After months of deliberation, former Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday announced his decision to run for president for a third time, answering one of the biggest outstanding questions about the makeup of the 2020 race.
In his campaign announcement video, Biden rebuked the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 and President Donald Trump’s handling of the aftermath.
“He said there were quote some very fine people on both sides,” Biden said. “With those words, the President of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. And in that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime.”

An Emirati woman opened her eyes and regained consciousness after spending 27 years in a coma induced by a serious brain injury, her family said Wednesday.
Munira Omar was 32 when she was injured in a road traffic accident in 1991, after picking up her son Omar from school in the city of Al-Ain. Omar survived — and lived to see his mother awake again, decades later in a hospital bed in Germany, where she had been transferred for medical care.
“I always believed that my mother would get better,” Omar, now 32 himself, told AFP by phone. “Many doctors had told us not to expect much after being in a coma for 15 or 20 years, but I would not accept that.
“This is all in God’s hands, and I never lost hope.”

The tobacco company behind Marlboro cigarettes is starting a life insurance firm in the United Kingdom, and will offer discounts to people who quit smoking.
Philip Morris International, which is separate from Philip Morris USA and does not sell products in the U.S., announced Tuesday that it is launching the wholly owned subsidiary Reviti. The company will give smokers a bonus for quitting, or switching to a less carcinogenic product, like the vaping devices sold by Philip Morris International (PMI).

Children younger than a year old shouldn’t be exposed to any electronic screens, according to guidelines issued Wednesday by the World Health Organization.
The United Nations agency, issuing its first such guidelines, also recommended that children ages 2 to 4 have no more than one hour of “sedentary screen time” – including playing computer games or watching TV – per day. It emphasized that young kids need be physically active and get enough sleep, habits that go a long way in preventing obesity and other diseases later in life.

A New York Times article claiming that Yoshka “was most likely a Palestinian man with dark skin” is generating a fierce push-back from the Jewish community.
The executive director of Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council, Jeremy Burton, tweeted, “Important to point out that no, Yoshka did not identify as Palestinian. He was a Judean Jew and for him, the term Palestine was that of the Roman occupier.”
A professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University, Steven Fine, responded on the Times comments page that “for sure” Yoshka “was a youngish Jewish man” who “looked like other Jews of his place and time.”

A top US official denied on Wednesday that the Trump administration’s yet-to-be-unveiled Israeli-Palestinian peace plan involved a confederation with Jordan.
King Abdullah II and Jordan “are strong US allies,” President Donald Trump’s special representative for international negotiations, Jason Greenblatt, tweeted. “Rumors that our peace vision includes a confederation between Jordan, Israel & the PA, or that the vision contemplates making Jordan the homeland for Palestinians, are incorrect. Please don’t spread rumors.”
Last week, Greenblatt dismissed the idea that the plan would see a part of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula next to the Gaza Strip transferred to Palestinian control.

The number of measles cases in the Big Apple shot up to 390 Wednesday from 374 just two days earlier — and now includes two pregnant women, according to the city Department of Health.
“We have now identified two expectant mothers who have contracted measles,” said Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot.
“These cases are stark reminders of why New Yorkers must get vaccinated against the measles as soon as possible. When we do not get vaccinated, we put our friends, our relatives, our neighbors, our classmates and other fellow New Yorkers at risk.”
Read more at NY POST.
{Matzav.com}

Iran’s foreign minister bluntly told an invited audience in New York City on Wednesday that the US must recognize the authority of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) if it wanted to navigate the Strait of Hormuz — the strategically-vital sea passage that connects the Persian Gulf with the Arabian Sea.
During an appearance at the Asia Society in Manhattan, Mohammad Javad Zarif was questioned as to whether the Tehran regime might close off the Strait of Hormuz — through which approximately 35 percent of the world’s oil supply is carried — to international shipping.
“When the US enters the Strait of Hormuz, they have to talk to those who are protecting the Strait of Hormuz — and that is the [Islamic] Revolutionary Guard Corps,” Zarif answered.

Democratic 2020 hopeful Kamala Harris wants the House to impeach President Donald Trump, but doesn’t necessarily expect it to be a successful effort.
Harris joined fellow Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren in calling for Trump’s impeachment following the release of a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the 2016 election. Impeachment has been a sensitive topic for Democrats, who have largely opted to say they would look into the president’s actions rather than directly call for impeachment.

President Trump will make a three-day state visit to the UK from 3 to 5 June, Buckingham Palace has announced.
The president and First Lady Melania Trump will be guests of the Queen and attend a ceremony in Portsmouth to mark 75 years since the D-Day landings.
He will also have official talks with the prime minister at Downing Street. Trump previously met the Queen at Windsor Castle when he came to the UK in July 2018 on a working visit.
The White House said the upcoming trip would reaffirm the “steadfast and special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom”.
Read more at BBC News.
{Matzav.com}