10 things you need to know today: August 21, 2016

The aftermath of a terrorist attack in Gaziantep, Turkey

(Image credit: Ilyas Akengin/Getty Images)

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1. At least 50 dead in Turkish wedding bombing, ISIS suspected
2. Rio Olympics end Sunday evening with Closing Ceremony
3. Trump continues outreach attempt to black, Latino voters
4. July fundraising data shows Trump accelerates but Clinton leads
5. DOJ: It's unconstitutional to detain people because they can't afford bail
6. North Korea: Defected diplomat is 'human scum'
7. Smallpox eradicator D.A. Henderson dies at 87
8. 5 found murdered in Alabama home
9. Philippine president threatens to leave the UN over drug war censure
10. Embattled swimmer Ryan Lochte apologizes for immaturity, exaggeration

last updated 21 August 2016

1. At least 50 dead in Turkish wedding bombing, ISIS suspected

A suspected suicide bombing killed at least 50 people in Gaziantep, Turkey, on Saturday night while they were dancing at a reportedly Kurdish wedding. "The celebrations were coming to an end and there was a big explosion," said eyewitness Veli Can. "There was blood and body parts everywhere." The bride and groom both survived. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said early Sunday the Islamic State is the "likely perpetrator" of the terrorist attack, but Erdogan also claimed there is "no difference" between ISIS and two other groups that oppose his government: the Kurdistan Workers Party, which is itself fighting ISIS, and the following of elderly cleric Fethullah Gülen, who lives in exile in Pennsylvania. In a statement Sunday afternoon, Erdogan said the bomber is believed to have been about 13 years old.

The 2016 Summer Olympics will formally end with a Closing Ceremony in Rio Sunday evening at 7 p.m. Eastern time, featuring a parade of athletes and the extinguishing of the Olympic flame. Simone Biles has been chosen to lead the American delegation at the ceremony. She is the first gymnast to be chosen to carry the U.S. flag since 1936. The 2018 Winter Olympics will be held in PyeongChang, South Korea, and the 2020 Summer Olympics will take place in Tokyo, Japan.

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Republican Donald Trump on Saturday continued the attempt to woo minority voters he began on Friday, when he asked black Americans to vote for him because they have nothing to lose. Speaking in Virginia on Saturday, Trump said the GOP "must do better" in appealing to African Americans, but he labeled as "crooked politics" a Virginia campaign to restore voting rights to felons — a policy that would disproportionately re-enfranchise black voters. Trump also joined a roundtable discussion with Latino leaders at Trump Tower in New York on Saturday, reportedly telling participants he wants to find a "humane and efficient" immigration policy.

Fundraising reports filed Saturday night with the Federal Election Commission show July was a strong month for both presidential campaigns, but Democrat Hillary Clinton still easily outpaces Republican Donald Trump in the money game. Trump's haul was $36.7 million, including $2 million he contributed himself, marking his best fundraising month to date. Clinton also had her best month so far, taking in $52.3 million thanks in part to an influx of small donors. The Democrats' advantage persisted in national committee fundraising, too: The DNC collected $32.4 million in July to the RNC's $27.2 million.

The Justice Department said in a court filing this week that holding people in jail purely because they are too poor to make bail is a violation of their constitutional rights. This is the first time the DOJ has made this argument in a federal appeals court. "Although the imposition of bail ... may result in a person's incarceration, the deprivation of liberty in such circumstances is not based solely on inability to pay," the amicus curiae brief said. "But fixed bail schedules that allow for the pretrial release of only those who can pay, without accounting for ability to pay and alternative methods of assuring future appearance, do not provide for such individualized determinations, and therefore unlawfully discriminate based on indigence."

Pyongyang harshly condemned North Korean diplomat Thae Yong Ho, who recently defected to South Korea, in a statement reported by the isolated country's state-run media on Saturday. "This one clearly deserves legal punishment for crimes he has committed," the statement said, "but he proved that he is human scum that has no basic loyalty as a human and no conscience and morality by running away to survive and abandoning the homeland and parents and siblings that raised and stood by him." The North Korean government also accused Thae of "embezzling a lot of state funds, selling state secrets and committing child rape."

The man who led the effort to eradicate smallpox died Friday in Towson, Maryland. Donald "D.A." Henderson was 87. An epidemiologist who worked at Johns Hopkins University, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization, Henderson's successful elimination of smallpox has been hailed as "the single greatest achievement in the history of medicine." Before the deadly disease was eradicated, it killed some 300 million people worldwide in the 20th century.

Five people including one pregnant woman were found murdered in a home in Citronelle, Alabama, local police said Sunday. A baby was found in the house unharmed. The victims were discovered Saturday afternoon, and are believed to have been killed very early Saturday morning. A suspect, Derrick Dearman, was arrested across the nearby Mississippi border; once in custody, he confessed to the crime. The investigation is still ongoing, and police are in the process of determining what weapon was used, as well as whether the victims were attacked in their sleep.

Angry at United Nations criticism of his violent drug war prosecution, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Sunday threatened in an expletive-laden rant to remove his country from the organization and launch a new association of nations with China. About 900 suspected drug traffickers have been killed in the Philippines since Duterte entered office in May. Though he denies government responsibility for the deaths, Duterte has publicly encouraged vigilante and extrajudicial police killings of drug suspects. A UN human rights report said his comments are an "incitement to violence and killing, a crime under international law."

American swimmer Ryan Lochte followed up his Instagram apology for lying about being robbed at gunpoint during the Rio Olympics with a further mea culpa in a Saturday interview with NBC News. "I'm taking full responsibility for it, because I over-exaggerated the story," he said. Lochte also admitted he was "very intoxicated" at the time of the incident. "Brazil doesn't deserve that," he said in another interview Saturday. "I am sorry that my immaturity caused all this ruckus." Lochte may be be banned from future competitive swimming, pending decisions from USA Swimming and the U.S. Olympic Committee.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.