What happened
Ukraine says it has reached a “common understanding” with the United States on an amended peace proposal intended to halt its war with Russia. The plan, built on a 28-point framework delivered to Kyiv last week, was refined during talks in Geneva over the weekend. Russia, however, has yet to receive the updated version and remains wary of any potential changes.

Who said what
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he hoped to meet with US President Donald Trump soon to address “sensitive points” in the plan. Trump confirmed on social media that he aimed to sit down with Zelenskyy and Putin “soon, but ONLY when the deal to end this war is FINAL”. Yet European leaders remain sceptical: Emmanuel Macron said he saw “no Russian will for a ceasefire” and Downing Street cautioned that there was “a long way to go”.

Some of the issues that Russia and Ukraine are “still deeply at odds over” remain “unaddressed so far”, said Laura Gozzi on the BBC. Still to be resolved are complex matters including “security guarantees for Kyiv and control of several embattled regions in Ukraine’s east”.

What next?
As talks inch forward, the fighting continues. Heavy Russian air strikes on Monday and yesterday killed 14 people across Ukraine, while Moscow has reported intercepting hundreds of Ukrainian drones.

What happened
A judge has ruled that comedy writer Graham Linehan did not harass transgender activist Sophia Brooks, but was guilty of criminal damage for throwing their phone. The “Father Ted” creator was fined £500 and ordered to pay costs of £650 and a statutory surcharge of £200.

Who said what
The court heard that Linehan (pictured above) had called Brooks a “sissy porn-watching scumbag”, a “groomer” and a “disgusting incel”, said The Guardian. The complainant had responded “you’re the incel, you’re divorced”.

District Judge Briony Clarke found that while Linehan’s comments were “deeply unpleasant, insulting and even unnecessary”, they were not “oppressive or unacceptable beyond merely unattractive, annoying or irritating”. She declined to issue a restraining order against Linehan and ruled that Brooks was not “as alarmed and distressed as they portrayed themself to be”. Speaking outside court, Linehan said he was “proud to have stood up to” Brooks and her supporters.

What next?
Sarah Vine KC, Linehan’s legal representative, told the court she expected him to mount an appeal against his conviction for criminal damage.

The 12,000-year-old Göbekli Tepe site in Turkey is often called the “zero point of history”, according to The Archaeologist. But recent excavations at the nearby Mendik Tepe site suggest that it dates back even further and could offer “newer insights into humanity’s earliest steps towards settled life”.

Mendik Tepe (Mendik Hill or Peak) is in a rural area of south-eastern Anatolia, about 130 miles east of the city of Şanlıurfa. It is in this region that the first permanent human settlements are thought to have been established in the early Neolithic period.

Excavation at Mendik Tepe got underway last year, led by University of Liverpool archaeology professor Douglas Baird. Baird told The Archaeologist the site dates to when humans began to abandon “mobile foraging” for a more “sedentary lifestyle, possibly experimenting with plant cultivation”. The “site seems to capture the very beginnings of that transformation”, dating it to as much as 2,000 years before Göbekli Tepe.

The excavations have already unearthed several buildings of various sizes, raising questions about their function and significance.

While structures excavated at Göbekli Tepe have massive T-shaped stone pillars, decorated with carvings of people and animals, the pillars on the buildings at Mendik Tepe are smaller and not T-shaped. This suggests that the two communities “possessed a different ideology” or that Mendik Tepe “was constructed for different purposes”, said science site The Debrief.

The whole Taş Tepeler region is “particularly exciting” for archaeologists, Baird told Turkey’s Anadolu new agency, because it allows for the study of “a network” of Neolithic settlements and their development “on a larger, regional scale”.