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Russia halted a breakthrough wartime deal on Monday that allowed grain to flow from Ukrainian ports to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, where hunger is a growing threat and high food prices have pushed more people into poverty. Western leaders and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres denounced the move. Follow FRANCE 24’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. All times are Paris time (GMT + 2).

The Kremlin said Friday that it is considering granting legal status to some of the more than two dozen private military companies active in Russia. Legally, these shadow paramilitary groups do not exist – which allows them to operate parallel to Russia’s armed forces, at times doing high-risk “dirty” jobs for the army while giving Moscow a measure of deniability.

Summer has just begun in the Northern Hemisphere but a brutal heat wave is already gripping parts of Europe, China and the United States, where record temperatures expected this weekend are a stark illustration of the dangers of a warming climate.

On July 12, the landmark Nature Restoration Law was adopted in a cliffhanger vote at the European Parliament. Our guest, prominent Finnish MEP Heidi Hautala – who’s one the parliament’s vice-presidents – says she is “relieved” that the EU parliament now has a position to negotiate with the member states. She applauds the law as “step towards combating climate change”, and decries what she calls the use of “fake news and disinformation” by far-right as well as right-wing parties on the nature restoration issue. Hautala also praises the EU parliament’s recent approval of the corporate due diligence directive, saying “companies must unlearn old bad habits”.