years in prison. Previously the abuse was thought to have occurred between 1994 and 2008. The latest allegation — which Paterno's family calls an unsubstantiated "smear" — surfaced in a lawsuit the university filed to get an insurer to pay its $60 million share of settlements with 26 men who say Sandusky sexually abused them.

SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 rocket at sea on Friday after it put a satellite in orbit. It was the second landing on a floating pad for entrepreneur Elon Musk's private space company. It made the first successful landing on a floating pad in April after four failed attempts. SpaceX is trying to re-use its rockets so it can cut the costs of its launch services. "Woohoo!!" Musk tweeted after the latest landing. "May need to increase size of rocket storage hangar."

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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.