Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm Aura Ogambi.

And I'm Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

India has banned the export of some of its enormous supplies of white rice and this will hit poor countries harder.

As climate change threatens harvests the world over, expects other countries to rain in their grains in much the same way.

And it's pretty easy to get your hands on milk that didn't involve a cow.

But considered dairy products made from real milk proteins that are also move free.

We visit a startup that's using fermentation to make an utterly cowless cheese.

First up though.

For all the secrecy that North Korea holds, there's one key area where the country's leaders aim to show off on an international stage.

The parade ground.

Last week, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un put on a military show to mark 70 years since the fighting of the Korean War ended.

In Pyongyang, the country's capital, thousands of beaming soldiers marched past crowds of applauding party officials.

Weapons were in display too, including intercontinental ballistic missiles and drones that closely resembled those used by the U.S. armed forces.

On show two for the first time since 2018, were international guests, posing up next to Kim Jong-un on a terrace overlooking the festivities where Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shogu and members of a Chinese delegation.

It's really noteworthy that there were actually people in the country there to view it from outside.

Andrew Knox is the economist Korea's correspondent.

It's the first time that there have been visitors to North Korea since before the pandemic, really.

The only people we know to have actually gone in during that time are the Chinese ambassador and some staff and an American soldier who's sprinted across the line between the two countries.

Some have interpreted the presence of foreigners in North Korea as an indication that maybe the country, which has been locked up since January 2020, might be slowly reopening but to be perfectly honest, there's scanned evidence for that conclusion.

Why have they had restrictions in place for so long?

Well, North Korea has always taken a pretty idiosyncratic approach to the pandemic.

They've always been extremely germophobic even during past pandemics and it's a rather xenophobic regime.

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