Donald Trump's WHO Letter About China Explained: An Annotated Timeline

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-who-letter-china-explained-annotated-timeline-1505379

President Donald Trump wrote this week a letter to the World Health Organization (WHO) chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus criticizing the U.N. agency and his leadership during the coronavirus pandemic, specifically its work with China, where the outbreak first emerged.

 

Here, Newsweek presents Trump's letter to the WHO in full, along with annotations to add context, facts, counterclaims, and other relevant information.

 Observers have warned that the loss of U.S. funding would degrade the WHO's ability to prepare for and fight future pandemics. Philanthropist billionaire Bill Gates, himself a major funder of the organization, said Trump's threat is "as dangerous as it sounds."

I was right, says prof who predicted pandemic would play itself out in 70 days

https://www.timesofisrael.com/i-was-right-says-prof-who-predicted-pandemic-would-play-itself-out-in-70-days/

Isaac Ben-Israel says virus disappears everywhere at same speed, rendering interventions irrelevant. Public health expert: He ‘has no clue about epidemiology and public health’

Many medical professionals have raised their eyebrows over Ben-Israel’s claims. The public health expert Nadav Davidovitch, asked to comment for this article, said he agrees with Ben-Israel’s sentiment that “hysteria” must be avoided but added: “He is an excellent scientist, yet he has no clue about epidemiology and public health.”

Ben-Israel doesn’t have a medical background, but claimed that simple mathematics can yield an understanding of the virus’s pattern. He argued that this pattern proves that lockdowns are “unnecessary no matter what,” and have been a needless disruption to life and a waste of money.

Ben-Israel has supported social distancing and hygiene measures but said that they only have a limited impact on infection rates. He argued that this is now shown to be true because he can’t draw a clear correlation between a country’s hygiene level and a significant change in the pattern of infection rates.

Trump Is Dangerously Predictable With China

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/01/trump-xi-china-coronavirus-trade-deal/

However erratic Trump’s positions on China appear at the surface, an honest examination of his engagement with Beijing reveals not unpredictability but a dangerous steadfastness. Trump has consistently placed his personal political interests over the national interest of the United States—even when the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Nor has Trump been shy about brandishing the trade deal as a pillar of his reelection campaign. Just before its signing, Trump crowed about the deal—describing it as a “big, beautiful monster”—at a campaign rally in the swing state of Ohio. During the signing ceremony itself, he declared: “It just doesn’t get any bigger than this.” Trump’s campaign, moreover, was planning a series of television ads touting the deal, whose signing and implementation spanned the exact period when America’s coronavirus trajectory was taking shape. It was precisely during this period when the dialogue between Washington and Beijing could have benefited from less fawning and more calls for transparency and international cooperation. But for Trump himself, the trade deal and its political implications didn’t “get any bigger,” and not even public health concerns could push him to jeopardize his rapport with Xi to secure it.

Other developments in Trump’s relations with Beijing that seem erratic on the surface display the same predictable, one-track mindset. This includes Trump’s protection of the Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE against his own officials in the Department of Commerce. In March 2017, ZTE pleaded guilty in the United States to illegally exporting American technology to Iran and North Korea. A year later, when the firm violated the settlement agreement with the U.S. court, the Department of Commerce banned American companies from providing ZTE with technology for seven years. The ruling underscored the national security implications of ZTE’s original offenses, its disregard for the settlement agreement, and the company’s efforts to cover up that disregard.

 Trump upended this course of action in May 2018, when he abruptly tweeted about how he was working with Xi to get ZTE “back into business,” citing “[t]oo many jobs in China lost” and directing the Commerce Department to “get it done.” The U.S. president’s focus on unemployed Chinese—after railing against Beijing’s unfair economic practices for years—raised eyebrows and sowed confusion even within his own administration.

Trump owed tens of millions to Bank of China

https://www.politico.eu/article/trump-owes-tens-of-millions-to-the-bank-of-china-and-the-loan-is-due-soon/

Donald Trump is warning “China will own the United States” if Joe Biden is elected president.

But Trump himself has taken on debt from China. In 2012, his real estate partner refinanced one of Trump’s most prized New York buildings for almost $1 billion. The debt included $211 million from the state-owned Bank of China, which matures in the middle of what could be Trump’s second term.

 

Donald Trump’s Debt to China

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/donald-trumps-debt-to-china

With criticisms of Trump’s handling of the pandemic growing and new opinion polls showing him trailing Biden in several key battleground states, we are sure to see more of these diversions. But adopting a China campaign strategy would also present a number of problems for Trump, beginning with the fact that Hunter Biden’s investment partnership isn’t the only American business that received funding from Chinese entities. In 2012, the Bank of China, a commercial bank owned by the Chinese state, provided more than two hundred million dollars in loans to a New York office building that Trump co-owns, Politico reported on Friday. The loans will come due in 2022, “in the middle of what could be Trump’s second term,” the timely article noted.

Trumplomacy: What's behind new US strategy on China?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52506073

 

Mr Trump's allies in the America First Action (AFA) political committee have been rolling out advertisements lashing "Beijing Biden" for "leading the charge" of a Washington elite too willing to accommodate a predatory China.

Mr Biden has hit back with an advert that accuses the president of trying to deflect blame for his own slow response to the pandemic, and of being too trusting of China's initial information about the virus.

The common element in these starkly different positions is that both campaigns believe it's good politics to argue their man will be strongest in taking on Beijing.

"If you look at the most recent Pew poll and Gallup poll, Americans' distrust of China, whether you're Republican or Democrat, is at an all-time high," roughly two-thirds of the country, says the AFA's Kelly Sadler. "This is a universal issue that Republicans and Democrats can both agree on."

There's certainly been a dramatic uptick in negative views of China since Mr Trump took office and dialled up the trade war.

Donald Trump’s erratic China policy undermines western unity

https://www.ft.com/content/b9a063aa-9057-11ea-9207-ace009a12028

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found here. https://www.ft.com/content/b9a063aa-9057-11ea-9207-ace009a12028

The broader difficulty is that America’s allies fear that the Trump administration’s goal is not to compel China to follow international rules — an aim they would support — but to destroy the rules. The allies know that the White House has pulled the US out of the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and is deliberately hobbling both the World Trade Organization and the World Health Organization. They remember that the president has threatened to impose tariffs on Germany and Japan — and has expressed scepticism about Nato and hostility towards the EU. They also know that Mr Trump is up for re-election in November, and suspect his motives in going after China now.

The sad truth is that America’s allies in Europe and Asia are also angered by Beijing’s behaviour. They simply do not trust the Trump administration’s leadership in countering it.

Trump's Glaring Absence On World Stage As He Blames CDC Director For The Crisis | Deadline | MSNBC

Flynn tries to shut down Judge Sullivan; Trump fires (another) IG

The Fake Aguna is a Creation of Corrupt Rabbis(V6)

Roe v Wade: Woman behind US abortion ruling was paid to recant

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52733886

 The woman behind the 1973 ruling legalising abortion in the US is seen admitting in a new documentary that her stunning change of heart on the issue in later life was "all an act".

Norma McCorvey, known as Jane Roe in the US Supreme Court's decision on Roe v Wade, shocked the country in 1995 when she came out against abortion.

But in new footage, McCorvey alleges she was paid to switch sides.

 n her "deathbed confession", as she calls it, a visibly ailing McCorvey says she only became an anti-abortion activist because she was paid by evangelical groups.

"I was the big fish," she said. "I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money and they'd put me out in front of the cameras and tell me what to say.

"That's what I'd say. It was all an act. I did it well too. I am a good actress. Of course, I'm not acting now."

Teenage boy charged in Canada's first 'incel' terror case

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52733060

The 17-year-old boy is accused of fatally stabbing a woman in February.

Incel, short for "involuntarily celibate," is an online subculture focused on members' perceived inability to find romantic or sexual partners.

A 2018 attack in Toronto that killed 10 was also allegedly inspired by the ideology, but the accused in that case was not charged with terrorism.

"Terrorism comes in many forms and it's important to note that it is not restricted to any particular group, religion or ideology," said the RCMP.

 

Judge allows fraud suit against Trump, family and company to proceed

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/19/politics/fraud-suit-trump-family-company/index.html

A federal judge on Monday allowed a federal lawsuit accusing President Donald Trump, his three eldest children and his company of collaborating with a fraudulent marketing scheme to prey on investors to proceed.

The lawsuit, originally filed in October 2018 and amended a few months later, alleges that in exchange for "secret" payments, Trump and three of his adult children used his former reality TV show "The Celebrity Apprentice" and other promotional events as vehicles to boost ACN Opportunity, a telecommunications marketing company linked to a nonprofit that used Trump's brand to appeal to teens.

The lawsuit also accuses the Trumps of having profited off the poor and vulnerable, as people looking "to enrich themselves by systematically defrauding economically marginalized people looking to invest in their educations, start their own small business, and pursue the American dream."

 

Nancy Pelosi accused of fat-shaming 'obese' Trump

https://www.bbc.com/news/52733199

"Especially in his age group, and in his, shall we say, weight group, morbidly obese, they say," the US House of Representatives speaker said.

 

Why the campaign is frozen: Trump, Biden and industrial-strength Teflon

https://www.foxnews.com/media/why-the-campaign-is-frozen-trump-biden-and-industrial-strength-teflon

 

If I had told you three months ago that a terrifying virus would invade America, infecting a million and a half people, killing 90,000 and throwing 35 million folks out of work, what would you have thought about President Trump’s reelection chances?

My first thought would have been that he’d be on the ropes, that any president would find it nearly impossible to win a second term in the face of such a devastating calamity.

My second thought would have been that Trump might be soaring in popularity if he was seen as leading the country in crisis--just as war can boost a commander-in-chief’s fortunes as people rally behind the leader.

And yet neither of those things has happened.

My view is that politics in this country have become almost completely tribal. Most people are so locked into their viewpoints, pro-Trump or anti-Trump, that they rationalize and excuse behavior that they would find intolerable in a figure on the other side.

“Americans feel more strongly about Trump, either for or against, than about any other candidate since polling began,” Continetti writes. “His supporters give his approval ratings a floor, and his detractors give his ratings a ceiling. There is not a lot of room in between.

So are both candidates so thoroughly coated in Teflon that they can’t be seriously scratched?

I liked this Continetti line: “Watching the numbers hardly budge over these past months, I have sometimes wondered what could move them. War? Spiritual revival? Space aliens?”

Barring an interplanetary invasion, the candidates are competing for a strikingly small number of persuadable voters. The election is likely to be a referendum on Trump’s handling of the coronavirus and the reopening; his team wants it to be a verdict on Biden’s fitness for office.

And the press, which was wrong about Trump four years ago and wrong about Biden three months ago, is left covering a virtual race that just doesn’t seem to budge.

Making China Great Again

Jerusalem's haredi schools return to nearly normal functioning

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/280547

Following the dramatic improvement in coronavirus infection rates in Jerusalem, the city's mayor, Moshe Lion, ordered the city's haredi schools to reopen nearly fully.

On Tuesday, Rabbi Yisrael Kellerman and Rabbi Avraham Bezalel, who are in charge of the city's haredi education resources and haredi education portfolio, respectively, presented the plan for reopening the schools.

The plan was made in coordination with rabbis, and in accordance with Health Ministry guidelines, and was approved by Lion.

Trump sows division and confusion as anxious country edges toward opening

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/20/politics/trump-coronavirus-response/index.html

 If America navigates its risky pursuit of a comeback without unleashing a vicious resurgence of coronavirus, it will be in spite of President Donald Trump, not because of him

 

But they will not be shepherded by a President offering advice on how to safely open, empowering his public health officials, or publicly shouldering the fear and concern of his compatriots.

 

 Trump, disdaining a mask and flouting the scientific advice of doctors, portrays himself as a warrior President standing up for Americans who believe liberal elites have leveraged the crisis to stifle freedoms and defeat their hero.

 

Trump's behavior in recent days flies in the face of every template of convening presidential leadership amid a crisis that will join the list of the greatest challenges in US history.

 

He and his son-in-law Jared Kushner and chief of staff Mark Meadows swept barefaced into the US Capitol for lunch with GOP Senators on Tuesday. The President's resolve will be tested on Wednesday when he heads to a Ford plant in Michigan. Managers have told the White House that masks are mandatory.

Pence's Doctor Disagrees With Trump's on Using Hydroxychloroquine to Prevent Coronavirus

https://www.newsweek.com/pences-doctor-disagrees-trumps-using-hydroxychloroquine-prevent-coronavirus-1505265

Vice President Mike Pence says he is not preemptively taking the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to ward off COVID-19 like President Donald Trump because his doctor does not recommend using the drug.

 

Michael Flynn's Attorney Files Emergency Appeal to Force Judge to Dismiss Charges Despite Guilty Plea

https://www.newsweek.com/michael-flynns-attorney-files-emergency-appeal-force-judge-dismiss-charges-despite-guilty-plea-1505252

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn has asked a U.S. Appeals Court in D.C. to force the U.S. District Court judge overseeing his case to grant the Department of Justice's motion to dismiss his case.

 

President Trump Says America's 1.5 Million Coronavirus Cases Are ‘Badge of Honor’ for Testing

https://time.com/5839262/trump-badge-of-honor-coronavirus/

P resident Donald Trump said it’s “a badge of honor” that the U.S. has more than 1.5 million cases of coronavirus — the highest number of infections globally — saying the total is simply a reflection of a successful testing regime.

“I view it as a badge of honor, really, it’s a badge of honor,” Trump told reporters during a cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday. “It’s a great tribute to the testing and all of the work that a lot of professionals have done.”

At least 91,000 Americans have died from Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, since February. The U.S. has now performed more than 11.8 million tests for infection by the virus, according to the Covid Tracking Project, after the government experienced delays in getting tests developed and manufactured. The U.S. continues to face testing shortages and sets priorities for who gets one.

Contrary to Trump’s claim, U.S. testing levels aren’t extraordinary. The U.S. trails countries like the U.K., Italy and Germany in tests conducted per 1,000 people, Bloomberg data show. And the U.S. is finding a case for every 7.8 tests, far behind other countries like New Zealand, Australia and South Korea, who have to test far higher numbers of people to find a case, according to figures compiled by Our World In Data.

 

Cabinet approves further relief measures

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/280528

The Cabinet on Tuesday night approved a series of changes to the emergency regulations and lifted some of the restrictions that had been placed on the public as part of the fight against the coronavirus.

The prohibition of staying at a beach has been lifted, and from now on, staying at a beach will be possible in accordance with several guidelines, including maintaining physical distance between bathers.

The prohibition on prayer in a building was lifted as well. Prayer will be possible under restrictions that include up to 50 people in the building, while maintaining a distance of two meters between people, wearing masks and appointing a person who will be tasked with ensuring that the guidelines are followed.

The ban on operating a museum has been lifted as well. Operation of facilities or exhibits for children that can be touched will not be permitted in museums. Museums will adhere to the guidelines on the operation a public space, including allowing the entrance of one person per 15 square meters.

 

Mnuchin asked if workers should give their lives to increase GDP

Mike Pompeo's explanation for the firing of State's inspector general doesn't make sense

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/19/politics/mike-pompeo-steve-linick-state-department/index.html

 In the wake of the removal of State Department Inspector General Steve Linick by President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tried to quell the controversy in an interview with The Washington Post on Monday. He did the opposite.

"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," Pompeo told the Post by way of "explanation" for his push to have Linick fired by Trump. "The kinds of activities he's supposed to undertake to make us better, to improve us."

 

OK. So, Pompeo -- according to Bulatao's explanation -- asked Trump to fire Linick because of leaks to the media about ongoing IG investigations that they had absolutely no evidence that Linick had been involved in? Uh, what?

 

Medical journal says Trump is 'factually incorrect' about when it first published coronavirus reports

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/19/politics/trump-world-health-organization-lancet/index.html

In a letter Monday to the director-general of WHO, Trump said that his administration's review of WHO's response to the outbreak found that the organization ignored "credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet medical journal."

"The World Health Organization failed to independently investigate credible reports that conflicted directly with the Chinese government's official accounts, even those that came from sources within Wuhan itself," he wrote.

The Lancet, however, said Tuesday "this statement is factually incorrect" and that it "published no report in December, 2019, referring to a virus or outbreak in Wuhan or anywhere else in China."

The Lancet said it first published reports on January 24, 2020. The first report described the first 41 patients from Wuhan, China, diagnosed with Covid-19. The Lancet noted that the lead scientists and physicians on the study were from Chinese institutions and "worked with us to quickly make information about this new epidemic outbreak and the disease it caused fully and freely available to an international audience."

 

Housing Minister Yaakov Litzman blasts 'anti-Semitic' article on IKEA opening

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/280478

Former Health Minister blasts claims that IKEA stores were given special permission to open because of owner's donations to Hasidic movement

Turning to the charges that he permitted the opening of IKEA stores because of the owners’ donations to the Gur movement, Litzman said the link was based on a number of false points.

“One, I don’t know Fisher. I know who he is, but we’re not acquaintances. Two, he isn’t a Gur Hasid. Three, am I supposed to know who donates to what? Four, I didn’t even know about [the donations] until it was reported. Five, the Health Ministry didn’t request this [the reopening of IKEA stores], it was the Finance Ministry that requested it. That’s front-page news? What should I think about such a report?”

 

Trump Says Fox News Isn't the Same and He's 'Looking for a New Outlet' after Host Warns Against His Medical Advice

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-fox-news-hydroxychloroquine-neil-cavuto-1504977

Donald Trump believes Fox News is "no longer the same" after host Neil Cavuto urged caution over the use of hydroxychloroquine, which the president is taking as a preventative against COVID-19.

The president criticized the network and said he is "looking for a new outlet" after Cavuto's message, in which he warned of potential risks of taking the drug for vulnerable groups.

Cavuto cited a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) study of the drug on veterans hospitalized with COVID-19, which saw a higher mortality rate among those treated with the drug alone. He said: "Those with vulnerable conditions, respiratory conditions, heart ailments, they died."

 

Partly false claim: President Trump signed Executive Order 13769, temporarily barring foreigners from entering the U.S. if they had been to China

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-trump-executive-order/partly-false-claim-president-trump-signed-executive-order-13769-temporarily-barring-foreigners-from-entering-the-us-if-they-had-been-to-china-idUSKBN21739V

Reuters could not find evidence of major media outlets or Democrats calling the "Proclamation on Suspension of Entry as Immigrants and Nonimmigrants of Persons who Pose a Risk of Transmitting 2019 Novel Coronavirus" racist, xenophobic or bigoted. This line of criticism has been widely used to condemn the travel ban (Executive Order 13769) and its later iterations ( here ), but this travel ban never included China, supersedes the coronavirus outbreak, and its latest iteration issued in January 2020 was not part of Trump’s coronavirus response.

 

Coronavirus quarantine, travel ban could backfire, experts fear

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/04/coronavirus-quaratine-travel-110750

"This is a virus that happened to pop up in China. But the virus doesn’t discriminate between Asian versus non-Asian,” said Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), a former emergency room physician who will preside over Congress' first hearing on the outbreak on Wednesday. “In our response we can’t create prejudices and harbor anxieties toward one population."

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday that widespread travel bans and restrictions weren’t needed to stop the outbreak and could "have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit." Union leaders separately called for a coordinated government response and warned authorities against profiling people of Asian descent while addressing the threat.

Trump, Biden Spin China Travel Restrictions

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/trump-biden-spin-china-travel-restrictions/

 

Trump has repeatedly boasted, as he did on April 4, that “I stopped people from China very early — very, very early — from coming into our country.” On April 1, Trump said that “banning dangerous foreign travel that threatens the health of our people” was one of the actions his administration took that was “far earlier than anyone would have thought and way ahead of anybody else.”

ThinkGlobalHealth, a project of the Council on Foreign Relations, has been tracking the travel restrictions on China due to COVID-19. Its country-by-country analysis of the date and type of travel restrictions shows that in the days after the World Health Organization on Jan. 30 declared the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, 36 countries imposed travel restrictions, including the U.S., by Feb. 2.

“What this data shows is that the United States was neither behind nor ahead of the curve in terms of imposing travel restrictions against China,” a co-author of the tracker, Samantha Kiernan, a research associate on global health, economics, and development at the Council on Foreign Relations, told us via email.

“Taking this all together, what this data shows is that the United States was neither behind nor ahead of the curve in terms of imposing travel restrictions against China,” Kiernan said.

The United States announced its restrictions the day after the WHO declared a public health emergency, “and those restrictions came into effect two days later. However, to say the United States was one of the first countries to impose an entry ban on travelers from China would be incorrect,” she said. “By my count, roughly twenty countries and territories (Hong Kong) imposed entry bans similar if not more stringent than the U.S. ban prior to the United States imposing its restrictions.”

That contradicts the narratives of both Trump and Biden.

What are President Trump's charges against the WHO?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52294623

US President Donald Trump says the World Health Organization (WHO) has mismanaged and helped to cover up the spread of the coronavirus after it emerged in China.

But the WHO has defended its handling of the early stages of the pandemic.

We've been looking at some of the charges President Trump has levelled against the WHO.

Claim 4

"One of the most dangerous decisions... from the WHO was... to oppose travel restrictions. They actually fought us."

The US restricted travel from China and other countries from 2 February.

But there is no record of the WHO publicly criticising this move.

And it would have been highly unusual for it to do so.

 

Trump's claim he takes hydroxychloroquine prompts warnings from health experts

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/media-health-experts-reactions-trump-taking-hydroxychloroquine

The malaria drug hydroxychloroquine can cause heart rhythm problems and other side effects. The Food and Drug Administration has said hydroxychloroquine should only be used for coronavirus in formal studies.

Two large observational studies, each involving around 1,400 patients in New York, recently found no benefit from the drug. Two new studies published Thursday in the medical journal BMJ reached the same conclusion.

 

Fox News can't get its message straight on hydroxychloroquine

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/19/media/fox-news-hydroxychloroquine-reliable-sources/index.html

That was one side of the Fox News coin. The other painted a starkly different picture. On Tucker Carlson's program, Fox News contributor Dr. Marc Siegel hyped the drug and said the media was going to "politicize" the issue. "I think it's reasonable," Siegel said of Trump taking it. In the next hour, Sean Hannity also attacked the news media, saying "predictably the mob in the media are hyperventilating" over Trump's announcement. Hannity decried journalists who he said have been "waging an unhinged, non-stop never-ending PR campaign against" the drug.

 

And in the 10pm hour, Laura Ingraham, who has been one of the top promoters of hydroxychloroquine, asked, "Why is the media freaking out about the President taking hydroxy?" She said the "medical establishment went crazy" over his announcement, playing clips of doctors on CNN and MSNBC while ignoring what Fox's own coverage just a few hours before.

The contradictory coverage from Fox News isn't unprecedented. But it continues to be remarkable that on a basic issue of health and safety, one in which Ingraham even acknowledged that the medical establishment is in general agreement on, Fox News can't get its message straight...

 

 

Trump himself tweeted, "[Fox News] is no longer the same. We miss the great Roger Ailes. You have more anti-Trump people, by far, than ever before. Looking for a new outlet!" Of course, Fox News has over the years become more pro-Trump, not less supportive.

>> Paul Farhi's point: "The 'great' Roger Ailes was credibly accused of sexual harassment by multiple women. He was fired by Rupert Murdoch and sons for his alleged behavior. He died in disgrace in 2017..."

 

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.