TAIWAN — WOLF WARRIOR GONE WILD: Not content with advertising "re-education" plans for Taiwanese people, Lu Shaye, China's ambassador to France, is now tweeting out a map of a high-speed train line between Beijing and Taipei . KENYA — PRESIDENTIAL RACE TOO CLOSE TO CALL: Latest vote projections give Deputy President William Ruto a slight lead (50 percent) over veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga (48 percent), defying pre-election polling which gave Odinga the lead. A candidate needs to hit 50 percent to avoid a run-off vote. Turnout was a relatively low 56 percent (compared to 86 percent in 2013), after a widespread boycott by young voters. How the count is handled is a matter of life and death: Weeks of violence left 1,200 dead, and 600,000 needed to flee their homes after the country's 2007 election. A joint National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute election observation mission is on-the-ground but yet to release a post-election statement. IRAN — NUCLEAR DEAL LATEST: The United States and Iran are still weighing up the final text of a renegotiated deal offered to them by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Monday. The biggest shift from Iran is a retreat from a demand that Washington remove Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps from its list of foreign terrorist organizations. "There is a real chance for an agreement but there are still a number of uncertainties as always," one senior Western official told POLITICO. CANADA — SURPRISE! THOSE CUTE MOUNTED POLICE ARE SPYING ON YOU: Daniel Therrien , the recently departed privacy commissioner of Canada, told a parliamentary committee Tuesday it was news to him that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has the ability to intercept text messages, emails, photos, videos, financial records and other information from cellphones and laptops, and to remotely turn on a device's camera and microphone. Therrien has good reason: RCMP publicly complained for years after it obtained the spyware technology about the challenges posed to it by encrypted communications. In 2016, for example, the police force gave the Toronto Star and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation an inside look at 10 cases it said were being stymied by encryption. The background: The Parliament's ethics committee launched a study this week of the RCMP's use of spyware, prompted by POLITICO's revelation in June that the police force had admitted its use to hack mobile devices. MONKEYPOX — NEW U.S. POLICY COULD INCREASE VACCINE DISTRIBUTION FIVE-FOLD: The Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday that the JYNNEOS vaccine may be administered intradermally. Because this method requires a smaller dose (0.1ml v. 0.5ml), the number of people reached with the available vaccines can increase five-fold . UKRAINE FRONTS BY THE NUMBERS: The Pentagon says between 70,000 and 80,000 Russian soldiers killed or wounded since Feb. 24 — a huge figure that the Kremlin hasn't acknowledged. A PUTIN LOVE AND CORRUPTION STORY: From inside the Putin family, the story of the new husband of Vladimir Putin's ex-wife . Artur Ocheretny loves to do triathlons, but it's unclear how he keeps accumulating multimillion-dollar properties across Europe, including one Moscow building that was the scene for parts of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. EU LEADERS DISCUSS BANNING RUSSIANS: Calls are growing among European leaders for the bloc to close its borders to Russian travelers. On Tuesday, Estonia's Prime Minister Kaja Kallas joined the leaders of Ukraine, Finland and Latvia in calling for a travel ban in response to Moscow's war. "Stop issuing tourist visas to Russians. Visiting Europe is a privilege, not a human right," Kallas tweeted . USING PORN AND GAMBLING SITES TO TELL WAR TRUTHS TO RUSSIANS: Anastasiya Baydachenko told Insider's Sam Tabahriti about her support for using advertisements featuring still images and video on porn and gambling sites to tell Russians and Belarusians the truth about the conflict in Ukraine. The reasoning: Putin doesn't dare to fully block these sites, and targeting them is both easy and affordable. Baydachenko is chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. HOW TO STOP RUSSIAN MILITARY EQUIPMENT THAT RELIES ON WESTERN TECH: Russia relies on Western-made microchips, specialized cameras and around 450 other tech components to keep 27 of its most sophisticated military systems running. To cripple Russian military fighting in Ukraine, researchers from U.K.-based think tank Royal United Services Institute said in a new report that Russia needs to be denied this equipment. RUSI said Western governments should ramp up their efforts to map and shut down networks using front companies and fake end-user certificates to obtain equipment, and ramp up coordination with third countries, such as India and Malaysia, to stem illegal transfers and stop Moscow forming new alliances to manufacture equipment they need. CONGRESS MEETS WORLD IT'S THE WAIT THAT KILLS YA: Following up the debate launched in Monday's Global Insider around whether the U.S. ambassador post in Rome is being kept open for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Nahal Toosi obtained the latest data on how long it's taking President Joe Biden's ambassador nominees to get confirmed by the Senate. Compared to nearly every recent past president, the number is shocking. The average time it takes a Biden nominee for ambassador to be confirmed by the Senate is 145.6 days. For Donald Trump, it was 145.7 days on average. That compares to 43.3 days for Ronald Reagan, 56.7 days for George H.W. Bush, 63.1 days for George W. Bush, 83.4 days for Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama's 121.1 days. How long is Pelosi — or anyone nominated for that job — willing to wait for it? It's easy to blame senators for these delays, but the Biden administration also has taken its time nominating people, and still hasn't put anyone forth in several cases beyond just Italy, according to the American Foreign Service Association. POLITICO reporters don't get official public comments on situations like the empty chair in Rome but the private eye-rolling and head-shaking from nominees themselves, and from host governments, is extensive. How are America's governing systems so broken, they all wonder. SPEEDING UP AFGHAN VISA PROCESSING: A bipartisan group in Congress introduced the Afghan Adjustment Act on Tuesday to allow Afghans who currently hold temporary status in the U.S. to apply for legal permanent residency. AP's Aamer Madhani reported that "as of last month, more than 74,000 Afghan applicants remained in the pipeline for special immigrant visas that help military interpreters and others who worked on government-funded contracts move to the United States and pave the way for them to receive a green card." Krish O'Mara Vignarajah , president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which has welcomed more than 13,500 Afghans over the past year, said: "This vital legislation addresses the legal limbo that tens of thousands of evacuees still face, and offers them the stability and peace of mind they need to thrive in their new communities." The Act's Senate sponsors are: Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). House of Representatives sponsors are: Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Peter Meijer (R-Mich.), Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Scott Peters (D-Calif.). CLIMATE COMPLICATIONS GREEN SCREEN FOCUS ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLES' DAY: Indigenous leaders have launched a new coalition to secure indigenous peoples' rights in the green economy. Five NGOs based in the U.S. and Switzerland are calling on governments and companies to "avoid the mistakes and harms of past resource development" by protecting the rights of indigenous people who "live on lands rich in transition minerals." That's code for using better practices to extract the critical minerals used to make products such as electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels. Demand for these so-called "rare earths" is expected to explode between now and 2040. Case study — Rare earth mining is messing up Myanmar: As if the people of Myanmar don't have enough to deal with between a genocide and a brutal military junta. Now, an AP investigation, led by Dake Kang, Victoria Milko and Lori Hinnant, and using material collected by the NGO Global Witness , ties problematic extraction practices in Myanmar to 78 multinational companies including GM, Volkswagen, Mercedes and Tesla. Loophole: Since 2010, Congress has required companies to disclose the origin of so-called conflict minerals (tantalum, tin, gold and tungsten) and to ensure they do not fund armed groups. The law does not extend to rare earth mining. GREENFLATION … BUT IS THAT GOOD, OR BAD? The point of the Inflation Reduction Act is clear from the name. But the Act also contains massive amounts of climate-themed spending — and anything that drives demand while supply is short is, by definition, going to be inflationary. So what gives? My colleague Debra Kahn points you to Columbia Business School climate economist Gernot Wagner , who argues that $369 billion in incentives and tax breaks for renewable energy and electric vehicles will ultimately help free us from dependence on fluctuating fossil fuel prices. It's "anti-inflationary in the sense that it cuts our dependence on fossil fuels, and hence in the medium run will cut energy prices, will cut inflation," Wagner said. European Central Bank board member Isabel Schnabel warned in January that transitioning to renewables could cause inflation , but backtracked after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, because fossil fuels were causing more immediate inflation than any green incentive could. In other words, Russia made "greenflation" acceptable to the ECB . Resources for the Future backs Wagner's view with an analysis that finds the bill's tax credits for wind and solar will boost generations enough to insulate people from natural gas price swings over the next decade. Dave Rapson, a Federal Reserve economist and professor at the University of California, is skeptical: "Hopes that subsidizing EVs will somehow reduce inflation anytime soon aren't supported by basic economics," he said. Kneecapping greenflation: Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) demand to restrict EV rebates to vehicles with non-Chinese supply chains will severely limit the number of cars that can qualify in the short-term, Jael Holzman of POLITICO's E&E News reported . And if the U.S. wants more American-made EV's, it will need to approve more American critical minerals mines on federal land. But the speed and shape of the permitting process is a long way from aligning with the thrust of the Inflation Reduction Act.
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