A significant settlement or a slap on the wrist? Those hoping to see media mogul Rupert Murdoch take the stand will be disappointed by news of a $787 million settlement with Dominion, which sued Murdoch's Fox News over repeated false claims that its voting machines rigged the 2020 elections for Joe Biden against Donald Trump.

What do the French want – a leader who respects the will of the people, or one that gets things done? In his prime time address on Monday, the term-limited Emmanuel Macron acknowledged how deeply unpopular his pension reform is. But now that it has been railroaded through parliament, validated by the courts and enacted by the president, he again assured it was for the best and that it's time to move on to the rest of his laundry list of reforms.

How to stop Sudan from descending into an all-out civil war? Civilians are caught in the crossfire of a lethal dispute between coup leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his number two, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti. Stray bullets and aerial bombardments are currently pinning down citizens in the capital and other major cities.

Loose lips sink ships, read the poster during World War II. The US government was then urging citizens to refrain from sharing what might even seem like benign information to the untrained ear. It was only a matter of time before Europe's first ground war since the information age sprang a leak that might be anything but benign. In fact, it is a miracle it did not happen sooner. The so-called Pentagon Files are coming out in a very 21st-century way: first in a chat room among gamers, before graduating to Twitter and Telegram, and now to journalists following up on a trove of documents that appear to be five weeks old – some authentic, some apparently doctored.

A nostalgia tour or a chance to consolidate the peace in Northern Ireland? On the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of what was effectively sectarian civil war in an impoverished corner of Europe, a US president who is proud of his Irish Catholic heritage returns, but for less than a day in the north. Joe Biden does not want to appear to be endorsing the current gridlock in Belfast's power-sharing assembly. Twenty-five years on, peace is still a work in progress.

Surely Ukraine is not the prelude. As Emmanuel Macron was departing Guangzhou, Chinese warships were cruising towards the Taiwan strait. We ask about the three-day show of force staged as a show of displeasure with last week's visit by the Taiwanese president to California, and about the US Navy destroyer dispatched to what China claims are its territorial waters.

The French president has landed in Beijing for his first post-Covid visit. Emmanuel Macron is accompanied by the European Commission president, who last week went on the offensive over unfair trade practices and Chinese backing of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Will Ursula von der Leyen speak for other recent EU visitors?

Justice may be blind, but can it block out the noise? Somewhere between spectacle and tribal rage comes the first-ever criminal indictment of a president of the United States. There are Donald Trump’s supporters energised for his return to New York City and the glee of detractors, with both sides using the hashtag #TrumpMugShot on Twitter. We ask about the media circus.

Are those sanctions starting to bite? On the surface, it's business as usual for a Russia that on Saturday took over the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council and still enjoys plenty of support from the likes of China. But last week, President Vladimir Putin for the first time told his cabinet to expect trouble ahead.

Maybe we are not as smart as we think we are. We thought technology would set us free, liberate us from menial tasks, democratise access to information and knowledge. We marvelled at our ability to connect instantaneously to whoever, wherever, whenever. We even fell for the illusion that each one of us is our own brand with a global reach. But beyond the way the digital age plays tricks on the human mind comes an even bigger threat.