Our daily flight around the world

🇮🇳🌕 India launched a historic unmanned mission to the Moon’s south pole. The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft blasted off early Friday morning to begin its 240,000-mile journey to the moon, with an ETA of August 23. The mission represents India’s second attempt at a soft landing on the Moon’s surface, after its Chandrayaan-2 craft’s landing attempt failed in 2019. If successful, India would become the first country ever to reach the lunar south pole, and the fourth country overall to successfully land on the Moon (after the US, former Soviet Union, and China).

🇨🇦 Canada is offering open work permits to any immigrants in America on an H-1B work visa. The move, which was first announced last month and officially entered law on Sunday, is aimed at luring away foreign tech workers in the US whose immigration status has been jeopardized by the recent layoffs within the industry. Meanwhile, the process to obtain work visas in the US has become dramatically more competitive – last year, roughly 1 in 5 applications to the annual H-1B lottery were granted a visa; this year, that number was nearly 1 in 10.

🇺🇦🌾 A UN-backed deal allowing Ukraine to export agricultural products during Russia’s ongoing invasion is set to expire today. Under the deal, which was brokered last July, more than 1,000 ships carrying nearly 33 million metric tons of food products have departed from Ukraine, which accounts for 10-15% of the world’s wheat, corn, and barley markets, as well as 50% of the sunflower oil market. But Russia has consistently maintained its opposition to the deal in recent months, due to the country's issues with exporting food and fertilizer (contrary to obligations in the deal that were supposed to lift such barriers).