Aug 8 update

A senior American official held “extremely frank” and “difficult” talks with Niger’s junta, with the aim of reinstating the ousted president, Mohamed Bazoum. Victoria Nuland, America’s acting deputy secretary of state, met the coup leaders in Niamey, the capital. She encouraged the military government to restore democratic order but said she made little progress. The junta refused to let Ms Nuland meet Mr Bazoum, who is under house arrest. The Economic Community of West African States, a regional bloc, will hold a summit in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, on Thursday, to discuss the coup.

Russian missile strikes on Pokrovsk, a city in eastern Ukraine, killed at least eight people, including a high-ranking official, and wounded scores more. The attack damaged homes, shops and a hotel where many foreign correspondents have stayed while covering the war. Earlier, at least two civilians were killed when Russian bombs hit houses in the Kharkiv region.

Paramount will sell Simon & Schuster, a book publisher, to KKR, a private-equity firm, for $1.6bn. The all-cash deal ended Paramount’s three-year search for a buyer. In November the media behemoth’s agreement to sell Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House, another publishing house, for $2.2bn was thwarted because of the American government’s antitrust concerns.

Voters in the Central African Republic backed constitutional changes scrapping a limit on presidential terms, according to the country’s electoral authority. If ratified, the proposed new law would allow the country’s president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, who is backed by the mercenary Wagner Group, to seek re-election in 2025. Critics said that turnout in the referendum might have been as low as 10%; the government claims it was around 60%.

Yellow, an American trucking company, filed for bankruptcy and said it would sell “all or substantially all” of its assets. The 99-year-old firm’s outstanding debt had exceeded $1bn by the end of March. Darren Hawkins, the company’s boss, said that Yellow intends to pay back “in full” the $700m pandemic-relief loan it received from the federal government in 2020. The company’s closure will affect 30,000 employees.

At least 11 migrants are dead and 44 missing after a shipwreck on Tunisia’s coast on Sunday, according to a Tunisian official. Only two people were rescued. Tunisian authorities said that all of the migrants were from sub-Saharan countries. The number of people travelling from or through the north African country to Europe has surged in recent months.

Even Zoom, the videoconferencing firm that helped millions work from their sofas during the pandemic, wants its staff back in the office. Employees living within 50 miles (80km) of an office have been told to come in at least two days a week. The working-from-home revolution is fading, as new research shows that offices, for all their flaws, remain essential.

Figure of the day: Less than $2m, the amount that national Democratic groups spent in Florida in last year’s midterm campaign, down from nearly $60m in 2018. Read the full story.

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PHOTO: REUTERS

Pakistan’s political uncertainty continues

This week Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister, is expected to dissolve parliament and appoint a caretaker government ahead of a general election later this year. The election will probably be delayed, after the government said on Saturday that the electorate would reflect a new census. The authorities expect to take up to four months to redraw constituencies. So parliament granted additional powers to the future caretaker government, allowing it to implement the conditions of a loan agreement with the IMF.

Elections—whenever held—will likely be conducted without Imran Khan, a previous prime minister. His conviction at the weekend for “corrupt practices” disqualifies him from parliament for five years. Mr Khan’s lawyers said they will appeal. But he faces dozens of other charges including blasphemy and terrorism. With his status having sunk in one parliamentary term from prime minister to that of a convict banned from politics, Mr Khan is the latest to learn the unforgiving nature of Pakistani politics.

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

SoftBank avoids another hard landing

SoftBank Group, a Japanese investment giant, has had a tough time of late. The collapse of the tech industry shrank the value of many of its big bets. There was more bad news on Tuesday, as it reported a surprise loss of 478bn yen ($3.5bn) in the second quarter. SoftBank was hit by declines in valuations of several companies it has invested in, including Alibaba, a Chinese tech behemoth.

However the Vision Fund, SoftBank’s venture-capital unit, returned to profit for the first time in six quarters. That was driven by an increased valuation for Arm, a British firm that produces the blueprints for many semiconductors and is slated for an initial public offering later this year. SoftBank bought Arm in 2016 for $32bn. Its valuation target is predicted to be $60bn-$70bn, with a listing possibly as soon as September.

PHOTO: AP

The European housing market

Is it time to invest in European housing again? House prices have probably bottomed out. Figures for the first three months of 2023 showed a quarterly decline in many European countries. But prices in Germany increased in the second quarter, and others may follow. With inflation coming down, interest rates and hence mortgage rates could follow, too. That might tempt buyers. On Tuesday, the European Central Bank released its latest survey on what consumers think of house prices, and their predictions for the wider economy.

Like in the surveys in April and May, the median consumer expects near-stagnant house prices and household incomes for the next 12 months. Expected inflation dropped from 3.9% to 3.4%, and mortgage rates dipped slightly by 0.1 percentage points to 4.4% over the same period. But markets remain unconvinced: rates have gone up notch in recent months for both short and longer term debt. For homebuyers deciding when to move, getting the timing right will not be easy.

PHOTO: AP

Ohio decides how to decide

On Tuesday Ohioans vote on whether to make their constitution harder to change. The Republican state legislature put an amendment on the ballot in May. It would require future citizen-led campaigns to collect signatures from every county in the state, rather than just half, to secure a ballot. It would also raise the threshold to pass an amendment from a simple majority to 60%.

Some state Republicans have been open about their motives for the timing of the proposal. Ohioans vote in November on whether to introduce a right to an abortion into their constitution. Since the overturning of Roe v Wade last year, six states have voted on abortion. In each, voters have protected access to it, but in Michigan, Kansas and Kentucky the abortion-rights campaign won with less than 60% of the vote. Activists in Ohio are litigating against a six-week abortion ban, passed in 2019. In Ohio the battle over abortion access is being fought in the courts and on the ballots, too.

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

Jamie Lee Curtis’s environmental horror story

On Tuesday Jamie Lee Curtis, an Oscar-winning actress, publishes a graphic novel, “Mother Nature”, co-written with Russell Goldman and illustrated in photo-realistic watercolour by Karl Stevens. Ms Curtis rose to fame at 19 in a slasher film, “Halloween”. At that age—recognising what she calls the “unbalanced relationship between humans and nature”—she began conjuring up a dark plot in which nature retaliates. Now she has brought it to life with gory graphics, featuring skull-shattering hailstorms, a man impaled by a pumpjack and deadly tornadoes.

Through a plot that involves environmental cover-ups and supernatural vengeance, the fossil-fuel industry (in the shape of the fictitious Cobalt Corporation) is turned into a comic-book villain. “Mother Nature” is being released during a summer of extreme, and deadly, weather conditions. The story uses bloody violence typical of the horror genre to engage readers who might otherwise be apathetic about the environment. Curtis has teased she might play the dastardly boss of Cobalt in a film adaptation.