Not all parties have signed on to the deal, it doesn’t include all of Syria, and there are already reports of some airstrikes, but so far, the Syrian truce has held well enough for the UN to get aid to the first recipients. They hope to target 1.7 million people by the end of March.

+ “It’s difficult to view the partial truce as much more than a ratification of the status quo that began when Putin ordered the Russian military intervention.” The New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins on a truce in Syria.

+ “Known for its nearly carbon-neutral cities, its free health care and university education for all, its bus drivers who are paid like accountants, its robust defense of gay rights and social freedoms, and its vigorous culture of social and political debate, the country has long been envied as a social-democratic success, a place where the state has an improbably durable record of doing good.” So why aren’t they open to the immigrants? In NYRB, Hugh Eakin on Liberal, Harsh Denmark