The Marshall Islands launch a legal campaign against the UK, India and Pakistan this week in a David versus Goliath battle to achieve the goal of a "nuclear free universe".

The islands accuse the nuclear states of failing to halt the nuclear arms race, and are urging the UN's highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), to pursue a lawsuit against all three.

The Pacific Ocean territory, used as a US nuclear testing site for 12 years, filed applications with the ICJ in April 2014 accusing the world's nine nuclear-armed states of not respecting their nuclear disarmament obligations under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and customary international law.

Jihadists in Syria have been shelling the Turkish area in an apparent attempt to provoke a response that could lead to Ankara sending troops into the neighboring country, according to Russia's truce center in Syria.

"On March 6, 2016 several militants of Jabhat Al-Nusra terror group repeatedly fired mortars at Turkish territory from the area near the Syrian settlement of Metishli," Lieutenant General Sergey Kuralenko, Head of the Center for Reconciliation, said on Sunday.

"The actions of militants are aimed at provoking the Turkish military units to return fire and bring their troops into Syria, which will inevitably lead to the disruption of the peace process," Kuralenko added.

Germany will manage to cope with migration crisis, keeping to a balanced and deficit-free budget without taking on new debt, Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview with the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. According to Merkel, all concerns about new state debts are "totally unfounded".

However, more and more people are expressing their disagreement with the German government's migration policy. According to the Independent, current opinion polls show that more than 80 per cent of Germans think Merkel's government has "lost control" of the refugee crisis. Merkel's policy has provoked serious dissent in German society and has been subject to sharp criticism both from the opposition and the allies in the ruling coalition. For instance, Bavarian Governor Horst Seehofer says that "the country is divided" and "Europe is stressed and disunited".

The funds allocated to cope with refugees' influx have gone beyond all limits. A new study by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research says the German government will have to spend 50 billion euros on refugees during this year and next.

How do you monitor a ceasefire that involves nearly 100 armed groups? This is one of the driving criticisms of the recent US-Russia brokered ceasefire deal in Syria.

Since it entered the conflict in September, Russia has built up arguably the best intelligence-gathering operation in Syria. Using both high-tech military systems, as well as an effective spy network, Moscow's success in Syria can be attributed in part to its emphasis on collecting reliable intelligence and acting swiftly to take advantage of it.

But now that the ceasefire has been implemented, Russia is using its intelligence-gathering systems to monitor and maintain the fragile peace in Syria. As Al-Masdar News reports:

Through the use of radar systems, the Russian Armed Forces have been tracking all reported breaches of the ceasefire agreement; this is something that almost all the monitoring countries do not have access to. As a result of their efforts, the Russian Armed Forces have been able to not only track the aggressive behavior of all parties involved, but also mediate when necessary.

The civilian death toll from the airstrikes conducted by the US-led coalition against the Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh) jihadist group could reach 1,000 "within days," local media reported Sunday, citing a monitoring NGO. The US-led coalition of over 60 nations has been conducting airstrikes against the positions of Daesh in both Syria and Iraq since 2014.

The number of civilian casualties from the coalition's activities in both Syria and Iraq has already reached 967 and could reach 1,000 "within days," according to The Independent newspaper that cites the data of Airwars NGO tracking the number of the aerial campaign's casualties.

The newspaper added that at the same time, 11 of 12 coalition member states engaged in anti-Daesh strikes reported that no civilians were killed during their bombardments despite the Airwars' figures.

Businessman Babak Zanjani as well as two of his accomplices have been sentenced to death for embezzlement in Iran. Zanjani says he has knocked together his fortune by selling Iranian oil bypassing anti-Iranian sanctions lifted earlier this year.

"The court of first instance... sentenced the three defendants to death," judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei announced during a weekly news conference, as quoted by Reuters.

The defendants were sentenced to death for "spreading corruption on earth" - a term used in the Iranian Penal Code to refer to a person who contributes to spreading and expanding corruption in the world. They were also forced to settle their debts to the state-run National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and to pay a fine amounting to a quarter of the sum they laundered, MEHR News Agency reports.

Now the defendants have an opportunity to appeal the verdict.

It seems that every week, Erdogan finds a new way to exhibit his authoritarian leanings: Turkey's largest newspaper, Zaman, was raided by authorities on Friday, resulting in demonstrations in Istanbul which were broken up (violently) by police.

Ankara has never been particularly kind to journalists. But this is perhaps the boldest attempt yet to crack down on the press. Turkey's western partners have expressed concern, but how genuine are they really being?

The EU's diplomatic service said that Turkey "needs to respect and promote high democratic standards and practices, including freedom of the media", while the US described the move as "troubling".

The Saturday edition of the newspaper was printed before the government-backed administrators had taken control. "The Constitution is suspended," a headline in large font on a black background reads on the front page. "The Turkish press has experienced one of the darkest days in its history," the paper adds.

Russian navy ships have become a common sight in the Bosphorus strait, and are a constant reminder to Turkey of Russia's naval prowess, journalist Laura Pitel wrote.

Russian warships and naval assets have become a familiar sight for boat-spotters on the Bosphorus strait that runs through Istanbul and forms part of the boundary between Europe and Asia, a reminder for Turkey of Russia's presence in the Middle East, journalist Laura Pitel wrote on Sunday.

Pitel spoke to a group of amateur ship enthusiasts in Istanbul, who observe and photograph the vessels that pass through the strait.

For the third time since December 2015, the Obama administration has met with social media companies to discuss fighting the spread of online extremism.

On February 23, the U.S. Department of Justice met with officials from Facebook, Twitter, and Google to discuss how online social media firms can take the lead in disrupting online radicalization.

Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of George Washington University's Program on Extremism, attended the meeting and told Reuters it was "a recognition that the government is ill-positioned and ill-equipped to counter ISIS online."

Imagine one of the most admired global political leaders in modern history taken from his apartment at 6 am by armed Brazilian Federal Police agents and forced into an unmarked car to the Sao Paulo airport to be interrogated for almost four hours in connection with a billion dollar corruption scandal involving the giant state oil company Petrobras.

This is the stuff Hollywood is made of. And that was exactly the logic behind the elaborate production.

The public prosecutors of the two-year-old Car Wash investigation maintain there are "elements of proof" implicating Lula in receiving funds — at least 1.1 million euros — from the dodgy kickback scheme involving major Brazilian construction companies connected to Petrobras. Lula might — and the operative word is "might" — have personally profited from it mostly in the form of a ranch (which he does not own), a relatively modest seaside apartment, speaking fees in the global lecture circuit, and donations to his charity.

Lula is the ultimate political animal — on a Bill Clinton level. He had already telegraphed he was waiting for such a gambit, as the Car Wash machine had already arrested dozens of people suspected of embezzling contracts between their companies and Petrobras — to the tune of over $2 billion — to pay for politicians of the Workers' Party (PT), of which Lula was leader.

Lula's name surfaced via the proverbial rascal turned informer, eager to strike a plea bargain. The working hypothesis — there is no smoking gun — is that Lula, when he led Brazil between 2003 and 2010, personally benefited from the corruption scheme with Petrobras at the center, obtaining favors for himself, the PT and the government. Meanwhile, inefficient President Dilma Rousseff is herself under attack engineered via a plea bargain by the former government leader in the Senate.

Lula was questioned in connection to money laundering, corruption and suspected dissimulation of assets. The Hollywood blitz was cleared by federal judge Sergio Moro — who always insists he's been inspired by the Italian judge Antonio di Pietro and the notorious 1990s Mani Pulite ("Clean Hands") investigation.

And here, inevitably, the plot thickens.