"They cannot continue down this road." Joe Biden's blunt talk on Israel ended speculation that the US president would reward Benjamin Netanayhu with a White House visit, this after the prime minister paused his controversial overhaul of the judiciary. It's not the first time that Biden has crossed swords with Netanyahu, whose own son – without proof – accuses Washington of fomenting the mass protests against the reform.

It's a moment of truth for Israel and its democracy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced he will pause the second and third readings of a contentious judicial reform bill that has seen hundreds of thousands of Israelis take to the streets for months. So what happens next?

If a Manhattan grand jury hands up a criminal indictment against Donald Trump, that will make him the first US president – sitting or former – to face felony charges. We ask about the case of alleged hush money paid to former porn star Stormy Daniels and whether fingerprinting and a possible perp walk for the cameras helps or hurts Trump's chances in the race for 2024.

"In love, there is always one who kisses, and one who offers the cheek." That French proverb was borrowed by Winston Churchill's daughter to describe the British prime minister's relationship during World War II with US president Franklin D. Roosevelt. When observing the optics of Xi Jinping's three-day state visit to Moscow, we ask about the stakes of the first trip to Russia by China's president since Vladimir Putin's decision to launch an all-out invasion of Ukraine.

A nation is up in arms, but Emmanuel Macron still fancies his chances. By turning the passage of a highly unpopular pension reform bill into a vote of confidence, the French president convinced enough conservatives to avoid bringing down the government. But it was close, with PM Élisabeth Borne's government clinging on by just nine votes. We ask about the lasting impact on the rest of Macron's term-limited four years in office.

French President Emmanuel Macron has got his pension reform out of the way early in his second term, but at what cost? His prime minister has triggered a vote of no-confidence rather than holding a straight up-and-down vote on the bill itself. How will the railroading through parliament of a plan that's sparked France's biggest strikes and demonstrations in years test the legitimacy of a term-limited president and his minority government in future dealings with the unions and lawmakers?

Xi Jinping boasted about a "great wall of steel" in the speech marking the kickoff of his precedent-breaking third term as China's president. He has consolidated his grip on power and is flexing his might just as leaders of the US, Australia and the UK converged on San Diego, where they vowed to stand up to Beijing's expansionist designs in the Pacific and elsewhere. How adversarial is Xi, what with so much trade between AUKUS allies and China?

Are banks going bad again? Markets are scrambling to contain the shockwaves from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, a California lending institution favoured by tech startups. Its seemingly safe bet on government bonds proved a bust, triggering an old-fashioned run on the bank. Is it contagious? The bank's failure marks the first major default since rising interest rates signalled the end of decades of cheap money. The 2008 financial crisis triggered a return of regulation, forcing big banks to keep more reserves in the vault. But was it enough?

Street protests have forced Georgia’s parliament to back down on a bill aimed at making groups with overseas funding register as foreign agents. Critics say it's a mimic of the law that’s on the books in Russia. We ask about a Georgian government that's on paper pro-European, but whose main backer first made his fortune in Russia. Why did lawmakers give in? What next for Georgia?

France is growing older. However, Europe's record-breaking life expectancy has a downside: in order to pay for its increasingly healthy legion of retirees, the French right wing says there's no other option but to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. The left retorts that if corporations paid their fair share in taxes, that would more than sustain the country's cherished pay-as-you-go pension system. Ahead of what unions are billing as their biggest strikes yet against the government's pension reform, what exactly does the future hold for workers?