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🌎  7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW

• First Russian found guilty of war crimes, sentenced to life: Vadim Shishimarin, 21, became the first Russian soldier to be convicted of war crimes since the Russian invasion three months ago. Shishimarin was found guilty Monday of shooting an unarmed 62-year-old man in northeast Ukraine shortly after the invasion began, and sentenced to life in prison.

• Ukraine-Poland joint customs control could be 1st step toward Kyiv in EU: Ukraine and Poland agreed to establish a joint border customs control as well as a shared railway company to facilitate the movement of people and increase exports coming from Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky said the pact was the “beginning of our integration into the common customs space of the European Union. That is a truly historic process.”

— Read all the latest at War in Ukraine, Day 89 —

• New Australian Prime Minister: Australian Labor party leader Anthony Albanese, 59, was sworn in as the country’s 31st prime minister in Canberra, after the conservative government was voted out on Saturday after nearly a decade in power. First order of business for the veteran politician: the “Quad” Summit in Japan tomorrow, where Australia, Japan, India and the U.S. leaders will gather for security and cooperation talks.

• U.S. to defend Taiwan if invaded by China: During a press conference, U.S. President Joe Biden said that the United States would militarily intervene to defend Taiwan if China decided to invade the island, adding that China “was flirting with danger.” This would be a break in the U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” on the China-Taiwan conflict.

• COVID-19 update in China:Workers in Beijing are urged by Chinese authorities to work from home to stem COVID-19 outbreak in the Chinese capital. Meanwhile, Shanghai slowly returns to a normal life after two months of lockdown, with public transport partly reopening.

• India and Bangladesh deadly floods: More than 60 people were killed and millions are currently isolated as India and the northeast part of Bangladesh are facing major floodings, which may be the worst affecting the country in two decades.

• RIP Miss. Tic: French street art pioneer Miss. Tic — real name Radhia Novat — died on Sunday at 66 of an undisclosed illness. The artist was one of the founders of stencil art and was well-known for her provocative works in the Montmartre neighborhood in Paris starting in the 1980s.

🗞️  FRONT PAGE

Spanish daily ABC frontpage focuses on the impact of the war in Ukraine on global food security, and especially on the grain and fertilizer sectors. The war could even “cause a global food crisis” as warned by the UN.

#️⃣  BY THE NUMBERS

$453 billion

A new Oxfam report reveals that food and energy billionaires have increased their fortunes by $453 billion over the past two years due to the skyrocketing prices in these two sectors, in the context of the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine.

📰  STORY OF THE DAY

The bogus concept of "carbon-neutral" oil

The Colombian president recently said that the country had exported one million barrels of carbon-neutral or offset oil. But in an unregulated carbon market, such a claim is pure greenwashing, reports María Mónica Monsalve Sánchez in Colombian daily El Espectador.

🛢️ During this year’s CERAweek, Colombia's President Iván Duque said that his country produced just 0.6% of the world's carbon emissions even as it had raised crude production to one million barrels a day. He also revealed at the event that the country's national oil firm, Ecopetrol, had sold the Asian market its first million barrels of carbon-neutral or offset crude. The idea of carbon compensation or offsetting is to capture the same amount of CO2 emitted in your production process through a compensatory project, like preserving a stretch of forest. But with oil production, can you really curb the emissions of one of the economy's most polluting sectors? Is compensation the right strategy or response to the climate crisis?

⛽ Ecopetrol's head of crude production, Juan Carlos Fonnegra, says the firm committed itself in 2021 to reaching zero net emissions by 2050. He did point out that the offsetting cited did not cover scope 3 emissions (generated by the decomposition of waste), which are outside a firm's control. There are mounting calls on firms to offset this stage of emissions, which amounts to 90 to 95% of the emissions of oil’s life cycle. Another point to consider with Iván Duque's claims concerns the project to offset emissions from the Castilla Blend shipment. The tradeoff is typically done through forestry projects to capture carbon from the air. Thus, one firm (Ecopetrol) buys from another (a forestry firm) carbon credits equivalent to the tons of carbon not being emitted.

🌳 Some would call this greenwashing, says Juan José Guzmán Ayala, a finance and climate specialist. He says Ecopetrol can act this way as the Colombian government has yet to create an obligatory and regulated carbon market. Such a regulated carbon market was supposed to be ready in 2021 according to the 2018 Climate Change Law. The carbon market in Colombia remains voluntary for now, and firms merely have to show that they offset emissions in order to avoid paying the carbon tax. Colombia's deputy environment minister, Nicolás Galarza said that by 2023, the government should have readied the institutional bases the market would need before it could start functioning between 2023 and 2025. According to him, Colombia is the only South American state actually "developing" offsetting measures, ahead of Chile and Brazil.

➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com

📣 VERBATIM

Nobody takes my husband away from me, not even the war.

— During a rare appearance alongside her husband, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, First Lady Olena Zelenska responded to a Rada TV interviewer who told her, “the war basically took your husband away.” She added that they had not seen each other for two months and that their “family was torn apart, as every other Ukrainian family.”