https://www.newsmax.com/suzannedowning/alaska-senate-kelly-tshibaka-lisa-murkowski/2021/06/21/id/1025819/

“Polls show 87 percent of Republicans don’t like her and 63 percent of all Alaskans view her unfavorably. It would be a miracle of all miracles if Lisa Murkowski ends up in the top three, when it’s all said and done,” Fagan said.

Top three? That is something most Americans don’t understand. Doesn’t the top vote-getter win?

Not in 2022. In November, Alaskans were persuaded by dark-money dollars to enact a new voting scheme – a wide-open, nonparty primary. The top four vote-getters head to the general election, where they compete in a ranked-choice system, such as Maine has been experimenting with.

It’s a voting scheme designed by Murkowski’s former campaign manager, with the understanding that, although Murkowski is a Republican, she cannot win a Republican primary. She needs to be in a jungle primary to get enough votes to advance to the general election, as she relies on liberal voters.

She beat Joe Miller with Democrat help too !!

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/us-should-bypass-palestinian-authority-to-provide-aid-to-gaza-1.1246005

Mike Pompeo and Sander Gerber

June 21, 2021

There has been a recent push in the US to utilise the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a “go-between” to ensure that aid to Gaza reaches civilians and is not pocketed by Hamas, the terrorist group currently controlling the Palestinian territory. But what this push signifies – and what its long-term ambitions might be – deserves further examination.

The reliance on the PA to be the broker of stability in the Arab-Israeli conflict is ill-considered, because partnering with a group itself implicated in terrorist activities in order to stop terrorism represents a failure of logic. It is easy to forget that the US Congress, in the 1987 Anti-Terror Act, determined the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and its related entities to be sponsors of terrorism and a threat to US interests. The PA fits squarely within this law.

Although the conditions attached to the law were waived by every administration prior to Donald Trump’s, the law itself remains on the books. In fact, the law was augmented with the passage of the Taylor Force Act in 2018, which cuts US funding to the PA until it stops what has been described as a “pay for slay” programme. The programme issues stipends to the families of Palestinians killed or imprisoned for crimes committed against Israel, and has, in effect, subsidised terrorist activity. The latest round of violence between Israelis and Palestinians was further fuelled by the PA’s endorsement of a “day of rage” against Israel.

The PA is guilty of such manoeuvres as well. It perpetually complains of having insufficient funds to serve the population. But that did not stop President Mahmoud Abbas from purchasing a home for $32 million and a private jet for $50m. As a candidate in the upcoming PA presidential election, Muhammad Aref Massad, who spent time in prison for terrorist activities, even wrote earlier this year: “The Palestinian leaders do not want freedom and do not want peace because they profit from the war and destruction in which we are engulfed… Any money that you send [to the Palestinian Authority] increases the power of the dictator, the terrorists and the robbers who starve my Palestinian people."

Yet, despite the moral bankruptcy of the PA, a senior official at the US State Department earlier this week repeated that Washington would be “working in partnership with the UN and the PA to channel aid there in a manner that does its best to go to the people of Gaza”.

If foreign governments are serious about assisting the Palestinian people, the objective should be establishing an honest destination for such aid – one that does not rely on groups who have remained only tenuously off the State Department’s list of Foreign Terror Organisations.

A reasonable answer to the lack of such a destination would be to establish one. A new NGO – funded by Arab countries, the US and interested European powers – would help to create an alternative power base focused primarily on the welfare of Palestinian society.

What did Joe agree too

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/russia-says-no-reason-to-remove-us-from-list-of-unfriendly-states/2280881

Russia on Monday said there is no reason to remove the US from its list of unfriendly states.

Speaking at a virtual news conference, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the situation could change if the agreements between the Russian and US presidents reached at a meeting in Geneva last Wednesday are implemented.

Peskov said such meetings are necessary to understand "where it is useless to talk, where it is necessary, where the parties do not agree categorically with each other, and where they can fully act in unison."

The next step is the practical implementation of the agreements, which could be sabotaged at the working level, Peskov said.

"Until this implementation at the working level has not taken an effective character, and until we see the results of this implementation, there is no reason for changes [removing the US from the list of unfriendly states]," Peskov said.

Asked about a new round of US sanctions announced earlier in Washington, Peskov said Moscow understands that the US will continue its "policy of containment."

"We are aware of possible upcoming sanctions that are codified [formalized into law]. The fact is that some sanctions are codified. Their introduction does not even depend on the will of the US president," he said.

However, although the introduction of sanctions does not depend on the US president's will, he can decide what measures will be chosen, he said.

"What sanctions can be imposed – we certainly analyze the situation and calculate different options," he said.

On Saturday, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Washington is preparing new sanctions against Russia connected to the situation of opposition figure Alexey Navalny and construction of the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/dog-meat-festival-kicks-china-24366731

Campaigners in China have failed to block the start of a dog meat festival in which 5,000 animals are set to be butchered over the next 10 days.

Animal rights activists who brand the event a "public health risk" were hoping an appeal to the country's government would secure a last-minute reprieve for thousands of pooches.

But vendors at the Yulin Dog Festival have already been snapped selling slaughtered pups in Yulin, Guangxi province.

Eight stands were found by activists at Dongkou market, and a further 18 at Nanqiao market, according to Humane Society International.

Earlier this week campaigners managed to catch a truck making its way into Yulin and rescue the terrified mutts inside.

But another truck also being followed by the activists got away.

“After everything China has been through with Covid-19, you would think national and regional governments would crack down hard on the illegal and filthy dog meat trade to stop public health risks from this unnecessary trade.”

China loves Joe

https://ajot.com/news/china-trucking-startup-said-to-raise-1.6-billion-in-u.s-ipo

Full Truck Alliance Co., an Uber-like trucking startup, has raised about $1.6 billion after pricing shares in its U.S. initial public offering at the top of a marketed range, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The company has priced 82.5 million American depositary shares at $19 each, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private. Full Truck Alliance had been marketing 82.5 million ADSs at $17 to $19 apiece. One ADS represents 20 ordinary shares.

Backed by investors including SoftBank Group Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., Full Truck Alliance is on track to be one of the biggest U.S. IPOs by a Chinese company this year, rivaling e-cigarette maker RLX Technology Inc.’s $1.6 billion listing in January.

Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi filed earlier this month for a U.S. IPO that could value it at as much as $100 billion, Bloomberg News has reported, in what would be one of the world’s largest listings this year.

Companies based in China and Hong Kong have raised $8.6 billion in U.S. IPOs so far in 2021, almost four times the amount a year ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

https://archinect.com/news/article/150269797/sou-fujimoto-unveils-sky-island-tower-for-shenzhen

https://www.metro.us/u-s-sec-official-says-2/

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission official said on Monday that the agency has issued letters of investigation into information technology company SolarWinds, which was identified in December and gave access to thousands of companies and government offices that used its products.

The official said the agency has issued letters to firms that were impacted by the breach as it seeks more details into potential insider trading and disclosure failings among other issues.