Israel and Lebanon have agreed to renew their fragile ceasefire. The truce, which is contingent on a “complete cessation” of Hezbollah fire, will also see a number of “pilot” security zones created in Lebanon from which the proxy’s militants would withdraw. Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has passed a resolution to block Donald Trump from carrying out more strikes on Iran without congressional approval. A new drug for ovarian cancer will be rolled out on the NHS in the biggest breakthrough against the disease for two decades. Elahere is known as a “biological missile” because it delivers chemotherapy drugs directly to cancerous tissue rather than the whole body, reducing debilitating side-effects and adding several months to patients’ lives. Britain is back in love with boffins, according to YouGov research which shows that trust in weather forecasters, nutritionists and economists has rocketed over the past decade. Nurses top the chart with almost 90% saying they believe them, while politicians languish at the very bottom, with 4%.

Credit where it’s due, says Jake Wallis Simons in The Daily Telegraph: the Home Office’s decision to ban two American “rabble rousers” from travelling to Britain this week was spot on. Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker, who have a long and ugly history of stoking hatred of Israel, were scheduled to appear at the SXSW London festival and to address the “formerly august” Oxford Union. What’s depressing is that the government had to step in at all. When the Oxford Union invited the Holocaust denier David Irving to address the debating chamber in 2001, the backlash was so fierce that his appearance had to be cancelled. But with Uygur and Piker? Nothing. “No petitions, no protests, no resignations.” What a shame our government has had to “save our brightest students from themselves”.

This is becoming a “bad habit” for the UK, says The Washington Post. In April the Home Office blocked Kanye West from performing at Wireless festival over past anti-Semitic remarks (for which he had apologised). Last month, 11 far-right figures were blocked from entering the country to speak at Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom rally. A Dutch anti-immigration activist called Eva Vlaardingerbroek had her visa application blocked earlier this year for the same reason. Now obviously the government should deny entry to the genuinely dangerous – someone who might commit a terrorist act, say. But the people being banned are “trolls, not direct instigators of violence”. Keeping them out only adds to their cachet, and – “unless the UK becomes North Korea” – British people will still be able to see their revolting content online. It always bears repeating: the only thing worse than odious speech is the suppression of it.

Google has asked the US government for permission to release 32 million male mosquitoes. It sounds “apocalyptic”, says Sara Hashemi in Smithsonian Magazine: mozzies are the world’s deadliest creature, spreading malaria, dengue fever, West Nile virus and other fatal diseases to millions of people each year. But the idea is that these male Google bugs, which don’t bite or carry disease, and have been infected with a naturally occurring bacteria that makes them sterile, will mate with “bad” disease-carrying mosquitoes, and the resulting eggs won’t hatch. Over time, says the project’s website, “there will be fewer and fewer bad mosquitoes”.

Ahead of the SpaceX IPO, The Wall Street Journal has totted up Elon Musk’s fortune and reckons the Tesla founder is already worth “roughly $970bn”. That exceeds the GDP of more than 125 countries, including Norway, Thailand, Argentina and his native South Africa. Over the 31 years since Musk co-founded his first company, he has pocketed roughly $59,492 a minute, $85.7m a day, or $2.6bn a month. To earn as much as him, a household on the median US income ($83,730) would have to work for more than 11 million years.

The changing face of modern warfare means large chunks of daily life can now be totally knocked out without a shot being fired, says Elisabeth Braw in The Guardian. One significant cyberattack could leave ordinary citizens without access to texting, banking apps, public transport and “most modern office work”. But in a temporarily “offline world”, the government would still need to keep operating, which would require huge numbers of people trained for exactly that scenario. And on this front, countries in Scandinavia and the Baltic region are way ahead of the game.

Sweden’s Volunteer Motorcycle Corps trains civilians as potential crisis couriers who could ferry crucial items between government offices and wherever else was needed. Others are contributing skills from radio communications to military dog training, and the “Home Guard” now has more applicants than openings. IT workers in Estonia are signing up to the country’s cyber defence unit; in Lithuania, children and adults are learning to build and operate drones. The Polish government has launched a programme called wGotowości (“Always Ready”) under which 400,000 citizens receive training in basic military skills, survival, first aid and cybersecurity hygiene. These nations obviously have more at stake in the short term because of their proximity to Russia. But their preparation is still a good reminder to Nato allies like the UK, Italy and Spain – which focus solely on investment in their full-time militaries – that “defence is not the exclusive realm of professional soldiers”. Citizens’ willingness to “do their bit as non-combatants” is a phenomenal resource that in today’s wars could be worth as much as all the “whiz-bang weaponry”. Our governments should take heed.

New Yorkers have taken to a bizarre new nighttime activity, says Walt Hickey on Substack: sneaking into the city’s sewer system. Security cameras have recorded small groups of people – some wearing headlamps and carrying shovels – climbing in and out of the tunnels via maintenance holes on streets in Brooklyn and Queens. Investigators are “befuddled” as to what these subterranean explorers are doing, but the answer is obvious to anyone who has sampled the city’s hipster nightlife: the latest trendy speakeasy must be hidden somewhere down in the sewers.

Welcome mats have been doing a lot less welcoming lately, says Julie Beck in The Atlantic. The percentage of Americans who have hosted over the past couple of decades has fallen drastically, and people now proudly wear T-shirts saying things like: “Sorry I’m late, I didn’t want to come.” Part of this is the pressure of hosting – cleaning the kitchen, re-stocking loo roll and so on. What we need is to “readjust everyone’s expectations”. Why not invite a friend over just to watch TV, say, or sit on the sofa chatting in your trackie bums? Let’s bring back that essential human activity: “hanging out”.

It’s one of Monet’s paintings in his Water Lillies series, says Michael Zhang in PetaPixel, which formed part of a fascinating – and rather embarrassing – social experiment this week. A user posted the image on X falsely claiming it was AI-generated, and asked people to explain what made it inferior to a genuine Monet. There was no shortage of sharp-eyed critics. One criticised the lack of “coherent composition”, another lamented that “Monet actually understood how light behaves on water”, while a third simply wrote: “Because it’s crap.” One user even took the time to write an 850-word breakdown of the artwork’s shortcomings. To see more would-be Brian Sewells offering their expert analysis, click here.