Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested a ground operation would be needed to overthrow the Iranian regime, saying Israel is still “working to create the conditions” for the collapse of the Islamic Republic. The Israeli prime minister also said he would “hold off” on attacking Iranian gas fields following a request from Donald Trump. Kemi Badenoch has backed her shadow justice minister, Nick Timothy, for describing an Islamic prayer event in Trafalgar Square on Monday as “an act of domination”. The Tory leader said the Ramadan event, which has also been criticised by Nigel Farage, had been “exclusionary” and that women attendees had been “pushed to the back”. Labour has called Timothy’s remarks “abhorrent”. London’s Natural History Museum has been crowned the country’s most popular tourist attraction for the first time, with visitor numbers last year rising 13% to a record 7.1 million. The free attraction in South Kensington was comfortably ahead of the British Museum (6.4 million), Windsor’s Great Park (4.9 million) and Tate Modern (4.5 million), and the second-most popular museum worldwide after the Louvre.

When I was growing up in the early 2000s, says Josh Kaplan in The Free Press, parents sincerely believed that “heavy metal music inspired Satan worship” and that violent video games like Grand Theft Auto would encourage hordes of young men to become “philanderers, drug dealers and cop killers”. A few decades on, research has found not only that video games are good for mental health, but that there is also a negative correlation between the boys who played GTA and their propensity to commit crimes. Kids, it turned out, were able to play these games and listen to these songs and understand that it wasn’t real life. Two decades on, the same is surely true of the hated “manosphere”.

In the past few years there has been growing alarm over the malign influence of social media influencers with extreme, repugnant, misogynistic views. Louis Theroux has a new documentary about it, and last year the entirely made-up Netflix show Adolescence became a kind of clarion call to people who appeared to believe that previously nice young boys were routinely murdering their female classmates because of Andrew Tate. Such was the hysteria, parliament convened an inquiry within weeks. (Compare that to the 20 years it took to get an inquiry into the vast rape gangs scandal.) Here’s the thing: Tate and co are obviously ghastly, but the idea that they are perverting the minds of the young is simply false. Gen Z boys and men have more progressive views on gender than their older peers. Misogynistic violence has not risen; sexual assaults in the US have halved in the past 20 years. Boys know an idiot when they see one. What if the thing that’s really fuelling Tate is everyone else’s outrage?

It’s worth remembering, amid all the commentary about how successfully Iran has stood firm against the US, why this all started, says Jim Geraghty in The Washington Post: the mass protests in January, which were largely triggered by the collapse of Iran’s economy. Annual inflation rose to a whopping 42.2% in December – and those are state-released figures, so the real number may be even higher. The Iranian rial is the least valuable currency in the world, with a five-million rial note worth just $3.10. However this conflict ends, those same economic problems are waiting on the other side. “Only then, they will be worse.”

The white lab coat is synonymous with scientists and surgeons, says Donna Vatnick in Asimov Press, but this is a relatively new development. So-called “gentlemen of science” used to dress in dark frock coats, waistcoats and black cravats, and Victorian surgeons did their rounds in heavy, woollen garments soaked in rotten-smelling blood and sweat. It was only after huge strides in public sanitation were made in the mid-19th century that health professionals adopted white uniforms. They were everything that the black frock coat wasn’t – washable, lightweight, cheap and disposable – and helped reassure their “newly cleanliness-obsessed” patients that they were working under sanitary conditions.

Donald Trump’s war has “divided and confused” the MAGA movement, says Freddie Hayward in The New Statesman. The president’s ego – which previously held the disparate coalition together – now makes unity impossible. For a large portion, including Vice President JD Vance, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the conspiracy-minded congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, the core of Trumpism was keeping America out of “ill-defined and costly wars”. Today, Vance is lying low, Greene has been “cast out from MAGA” and Carlson is online “waging war against the war”, which he calls “absolutely disgusting and evil”. This week another long-time supporter of the president, his counter-terrorism chief Joe Kent, resigned over the conflict, saying Iran “posed no imminent threat” to the US.

When George W Bush invaded Iraq, says Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times, the cultural conformity was extraordinary. Much of the Democratic Party fell in line; the Senate authorised military action by 77 to 23; and when one of the Dixie Chicks denounced Bush at a gig in London, the country band dropped out of the Billboard Top 40 and two DJs in Colorado were suspended for playing their songs. Trump has received “no such deference”. Joe Rogan told his millions of podcast listeners that the president’s backers feel “betrayed”; on X, the right-wing streamer Megyn Kelly accused pro-war pundit Mark Levin of having a “micropenis” (surreally, Trump stepped in to defend Levin). Stars speaking out at the Oscars have barely made the news, let alone faced a backlash. Republican hawks can’t even use the time-honoured tradition of painting opposition to the war as “unpatriotic”. Challenged over whether refusing to back the conflict amounted to “voting against the troops”, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy was unfazed. “Oh come on,” he said. “The American people don’t want this war.”

China’s BYD, the world’s largest EV maker, is releasing a premium model that can be almost fully charged in under 10 minutes, says Steve Fowler in The Independent. The Denza Z9GT, which has a range of about 500 miles and will be launched in the UK later this year, can reach 97% battery in nine minutes, and top up from 10% to 70% in just five minutes – not that much longer than it takes to fill up a petrol tank.

Now I’m in my mid-40s, says Jonn Elledge on Substack, I feel like I have crossed some “invisible line” where I am very aware of being exactly the age I am. At dinner with some old school friends a few weeks ago, we spent the first half-hour exchanging low-level medical complaints. When I mentioned this on social media, more than one person replied that there was a name for this: “the organ recital”.

It’s Lily Collins’s engagement ring, says Claire Fahy in The New York Times, which has been returned to the Emily in Paris star after being stolen from a Hollywood spa locker in 2023. When jewellery store owner Joe Hakimian posted the bezel-set rose cut diamond for resale in December, he received a message suggesting that it might be the one taken from the actress and later verified it with her husband. After the ring was returned, Collins posted it on her Instagram thanking “Joe the Jeweller”, who received roughly 4,000 new followers and a heap of engagement ring enquiries. What goes around comes around.