Putin announced a unilateral ceasefire covering Orthodox Easter — from Saturday afternoon through Sunday. It's fragile by design: past Easter truces have repeatedly broken down, and this one comes with no international monitoring mechanism. Still, it buys 36 hours and a rare diplomatic opening at a moment when battlefield attrition is grinding both sides down.
Source: BBC
VP Vance is set to lead US negotiators into direct peace talks with Iran in Pakistan this weekend. The context: a shaky US-Iran ceasefire is barely holding, Israel and Hezbollah are still exchanging fire despite the broader agreement, and Tehran still controls the Strait of Hormuz — giving it a stranglehold on global oil shipments that no one can yet bypass. How these talks go will shape Middle East stability for years.
Trump directly accused Iran of violating whatever informal understanding exists over the world's most critical oil chokepoint. Iran's control of the Strait of Hormuz is its leverage card — roughly 20% of global oil passes through it. The US has been pushing hard to find alternatives, but short of military force there's no quick substitute. This is the fault line the weekend talks are built around.
Source: BBC
The four Artemis II astronauts — the first humans to orbit the Moon since Apollo — are heading home, expected to splash down in the Pacific on Friday evening. NASA calls the mission a complete success: they captured unprecedented imagery of the lunar far side and gathered radiation data that will inform everything from Mars mission planning to next-gen spacecraft shielding. Atmospheric reentry is the final and most dangerous phase.
Source: BBC · Ars Technica
A Chinese rocket designed to match SpaceX's Falcon 9 failed on its inaugural flight — bad news for those hoping for a quick commercial heavy-lift competitor. Meanwhile, Ars's Eric Berger argues the US's reliance on a narrow set of launch vehicles (Falcon 9, SLS) is a structural risk for Artemis. The space architecture that took 50 years to build is now a single point of failure for NASA's Moon-to-Mars ambitions.
Source: Ars Technica
India's IT Ministry drafted rules that would give the government sweeping power to order removals of news-related posts by influencers and podcasters, and require platforms to moderate political content. Critics warn the rules could be used to silence critical reporting ahead of elections. India has more social media users than any other country — whatever it does here will set a template for the Global South.
Source: BBC