Facial recognition helps reunite kidnapped toddler with family after 32 years

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/19/asia/china-kidnapped-son-reunited-intl-hnk/index.html

 

There is no official tally on how many children are kidnapped in China each year. On the website "Baby Come Home," a widely-used platform for Chinese parents to post missing child notices, more than 51,000 registered families are searching for their children.

According to Xinhua, police have found and reunited more than 6,300 abducted children with their families since the Ministry of Public Security set up a nationwide DNA database in 2009 to match parents with missing children.

Trump, Flynn and Barr: A Corruption Update

Taiwan Says It Tried to Warn the World About Coronavirus. Here’s What It Really Knew and When

https://time.com/5826025/taiwan-who-trump-coronavirus-covid19/

 

When they heard about patients falling sick with a mysterious pneumonia in the Chinese city of Wuhan on Dec. 31, Taiwan’s health officials fired off an email to the World Health Organization asking for more information.

This four-sentence inquiry has since become fodder for the political brawl between China and the U.S. and threatens to bruise the reputation of the U.N.’s health agency as it leads the fight against an unprecedented global pandemic.

Taiwanese and U.S. officials have seized on the email to argue the WHO ignored an early warning that the coronavirus could likely be transmitted between people. In the weeks following the Dec. 31 note, the WHO echoed Chinese officials that there was “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission”— even as cases began cropping up that raised suspicion of contagion.

In an interview with TIME, Dr. Lo Yi-chun, the deputy director-general of Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC), says the WHO should have acted on Taiwan’s query by conducting its own investigation. Instead, he says the WHO “provided a false sense of security to the world.”

The WHO has defended its handling of the outbreak and says it relies on member countries like China to accurately report their findings. It also notes that Taiwan’s email did not explicitly mention human-to-human transmission, and that the self-governing island was not the first nor the only one to contact the organization about the disease.

 

Trump Says He Fired Inspector General Because He Was Appointed by Obama: We Should 'Get Rid' of Obama IGs

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-says-he-fired-inspector-general-because-he-was-appointed-obama-we-should-get-rid-obama-1504931

Pompeo told The Washington Post earlier today that he urged Linick's firing because the IG was "undermining" the agency's mission by failing to act in ways to improve the State Department, but declined to mention any specifics. "I went to the president and made clear to him that Inspector General Linick wasn't performing a function in a way that we had tried to get him to," he said, "that was additive for the State Department, very consistent with what the statute says he's supposed to be doing."

 

The Secretary of State's remarks came after Trump faced days of criticism from both sides of the aisle over his decision to dismiss Linick on Friday evening. It was the president's fourth watchdog dismissal in recent weeks. Trump told reporters on Monday that he followed Pompeo's suggestion because he has long supported firing IGs appointed by Obama.

Israel lifts mask requirement in classrooms, open spaces due to heat

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/SykWskWoU

The Israel Pediatric Association on Monday said that school children should not be forced to wear face masks during the hot days of summer despite health regulations meant to prevent coronavirus infections.

In the statement, the pediatrics association urged the health and education ministries to revoke the Health Ministry order in the wake of the unusual heatwave that hit the country on Sunday.

"During this current heatwave, requiring children to wear masks for long hours is impractical and a significant burden, masks that get wet from sweat will become ineffective," read the statement. "Therefore, we believe children should be exempt from wearing masks until this heatwave ends."

According to the association's experts, the effectiveness of face masks in preventing coronavirus spread among children is unclear and there is no evidence in the scientific literature to support the Health Ministry's claims.

TV: Ministers say Litzman ‘lying’ about having warned virus policy was excessive

https://www.timesofisrael.com/tv-ministers-say-litzman-lying-about-warning-virus-policy-was-excessive/

Ministers reportedly rebuked outgoing Health Minister Yaakov Litzman on Monday, saying he was “lying” when claiming he had spoken out against the “exaggerated” policies of the ministry’s director-general during the coronavirus outbreak.

Litzman on Sunday accused the government of overreacting in its response to the pandemic, aiming his criticism squarely at the outgoing director of his office, Moshe Bar Siman-Tov, who resigned last week.

Furious Fox host LOSES IT on Trump after he announces he’s taking hydroxychloroquine

Trump says he's taking hydroxychloroquine. Dr. Gupta says he shouldn't

Trump says he is taking hydroxychloroquine

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52717161

 

US President Donald Trump has said he is taking hydroxychloroquine to ward off coronavirus.

Speaking at the White House, he told reporters he started taking the malaria and lupus medication recently.

"I'm taking it for about a week and a half now and I'm still here, I'm still here," he said.

Pompeo says he asked for inspector general to be fired because he was 'undermining' the State Department

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/18/politics/pompeo-inspector-general-firing-explanation/index.html

 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told The Washington Post on Monday that he had recommended that State Department Inspector General Steve Linick be fired because the independent watchdog was "undermining" the department and wasn't performing in a way that the top US diplomat wanted him to.

"I went to the President and made clear to him that Inspector General Linick wasn't performing a function in a way that we had tried to get him to, that was additive for the State Department, very consistent with what the statute says he's supposed to be doing," he said in an interview with the Post. "The kinds of activities he's supposed to undertake to make us better, to improve us."

He did not go into details about what specifically displeased him about Linick's job performance.

Eric Trump's wild, dangerous coronavirus conspiracy theory

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/18/politics/eric-trump-donald-trump-coronavirus/index.html

So the reason that states with Democratic governors are slowly reopening after stay-at-home orders over the past few months is not to avoid a second surge in the coronavirus (as infectious disease experts worry could happen) but rather to keep President Donald Trump from holding campaign rallies?

But suggesting that Democratic governors are keeping their states from fully reopening to stop his dad's rallies wasn't even the most controversial thing that Eric Trump said!

That title goes to this line: "After November 3, coronavirus, will magically all of a sudden go away and disappear and everybody will be able to reopen."

WHAT? To believe that, you must believe that every governor of a state that is not fully reopened is covering up the fact that coronavirus is, in fact, not all that bad in their state. And they are doing this solely to keep Donald Trump from holding rallies. Or something.

 Here's how Pirro responded to Eric Trump's conspiracy theory: "I mean, it's clearly -- it's no longer, you know, for a while it was about the science and the non-believers and all of that, but it's right down the middle in terms of left and right." Uh huh.)

If you don't think this stuff is dangerous, you aren't paying attention.

Trump's Childish Tactics Won't Fly in the Flynn Case | Opinion

https://www.newsweek.com/trumps-childish-tactics-wont-fly-flynn-case-opinion-1504671

Heraclitus famously said that a man's character is his fate. So too with a presidency. A president's character is inextricably linked to his administration's fate. And one of this president's most characteristic personal failings has begun to manifest itself in his administration's legal arguments.

 

I refer to President Donald Trump's pathological reliance on "I'm rubber, you're glue" thinking—psychiatric professionals call it "projection"—to deflect attacks against him back onto his critics. This president accuses all his adversaries, real and imagined, of the very malignancies of which he is guilty. He did it with the presidential debates, quickly and childishly turning Secretary Hillary Clinton's accusation that he was a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin back onto her ("No puppet! No puppet! You're the puppet!"). He did it with race, accusing the four Democratic congresswomen who called out his racism of themselves being racist. And he did it with impeachment, railing for the impeachment of, among others, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Chairman Adam Schiff and Senator Mitt Romney.

Trump and his apologists are back at it again with Michael Flynn. They're offering the same "I'm rubber, you're glue" reasoning, this time covered in the thin veneer of legal argument. They accuse U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who presided over the Flynn trial and is poised to sentence Flynn for his federal crimes, of violating our constitutional separation of powers, for doing no more than taking entirely lawful and well-precedented steps to preserve the operations of the judicial branch. But in the end, it is Trump and Attorney General William Barr who are violating the separation of powers by taking lawless and unprecedented steps to undermine the judicial process.

How Donald Trump wins again, in 3 sentences

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/18/politics/donald-trump-james-woods-2020-reelection/index.html

"Donald Trump is a rough individual. He is vain, insensitive and raw. But he loves America more than any President in my lifetime."

Trump retweeted that assessment; "I think that is a great compliment," he wrote. "Thank you James!"

It's, of course, not a great compliment. If someone called you "vain, insensitive and raw," would you be flattered?

Trump is, quite simply, not likeable. He says and does things on an almost-daily basis that even many of his supporters think are over the line of acceptable conduct for a president or, really, for anyone.

Nothing will change that. Or certainly nothing that he can do between now and November. The only way he wins is to make the case that may not be your idea of what a president should look and act like but that he is someone who knows how to make change in Washington. (He also likely needs to disqualify Joe Biden, which his campaign is already working very hard to do.)

If that works, it would represent a fundamental change in the way in which we elect presidents. Conventional wisdom has long dictated that people vote for someone they'd want to have a beer with. Aside from his most unquestioning acolytes, it's hard to imagine most people would want to have a beer with Trump.

But will they vote for him anyway? They did once. And Woods (and Trump) have to hope they will vote for "their jerk" once more.

Donald Trump: A Study in Leadership