News junkies can be forgiven for not having heard of gallium and germanium until now. That's all about to change. If our growing general knowledge of the periodic table seemed timed with the visit to Beijing of the US Treasury Secretary, that's because China is announcing controls on exports of key rare minerals that only it produces; minerals essential for microchips as well as electric vehicles and fibre-optic cables.

It's an easy way to get clicks when the world's richest man challenges the ninth richest to a cage fight. But it's actually win-win for them if the owner of Twitter and the founder of Facebook have us debating whether we are Team Musk or Team Zuckerberg, instead of the outsized power the pair enjoy thanks to the concentration of popular, mostly unregulated social media platforms in the hands of a few.

It's almost as if it never happened. The unrivalled master of the Kremlin for 23 years has emerged from a moment of wavering with the leader of an aborted march on Moscow now sidelined and forced abroad, Russian troops on the frontlines in Ukraine who continue to hold their own and a public opinion that's either staying out of it or still squarely behind Vladimir Putin.

How can France pick up the pieces? From the anger over a police shooting and its attempted cover-up, to the riots and destruction that have left a local mayor's wife in hospital, has the violence now drowned out the legitimate outrage over what sparked it? There is no justification for looting and destruction, nor for the targeting of law enforcement with firecrackers. Why are so many of those in the street so young? Was the escalation avoidable? We ask about the state's response.

After two nights of rioting, battle lines are drawn over Tuesday's police shooting of Nahel, the 17-year-old driver who tried to flee the scene in Nanterre, west of Paris. One officer faces potential murder charges. The fact that he is even in custody is a rarity in France. Tensions over policing and France's unresolved issues with its banlieues, its working-class suburbs, are coming to the fore.

A continent away from the Kremlin, a host of African strongmen are now waiting for the chips to fall in Moscow. Russia's foreign minister took to the airwaves on Monday to immediately insist that it's business as usual for the Wagner Group's ties to the continent. Why the haste? It turns out Yevgeny Prigozhin's outfit is much more than guns for hire: it's influence and a cash cow.

What is a wounded bear to do? Good luck deducing Vladimir Putin’s next move he makes a return to the public eye in the wake of Saturday's aborted march on Moscow by Yevgeny Prigozhin's irregulars. What are the true intentions of the master of the Kremlin? With Belarus's president now claiming that he is hosting the Wagner Group mercenaries' boss, we ask what the real deal is and what it means for Ukraine, whose leader has made a point of staying in the public eye.

Hailed as a hero as he departed, Yevgeny Prighozin filing out of Rostov-on-Don Saturday evening with his Wagner mercenaries. Fourty-eight hours later, the question still begs: What just happened? What prompted Yevgeny Prigozhin’s march on Moscow and its abrupt halt? We chart the current whereabouts of the Wagner group leader and that of the master of the Kremlin.

Joe Biden is rolling out the red carpet and more for India's prime minister. The halls are decked for Narendra Modi's first White House state banquet. It's just one illustration of how much clout a diaspora of four-and-a-half million carries in the United States and of how strategic India has become in superpower showdowns.

$400 billion is how much the World Bank estimates could be needed to rebuild Ukraine. This Wednesday at a major conference in London, Ukraine's allies did promise significant chunks of cash – not just for the war effort but also for Ukraine's reconstruction. But with the conflict still raging and the counteroffensive to retake occupied territory just getting underway, is now the right time for a Marshall Plan for Ukraine?