Workers load grain at a grain port in Izmail, Ukraine, on April 26, 2023. Russia announced on 17 July that it was withdrawing from a grain deal enabling Ukrainian grain to pass through the Black Sea. (Keystone/ AP Photo/Andrew Kravchenko, File)

🌾 Russia says decision to terminate Black Sea grain deal is final. Speaking at a press conference yesterday afternoon, the UN secretary general, António Guterres has said he deeply regretted Russia’s decision, warning that hundreds of millions of people facing hunger and consumers confronting a global cost-of-living crisis will pay the price.

💬 Breakdown of grain initiative shows Africa is too dependent on global food imports. As Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea grain deal threatens to destabilise global prices and hit millions of people in need, the challenge for Africa is to think about more sustainable agriculture on the continent, writes Mègnon Didier Bébada, the France director of Geneva-based think tank Africa21.

💸 UN trade body weighs in on calls for global debt reform. An expert at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which warned in a report last week of new record levels of public debt, breaks down the financial hurdles affecting populations.

😷 Pandemic accord negotiations inch towards first draft. Pandemic accord negotiations resumed on Monday with World Health Organization (WHO) member states expressing a hunger for text-based talks to begin on a first draft amid grave concerns about whether enough progress will be made before the northern hemisphere summer break.

⚖️ Cut with an axe and heart devoured: some crimes never die. In June, a Swiss court upheld a 20-year sentence for Alieu Kosiah, a former rebel leader who committed atrocities during the first Liberian civil war. Alain Werner, director of the Geneva-based NGO Civitas Maxima and lawyer for plaintiffs at the trial, shares his impressions of this unprecedented verdict.