ITALY — THE PLOT TO BRING DOWN DRAGHI: How a marathon lunch Tuesday at Silvio Berlusconi's villa brought about the end of the Italian prime minister's career. Italy is heading to the polls for an early election, when President Sergio Mattarella bowed to the inevitable and accepted Mario Draghi's resignation as prime minister Thursday. U.K. — NO FRESH START FOR CONSERVATIVES: The race to replace Boris Johnson is down to two candidates … the two most senior members of his former Cabinet, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss. Whoever wins, it's going to be hard to argue it's a break from the past, and it means that Gordon Brown will remain the only prime minister since World War II to have studied at a university other than Oxford. Truss is the hot favorite . RUSSIA — UKRAINE ANNEXATION PLAYBOOK : Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov signaled Wednesday that Russia is willing to move forward to annex parts of south and east Ukraine (Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk). Such a move would encourage Kyiv to refuse a negotiated settlement to end the war. The White House says the mechanism to legitimize the annexations would be referendums, a copy of what happened in Crimea in 2014, possibly as early as September . U.S.-AFRICA — SUMMIT SET FOR DECEMBER: Biden will bring together leaders from across the African continent for a major summit mid-December covering challenges, including food security and climate change. AFRICA — TO PRODUCE ITS OWN VACCINES, THE CONTINENT FIRST NEEDS BUYERS: It's one thing to overcome manufacturing and skills gaps to make more vaccines on-the-ground in Africa, but for these dreams to become reality there needs to be a willing market. So far, African governments prefer to buy from India , or aren't that interested, reports Carmen Paun. Case study: Lack of orders for Aspen Pharmacare's effort to produce its version of Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 shot. In the four months between the deal announcement and the final text, Africa drowned in vaccine donations and demand for the vaccine declined, leaving no space in the market for Aspen. What's next: The African Union aims to produce 1.5 billion vaccine doses by 2040 to meet 60 percent of the continent's needs, compared to the less than 1 percent it meets today. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the 20-year plan will cost $30 billion. There are 20 initiatives to expand manufacturing, including plans by BioNTech and Moderna to build facilities in Kenya, Rwanda and Senegal. The catch — pay now or pay later: For Africa to build up and sustain its vaccine capacity, governments on the continent and international donors must be ready to pay higher prices for African-made shots, experts and pharma industry representatives said. CHINA — MORTGAGE STRIKE SPREADS: Thousands of mortgage holders are refusing to pay their mortgages , including customers of the troubled developer Evergrande, over unfair clauses in their contracts. China's five biggest banks have been forced to issue statements that their risk exposure is limited: never a good sign. CHINA — HSBC INTEGRATES THE COMMUNIST PARTY INTO ITS STRUCTURE: The British bank's investment banking subsidiary, HSBC Qianhai Securities, has established a Chinese Communist Party committee , Financial Times reported: "The committees serve a dual purpose as a workers' union and the means by which a party representative is installed within a company's top ranks, sometimes in a director or management role." IRAN — MI6 CHIEF 'SKEPTICAL' IRAN WANTS NUKE DEAL: Richard Moore, head of Britain's foreign intelligence service, told the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday he is "skeptical" Iran would accept the renewal of the dying nuclear deal. Meanwhile, Bahrain's undersecretary for political affairs, Abdulla Al Khalifa, told the Forum his country might be willing to support military action against Iran. Also at Aspen: China's ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, on Wednesday attempted to walk back his country's declaration of a "no limits" partnership with Russia, suggesting it has been misunderstood. CLIMATE CORNER IT GETS WORSE IN THE ARCTIC: The Arctic is not warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet. It's warming at around four times the rate. That is, in short, catastrophic . DATA CENTERS ARE MELTING: Data centers use thousands of gallons of water to keep themselves cool, but even that is no match for the intense heat across much of Europe this week. My colleague Nat Rubio-Licht writes that some data center operators are resorting to low-tech solutions: hosing down their roof-mounted air conditioning units to stay up and running. Big companies to experience drama include Google Cloud, which reported a "cooling related failure," forcing it to power down services in part of London. Oracle had to shut down some of its services to "prevent uncontrolled hardware failures" in London. An AWS data center in London went down on July 10 in what Amazon called a "thermal event." ESG — IT GETS CRAZIER: "Sustainable debt issuance tops $4 trillion," with the green bond market accounting for more than a third of that, at $1.5 trillion," per the Institute of International Finance . Reality check : $4 trillion is a big price tag for a set of investments that are yet to deliver significantly declining emissions or energy security. Echoing the theme addressed in Wednesday's Global Insider, The Economist is now calling ESG "Three letters that won't save the planet ." CHINA ORDERS MORE COAL MINING: 300 million tons a year, to be precise . FIXING FERTILIZER PROBLEMS: Picking up Wednesday's theme about the need for fertilizer to feed the world, a group of startups, including Pivot Bio and Joyn Bio, are leveraging the promise of synthetic biology to try and produce affordable, environmentally friendly fertilizer alternatives at scale. The race to develop alternatives matters because synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is a major greenhouse-gas contributor, water pollutant, and is getting more expensive as the price of natural gas (a key input) has skyrocketed. G-20 — INDONESIA'S ADVICE ON FREEING UP CAPITAL FOR POORER COUNTRIES: Indonesia's G-20 presidency published a G20 Independent Review of Multilateral Development Banks' Capital Adequacy Frameworks . The World Bank and Russia resisted publication of the report , Reuters' Andrea Shalal reported. The goal: Redirect up to $1 trillion, which ratings agency S&P sees as headroom for investment across the entire financial system, at a time when inflation and energy crises in rich countries are redirecting both political and financial capital to domestic problems. UKRAINE FRONTS HOW RUSSIA SIDESTEPS MEDIA SANCTIONS: My colleague Mark Scott writes that when Europe banned Kremlin-backed media outlets, such as RT and Sputnik, for promoting Ukraine disinformation, RT quickly created 12 new sites — in German, Spanish, French and English — that directly mirrored the now-outlawed content and share advertising trackers with the banned outlet. These are still available across the EU, according to research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank. Google, Facebook and Twitter have also played a part in these new RT sites finding an audience. The researchers discovered that almost all of the sites appeared in Google searches, often prominently on specific topics like Ukrainian refugees, and had 2.5 million visitors last month, according to SimilarWeb, a data analytics firm. On Twitter, RT journalists still reach millions of followers. POLAND TURNS TO …. SOUTH KOREA FOR WEAPONS PURCHASES: Warsaw announced Friday it will buy 48 FA-50 fighter jets, 180 K2 Black Panther tanks and howitzers from South Korea, part of the country's defense spending boost in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. CONGRESS MEETS WORLD DATA PRIVACY: The House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced the bipartisan American Data Privacy and Protection Act out of committee by a vote of 53-2 this week. Campaigners around the world have long sought federal privacy regulation, which they view not only as protection for American internet users, but a tipping point in forcing big tech companies to operate more cautiously. INDO-PACIFIC: Republicans urge Biden to work with allies on missile programs by prioritizing the development and deployment of ground-launched ballistic missiles and ground-launched cruise missiles in the Indo-Pacific. "The permanent, forward deployment of these weapons would demonstrate a strong commitment to our allies and partners that the U.S. is indeed committed to upholding a free and open Indo-Pacific," Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wrote. The full text of the letter is below.
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