Palin leads race for open Alaska House seat
Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska leads the 48-candidate field in a special primary election for the state’s sole U.S. House seat, according to a preliminary count of ballots Sunday.
The top four candidates in the race will advance to the special election on Aug. 16. Palin has nearly 30% of Saturday’s vote tallied so far; Nick Begich, scion of an Alaskan political dynasty, has 19.3%; Al Gross, a surgeon and commercial fisherman who ran for Senate two years ago, has nearly 12.5%; and Mary Peltola, a former state legislator, has about 7.5%.
Palin and Begich are Republicans, Gross is not affiliated with a party, and Peltola is a Democrat.
The special election was prompted by the death in March of Rep. Don Young, a Republican who was first elected to the House in 1973. The election is to fill the remainder of Young’s current term.
For Palin, the race is a political comeback. As Sen. John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential race, Palin lost to the Democratic ticket of Barack Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden. She resigned from the governor’s office, seeking to parlay her prominence into work as a well-paid pundit. Palin had tapped into a similar antiestablishment, anti-news media vein of the GOP that later galvanized Donald Trump’s unexpected rise to the White House in 2016.
The results announced Sunday
are preliminary and could change over the next few weeks, as more ballots are processed and counted.
VENEZUELA Opposition leader attacked at rally
The leader of the U.S.backed opposition in Venezuela was physically attacked Saturday during a visit to a rural community, according to members of his parallel government, who accused a group of ruling party associates of carrying out the assault.
A photo accompanying the opposition statement shows Juan Guaidó being held back as people gather around him and someone rips off his shirt. The parallel government said the group, which was associated with the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, known as PSUV, “hit and insulted” Guaidó, who is on a tour around the South American country seeking to unite and organize his party ahead of a planned primary election.
In an Instagram video, Guaidó called the attack as an “ambush” at a plant nursery in San Carlos, a community 168 miles southwest of Caracas, the capital. But he added that it won’t deter him from continuing to be “on the street.”
Last week, Guaidó’s supporters were met by a barrage of flying plastic chairs and fisticuffs from allies of President Nicolás Maduro in the western city of Maracaibo.
The U.S. and other nations recognize Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president. They withdrew recognition of Maduro after accusing him of rigging his 2018 re-election as president.
CHINA U.S. remarks draw angry rebuke
China’s defense minister accused the United States on Sunday of trying to “hijack” the support of countries in the Asia-Pacific region to turn them against Beijing, saying Washington is seeking to advance its own interests “under the guise of multilateralism.”
Defense Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe lashed out at U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, rejecting his “smearing accusation” the day before at a security conference in Singapore that China was causing instability with its claim to the
self-governing island of Taiwan and its increased military activity in the area.
Austin had stressed the need for multilateral partnerships with nations in the Indo-Pacific, which Wei suggested was an attempt to back China into a corner.
“No country should impose its will on others or bully others under the guise of multilateralism,” he said. “The strategy is an attempt to build an exclusive small group in the name of a free and open Indo-Pacific to hijack countries in our region and target one specific country.”
China has been rapidly modernizing its military and seeking to expand its influence and ambitions in the region, recently signing a security agreement with the Solomon Islands that many fear could lead to a Chinese naval base in the Pacific, and breaking ground this past week on a naval port expansion project in Cambodia that could give Beijing a foothold in the Gulf of Thailand.
IRAQ Lawmakers quit, deepening crisis
Dozens of lawmakers who make up the biggest bloc in Iraq’s parliament resigned on Sunday amid a prolonged political impasse, plunging the divided nation into political uncertainty.
The 73 lawmakers from powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s bloc submitted their resignations based on his request, to protest a persisting political deadlock eight months after general elections were held.
Allies of al-Sadr won 73 out of Parliament’s 329 seats in a blow for his Iran-backed Shiite rivals, who lost about twothirds of their seats and have rejected the results.
Al-Sadr has been intent on forming a majority government that excludes his rivals. But he has not been able to corral enough lawmakers to parliament to get the two-thirds majority needed to elect Iraq’s next president — a necessary step ahead of naming the next prime minister and selecting a Cabinet.
There are concerns that the stalemate could boil over and lead to street protests by supporters of al-Sadr, turning into violence between them and rival armed Shiite militias.