Sudan

• South Sudan said Sudan's army and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) agreed to a new seven-day truce after their latest attempt at a three-day truce failed. As in previous truces, the new one has already been punctuated by intermittent gunfire in Khartoum and elsewhere.
• It seems the army and the RSF have also agreed - in principle - to peace talks that will likely be mediated by South Sudan: both sides are said to be picking their representatives, but neither side has publicly confirmed they're even willing to talk yet.

• Both Russia and Ukraine escalated drone attacks on infrastructure targets - Russia's on cities in central Ukraine and Ukraine's on Crimea - ahead of Ukraine's expected imminent spring counter-offensive.

Iran

• The U.S. Navy said Iran seized a second oil tanker in under a week. Analysts think Iran is reacting to a U.S. court-ordered seizure of Iranian oil cargo last week.

• Iran's Pres. Raisi visited Damascus to meet Bashar al Assad, whose regime Iran has backed for the duration of Syria's brutal civil war (although this is the first time an Iranian leader has visited Syria since the war began).
• The NYT pointed out that Iran isn't the only Middle Eastern country rebuilding ties with Syria after they all isolated it when the war began: Saudi Arabia also opened dialogue with Assad's government recently.

• UN SecGen Guterres answered yesterday's question about whether the UN will continue to engage Afghanistan's Taliban government: it will - for now - for the sake of continuing to provide much-needed aid to the Afghan people.
• However, Guterres also pointed out that the UN is severely underfunded in Afghanistan: only 6% of its budget for the country is funded.

• Quartz reported that TikTok's head of U.S. Data Security Trust and Safety - who was a leader at the company in advocating against a U.S. ban - is leaving his role. That could mean he knows the fight has already been lost and a ban is imminent (TikTok is already banned on U.S. government devices, but users can still see silly videos - and potentially share their personal data with Beijing - on private devices).

• Pres. Biden is sending 1,500 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border ahead of an expected surge in migration after some COVID-era restrictions on asylees are lifted next week. They'll join the 2,500 U.S. troops already at the border.

• Today is World Press Freedom Day, and Reporters Without Borders commemorated the occasion by releasing its latest annual report on press freedom. This year's report ranked the situation for reporters as "good" or "fairly good" in only 52 of 180 countries, which is the worst overall ranking to date.