Nothing quite like a rocket launch. Dateline: Cape Canaveral, Florida, just before 6am local time. Elon Musk's SpaceX and its reusable rocket launcher on Friday sent a crew of four to the International Space Station. Musk has talked about this being a golden age for space flights.

What could possibly go wrong? Russia is insisting that the deployment of 83,000 troops for its land and sea manoeuvres at the Ukrainian border is routine. Ukraine responded with military drills of its own, with diplomatic lobbying in overdrive. The latest stop for President Volodymyr Zelensky is Paris, where lunch at the presidential palace came with a phone call to German leader Angela Merkel. Tensions were dialled up further on Wednesday with the expected arrival of two US warships. The Russians then decided to stage live fire naval exercises. But in the end, those two warships never came.

He was two months away from turning 100. Prince Philip had occupied the job of consort of the British monarch for nearly seven decades. In 2014, the Queen paid a historic visit to Northern Ireland where Prince Philip found himself alongside the late Martin McGuinness, whose IRA in a previous life had assassinated his uncle, Lord Mountbatten. The Russian embassy in London noted that Philip was the great-great-grandson of Czar Nicholas I.

It is hard to be clinical and cool-headed when the evidence is so disturbing. This week saw the opening of the trial in Minneapolis of the police officer accused in the murder of 46-year-old George Floyd. The jury on opening day was shown that nine-minute video of Derek Chauvin keeping his knee on the handcuffed victim's neck. From witnesses to experts and loved ones, each day was wrought with emotion – like Thursday, when Floyd's girlfriend Courteney Ross took the stand. That same emotion sparked worldwide outrage last May and the question of why it is not an open and shut case.

Vaccine rows are putting the focus on global supply chains. So is a stranded supertanker in the Suez Canal, holding up traffic for now more than 150 vessels. Also, are vacationers really still planning an Easter escape to Mallorca? As virulent new strains of coronavirus tear through Europe, the lives versus livelihoods debate goes to the beach.

Forget niceties, there won't even be a final communiqué when China and the US wrap up two days of talks in Anchorage, Alaska. The first face-to-face sit-down between the Joe Biden administration and top envoys of Xi Jinping was never going to be a love-in considering Washington – just the day before – imposed sanctions on 24 top Chinese officials over China’s crackdown in Hong Kong. Once again, the new US president is making sure that superpower rivals – whether past, present and future - get the message that he's not anything like his predecessor.

After Oprah Winfrey’s bombshell interview with Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, Prince William has finally come out to defend the British monarchy against Meghan’s inflammatory claims of racism, insisting his family is “very much not” racist. While late night TV show hosts in the States are clearly siding with Meghan, it is a different story in the UK.

"I'm happy to resume my travels." Those were Pope Francis' words to reporters before landing in Iraq, his first trip abroad since the Covid-19 pandemic. Francis, who has had his vaccine shots, is the first pontiff ever to visit the birthland of Abraham. The visit is fraught with sanitary issues, security concerns and a political hornet's nest, Iraq being a land where years of bloodshed have been fuelled by religious and sectarian rivalries. His first thoughts were for a Christian community that's dwindled from 1.2 million to 250,000 since the US-led invasion of 2003.

Joe Biden's first phone call to Riyadh went not to MBS but to his dad, the ailing King Salman. This came ahead of the declassification of intelligence that links the crown prince to the 2018 murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Overnight, we witnessed the first use of US military force on Joe Biden's watch: an air strike targeting facilities used by Iran-backed militias in Syria, just over the border with Iraqi Kurdistan. Some 17 people were killed, according to local sources.

The world but also what is out of this world: NASA's Perseverance Rover has successfully touched down on the Jezero Crater on Mars. It's the delicate first step in a mission to bring back to Earth in 2031 actual soil samples from the red planet.