Hours after the White House announced yesterday that Vladimir Putin had agreed to a temporary ceasefire on Ukraine's energy infrastructure,  Russia launched air strikes targeting exactly that.

The overnight attacks that followed the Trump administration's "first real foray into wartime diplomacy" suggest Washington has been "hopelessly bluffed" by the Kremlin, said CNN's Nick Paton Walsh.

What did the commentators say?
The White House has taken a hard line in its talks with Ukraine, but the transcript of yesterday's call between Putin and Donald Trump "contains not a hint of pressure", said David Blair at The Telegraph. And "once again", the Russian president has "paid no price" for defying a "public demand" from his US counterpart. 

The "long-heralded" call achieved "almost nothing" other than showing that Putin can "outmanoeuvre his counterpart effortlessly", said Paton Walsh. Both countries are portraying "two entirely different sets of ideas" on what was agreed. According to the Kremlin, the partial ceasefire agreed was limited to "energy infrastructure", while the US version of the conversation referred to "energy and infrastructure". 

Even the more restricted reading of the scope of the ceasefire is a "self-serving concession" for Putin, said Jamie Dettmer at Politico. It will "save Russia's energy system", which has been hit repeatedly since Ukraine "dramatically increased the range" of its missiles. But the biggest takeaway from the talks is that Trump is "all too ready to go along with Putin", which means a "real breakthrough is a remote prospect".

What next?
Putin gave "just enough" for the US president to claim he had "made progress towards peace in Ukraine", said BBC correspondent Sarah Rainsford. But the pushback on a formal ceasefire and the subsequent air strikes are "more proof that Russia has no interest in ending its invasion".

There is "some promise" in the talks, particularly in the acknowledgement that a "ceasefire is a step-by-step process", said Mark F. Cancian and Maria Snegovaya at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But similar steps were discussed "under the Biden administration" and there is little yet to suggest the current agreement is a "radical" breakthrough.

The former president of the Philippines is facing charges of "murder as a crime against humanity" over his brutal crackdown on drug trafficking. Rodrigo Duterte (pictured above), nicknamed "The Punisher", is accused by the International Criminal Court of ordering the "widespread and systematic" killings of thousands of people over a period of several years. But experts have cast doubt on whether putting the ex-president in handcuffs will end the country's deadly war on drugs.

Hollow promises
Duterte's successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, has "often spoke about winding down the bloody and brutal drug war" and opting instead for "community-based treatment, rehabilitation, education and reintegration", said the Council on Foreign Relations. But these promises have "proven completely hollow" since Marcos Jr took power in 2022.

Under his watch, the "killings have continued, albeit at a much lower rate, and activists still face harassment and forced disappearances", said Foreign Policy. Now, it is often contract killers that are culpable rather than the police.

Duterte's arrest last week felt like a "seismic event": he will be the first Asian ex-leader to face an ICC trial. But the "culture of impunity" that he "once championed remains entrenched". The families of drug war victims are unable to bring cases against the police who killed their loved ones. What the Philippines needs are "laws that will rebuild and strengthen institutions to make sure that they can withstand the next time another Duterte comes along", said former senator Leila de Lima.

Unravelling marriage of convenience
It was a feud with Marcos Jr that made Duterte vulnerable to arrest. Marcos Jr "rose to power" by forming an alliance with his predecessor's daughter, Sara Duterte, who is vice president, but "their marriage of convenience started unravelling quickly", said The New York Times. She is now leading in the polls to become the next president and has "railed" against Marcos Jr, "saying that she wanted to cut his head off and threatening to dig up his father's body and throw it into the ocean".

By "approving" her father's arrest, Marcos Jr is "gambling that he can eliminate the Dutertes as a political force without any major backlash". The "issue is now likely to be front and centre during the midterm elections, seen as a proxy battle between the Marcoses and the Dutertes".

If you're a parent of a school-age boy, Netflix's harrowing new drama "Adolescence" will "chill your blood", said The Telegraph's Anita Singh.

Each episode of this "quietly devastating" four-part series is filmed in a single take, opening with the arrest of 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), accused of stabbing to death a girl from his school. His "shell-shocked" parents – dad Eddie (Stephen Graham) and mum Manda (Christine Tremarco) – follow him to the police station, where he chooses Eddie to be his appropriate adult.

This show is a "masterclass" from Graham, who also co-wrote it with screenwriter Jack Thorne. Even when just silently walking through a DIY shop or driving a van, Graham manages to convey "more emotion than 99% of other actors can manage when they're talking".

It quickly becomes clear that this is not a "mystery thriller, or even really a crime drama",  said Abby Robinson at Radio Times. Instead, the writers are more interested in "interrogating why young men and boys are killing women and girls". Graham came up with the idea for the show after reading about a spate of real-life violent attacks, including the fatal stabbing in 2021 of 12-year-old Ava White by a 15-year-old boy, and the 2023 murder of 15-year-old Elianne Andam by a 17-year-old boy, in a row over a teddy bear.

The resulting script is an "incredibly powerful and poignant study of the devastating, sometimes fatal, impact of toxic masculinity", and how boys and young men are "dangerously susceptible to the poison being peddled by snake-oil salesmen like Andrew Tate".

Imagine if all those who are silent about the terrible evil being committed in Gaza spoke up
Owen Jones in The Guardian
Israel's "genocide" in Gaza was "only on pause", writes Owen Jones. More than 400 people have been "slaughtered" this week in a fresh round of air strikes. "No crime in history has been so well documented by its victims" nor "so confessed to by its perpetrators", yet there is "widespread silence" from those "with power and influence". If they "spoke out", the media would "correctly frame" Israel's actions as "heinous crimes" and demand "sanctions" and "accountability".

A smartphone ban won't solve our kids' problems
Abbie MacGregor in The Spectator
I "firmly" believe that children shouldn't have phones, writes former teacher Abbie MacGregor. In my teaching days, phones were a "constant source of bickering and disruption". But "pinning the blame entirely on phones" risks "ignoring the root cause of behavioural problems in schools": an "obsession" with seeking the "approval of friends" that is unwittingly exacerbated by schools' increasing "championing" of "peer bonding". Smartphones didn't cause this "deeper cultural" issue, "they merely reflect it".

Buy-to-let landlords are dodging tax en masse
Harriet Williamson on Novara Media
Buy-to-let property firms are now the most common type of business in the UK, writes Harriet Williamson. This landlord "explosion" should be called what it is: "widespread tax avoidance by a workshy, parasite class". Landlords are "leeches" attached to the "bare legs" of those who can't "get on the housing ladder". If Labour is the "party of work", when will Keir Starmer "crack down" on those "feeding off their tenants' labour"?