The ceasefire in the Middle East is on fragile ground after Iran called Israel’s continued strikes on its proxy Hezbollah a “grave violation” of the agreement. The US and Israel maintain that Lebanon was not covered in the deal, while Pakistan, which mediated the truce, says it was. The status of the Strait of Hormuz also remains unclear, with conflicting reports about whether vessels are able to pass through. A Russian warship escorted two sanctioned oil tankers through the English Channel yesterday, openly defying Keir Starmer’s previous threat to hit Russia’s shadow fleet “even harder” if its ships sailed through British waters. The Admiral Grigorovich, a Black Sea fleet frigate, accompanied Universal and Enigma as they passed along the south coast shortly after 9am. Rising numbers of vegetarians and vegans are switching back to meat. The shift, which has seen the proportion of the population who don’t eat animal products fall from 10% in 2021 to 7% this year, is thought to be due to the growing popularity of protein-rich diets.

Many in the Western media have been quick to portray the Iran ceasefire deal as a triumph for Tehran, says Holman Jenkins in The Wall Street Journal. That’s woefully premature. The idea that now, suddenly, the Iranians control the Strait of Hormuz, for example, “gets things backwards”. They have claimed for decades that they “own” the vital waterway, frequently attacking and harassing shipping to prove their point. Ultimately, it’s too early to tell how effective this conflict has been in pursuing America’s long-term goals in Iran, which are the same for Trump as they have been for all his predecessors. “The night is young.”

The notion of an Iranian “victory” is totally fanciful, says Gamal Sultan, editor of the Egyptian newspaper Al-Mesryoon, on X. Tehran has lost pretty much the entirety of its ruling elite, from the supreme leader down. Israeli and US spies have penetrated “every dimension” of the government and military, and the only reason a handful of top officials are being spared assassination is so that Washington has someone to negotiate with. Iran’s economy is shot, with initial assessments of the damages from the war at around $400bn. Its navy “rests at the bottom of the sea”, its air defences are all but destroyed and its military industry “turned to ashes”. Enemy aircraft operate in Iran’s skies every day, 24 hours a day, across the entire country. And when the Iranians did finally manage to shoot down a US plane, with its two crew members landing right there in front of them, they failed to capture either one of them and had to “watch from the stands” as American troops piled in and rescued them. If all that constitutes a victory, “what would a defeat be”?

🚀💣 One of the biggest surprises of the war has been the depth of Iran’s missile stocks, says The Economist. They are still firing between 10 and 20 a day at Israel, and US intelligence agencies reckon around half their missile launchers remain intact. Bombed-out entrances to underground “missile cities” have quickly been cleared, enabling the launchers trapped inside to be moved out and used. And some of the missiles are being refitted with lighter warheads so that they can be fired from deeper inside Iranian territory, making it harder for US and Israeli aircraft to target them.

Ahead of the local elections in May, a new YouGov poll of voting intention has Restore Britain, the far-right party led by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe, polling at 4%. This is still a road to zero seats in a general election, says Ethan Croft in The New Statesman, but it could be enough to cost Reform victory in close races. Lowe is essentially doing to Nigel Farage what Farage did to a succession of Tory leaders, “standing to their right and siphoning support”. How will he respond?

The comedian Brian Frange has set up an enjoyable website giving extremely detailed assessments of different varieties of apple. Top of his list, with a score of 97/100, is the SweeTango, described as “the best apple ever to grace the world of Gods and men”. The Pink Lady is joint fourth with 86 (“the perfect blend of sweet and tart”); the “wholly inoffensive” Gala gets a respectable 70; and the Granny Smith only 57 (“a most unpleasant eating experience”). Bottom of the pile with 19, just below the “putrid corpse” of the Golden Russet, is the Newtown Pippin, aka “Long Island’s sand-filled condom”. See how your favourite ranks here.

You can see why the Home Office revoked Kanye West’s visa to headline the now-cancelled Wireless Festival in July, says Hadley Freeman in The Free Press. This is an artist who has described himself as a Nazi, released a song called Heil Hitler and sold T-shirts with swastikas printed on them. But that doesn’t make it the right decision. “Cultural boycotts never age well”, and the likes of Kneecap and Bob Vylan, whose “anti-Zionism” is far more integral to their work, recently toured Britain with little protest. More broadly, and this may sound strange coming from a Jewish woman, I don’t think it’s right to describe West as an anti-Semite. He is “mentally unwell”. Plenty scoff at his claim that his behaviour was the result of undiagnosed bipolar disorder. But this was one of the most famous musicians in the world tweeting things like: “when I wake I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE”. That, for want of a better word, is “crazy”.

Crazy for attention, perhaps, says Hugo Rifkind in The Times. West isn’t the first to go off the deep end on social media. Another example is the Canadian former alt-right influencer Lauren Southern, who was herself denied entry to Britain for saying things like “Allah is gay”. Today, she acknowledges that she never meant or cared about this stuff. “It was all for clicks.” You see the same in Louis Theroux’s manosphere documentary: toxic male influencers willing to say anything at all, no matter how offensive, provided it drives engagement. And think of that other social media addict you keep reading about. Two months ago, Donald Trump was telling Iranians help was on its way; two days ago he was threatening to destroy their civilisation. This is “engagement addiction” writ large. “Same root, same path, infinitely higher stakes.”

The most moving image to emerge from the Artemis II mission hasn’t been of the moon or the Earth, says Ross Andersen in The Atlantic. It was the moment that astronaut Jeremy Hansen asked ground control if a newly discovered crater on the moon could be named after mission commander Reid Wiseman’s wife, Carroll, who died aged 46 in 2020 after a five-year battle with cancer. Wiping away tears, the four astronauts then floated up to the top of the capsule in a group hug. Watch the full, tear-jerking clip here.

With the cricket season under way, says Jack Blackburn in The Times, it’s worth remembering the sport’s “lasting impact on global culture”. As recounted in Writers in Whites, a book about authors and the great game, Arthur Conan Doyle made at least one key writing decision because of his time out in the middle. “Years ago I made 30 runs against a bowler by the name of Sherlock,” the writer explained in 1921. “I always had a kindly feeling for that name.”

It’s the world’s first statue dedicated to a landmine-detecting rat, says Claire Keenan on BBC News. Magawa, an African giant pouched rat, sniffed out more than 100 landmines and other explosives in Cambodia before his death in 2022, clearing more than 141,000 square metres of land – the equivalent of 20 football pitches. In 2020 he became the first rat to win the PDSA Gold Medal, known as “the George Cross for animals”. The statue was unveiled in the Cambodian city of Siem Reap last Friday in time for the International Day for Mine Awareness on 4 April.