MOVEMENTS: Norway is close to replacing Russia as Germany's largest natural gas supplier, but prices hit a new record Tuesday. The last French troops have left Mali , signing off after nine years of efforts to control terrorism in the Sahel region. MOSQUITO WEEK — PUTTING WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL ON NOTICE: "Mosquitoes and the diseases they carry kill more people in one day than sharks kill in 100 years," writes Bill Gates in his latest blog post. UNITED STATES — ELECTION DENIERS RISING With Liz Cheney now on her way out of Congress, punished for standing up to election deniers and insurrectionists, here's a look by Amy Gardner at 2020 election denier candidates on track to win office in November midterm elections, including Michigan secretary of state candidate Kristina Karamo, and gubernatorial nominees Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Kari Lake in Arizona. By the numbers: "Across the battleground states that decided the 2020 vote, candidates who deny the legitimacy of that election have claimed nearly two-thirds of GOP nominations for state and federal offices with authority over elections, according to a Washington Post analysis." What could those candidates do? Control election infrastructure. Even without administrative control of that infrastructure, Trump-allied lawyers have been operating " a secretive, multistate effort to access voting equipment." Facebook not changing its Trump timeline: Facebook will not move up its timeline for considering reinstating Donald Trump, regardless of whether he announces he's running again for president, the company's No. 2 executive Nick Clegg told POLITICO in an exclusive interview. The review will happen only in January 2023. Parent company Meta, meanwhile, is banning new political ads the week of the election — again. In parallel: a functional Congress U.K. — PORT STRIKES ADD PRESSURE ON GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS: More than 500 stevedores at Britain's fourth largest port, Liverpool's Peel Port, voted Monday to strike after rejecting a 7 percent pay hike. Instead, they want pay increases in line with soaring inflation — already more than 9 percent, and rising fast — and accuse bosses of failing to raise pay since 2018 and of reneging on an agreed bonus scheme. The effects of the dispute could include further blockages along already-clogged global trade arteries. ITALY — BERLUSCONI STAGE COMEBACK: He's 85, has no chance of running the country officially, and yet is set to be the kingmaker in the new right-wing Italian government that is likely to form after a Sept. 25 snap election. The comeback is the result of his sense of "duty," he told POLITICO's Hannah Roberts. KENYA — FROM CHICKEN HAWKER TO KENYA'S PRESIDENT-ELECT: William Ruto, the current deputy president, is now Kenya's president-elect, after a week-long disputed vote count. Four of Kenya's seven election commissioners resigned over the news, and massive protests started Monday. Ruto's opponent Raila Odinga will challenge the election results in court. AUSTRALIA — FORMER PRIME MINISTER SECRETLY SWORN INTO FIVE MINISTERIAL PORTFOLIOS: As the Covid-19 pandemic took hold and Australia moved to shut its border to control the contagion, the country's then-leader Scott Morrison instructed Australia's Governor-General (the country's effective head of state, representing Queen Elizabeth II) David Hurley to swear him into joint responsibility for the country's finance, health, home affairs and mining ministries. The arrangement was never made public, until now, and secretly allowed Morrison to overrule members of his Cabinet. Most of those who had their power usurped learned about it at a press conference Tuesday. The hijacked ministers included then-Finance Minister Mathias Corman, now secretary general at the OECD in Paris. Morrison is now under pressure to resign from Parliament altogether, after already losing a national election in May. Here is Morrison's response. Hurley insists he did nothing wrong. Farcical but constitutional: The Australian constitution doesn't ban the practice of holding multiple ministries — but the events are widely considered a deep breach of established protocols. First, because Morrison was holding positions already held by others. Second, because the Westminster system of government is based on ministers being accountable to parliament: which means members of parliament need to know who the ministers are in order to do their job. Some of the revelations were published in a book by journalists Simon Benson and Geoff Chambers, and confirmed by the Governor-General's office. The country's current prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has ordered a search for all documents related to the events. UKRAINE FRONTS VERBATIM: Washington Post Ukraine bureau chief Isabelle Khurshudyan sat down in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for an hour-long interview. Here's the transcript. OFFENSIVES: Ukraine showing off new capabilities to strike Russian assets and supply lines throughout Crimea. But where has Ukraine's much-telegraphed broader counter-offensive gone? ADDITIONAL U.S. CONTRIBUTION TO THE WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME: Another $68 million will go to supporting "procurement, transport, and storage of up to 150,000 metric tons of Ukrainian wheat to address acute food insecurity," per the State Department. USAID Administrator Samantha Power said that, in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and Minderoo Foundation, the agency "supported the first humanitarian grain shipment to leave the Black Sea via Ukraine's Yuzhny Port" on Tuesday, including 23,000 metric tons to the Horn of Africa. CHINA FRONTS MULTINATIONALS ADVANCE CONTINGENCY PLANS IN EVENT OF TAIWAN INVASION: Taiwan is now "perceived in many headquarters like it's going to be the next Ukraine," said Jörg Wuttke, head of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China. Eric Zheng, of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, told Financial Times " the popular thinking is 'China plus one' or even 'China plus two' — meaning China will still be the primary base for manufacturing but you have an alternative south-east Asian country, just in case." CHINESE CONSUMERS WANT FOREIGN GOODS, NO MATTER THE POLITICS: Quality, safety and affordability are the top three drivers of their decisions to "buy foreign" rather than local among Chinese consumers, per new Morning Consult data. Most consumers don't care about a foreign company's relationship to its home country's government, and influencers, it turns out, don't have much influence on Chinese consumption. HOUSING TIME BOMB: China has 50 million empty flats and no one to fill them, that's a burden for their owners, a mix of developers and ordinary Chinese. One reason why they're vacant: China's population is probably now shrinking. The world's most populous country added just 480,000 people to a base of more than 1.4 billion in 2021. Although we don't have the official numbers yet, the second half of 2022 is almost certainly the first shrinking of China's population since famine in 1961. MONTENEGRO FINALLY OPENS ITS CHINESE-FUNDED HIGHWAY: The 25-mile road, also built with Chinese labor, is open after years of delay and a pile of debt. Did Montenegro learn anything? And will the second stage of the road be built? Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty investigated here. CONGRESS MEETS WORLD MENENDEZ, RISCH CALL FOR MORE IRAQI-KURDISH REGION ENGAGEMENT: U.S. Sens. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Jim Risch (R-Idaho), chair and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, are urging the Biden administration to preserve energy firm access to the Iraqi-Kurdish region's energy sector. The risks they see: proxy militia attacks on a Development Finance Corporate-funded investment at the Khor Mor gas field, and disputes between the governments of Iraq and the Kurdistan Region slowing production. "The Administration also should seek to capitalize on the President's recent meeting with Prime Minister (Mustafa al-) Kadhimi and maintain a high tempo of engagement even as government formation drags on," the pair wrote in a l etter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
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