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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nearly four years ago India’s government split Jammu & Kashmir, a northern state, into two federally-run territories. The decision thrilled the Hindu-nationalist supporters of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. They had long resented the extra autonomy granted to India’s only majority-Muslim state, which had its own constitution and flag.

India’s government insists that the reorganisation has brought an “unprecedented era of peace and progress” to the region. But it required gutting an article of the national constitution that gave J&K its special status. Activists and lawyers immediately challenged the legality of that in the Supreme Court.

On Wednesday five judges finally began hearing that case, as well as petitions related to media freedom, internet shutdowns and political imprisonment in the region. Kashmiris, who chafe under the yoke of 500,000 soldiers in the territory, hope that the Supreme Court’s verdict will provide them with some relief.

In Niger, where soldiers toppled the president a week ago, the chaos could get worse. The Economic Community of West African States, the regional bloc, gave the junta until Sunday to reinstate Mohamed Bazoum. If the soldiers do not, it says it may intervene with force. The generals running the neighbouring jihadist-hit countries of Mali and Burkina Faso responded that this would be a declaration of war on them, too. On Wednesday the defence chiefs of the bloc began a lengthy meeting to discuss plans.

Despite an attempt by the president of Chad to mediate, the junta is not backing down. Instead it arrested more politicians. On Tuesday France, the former colonial power whose embassy was attacked by protesters brandishing Russian flags, began to evacuate Europeans. Expect the junta to call for more demonstrations to try to show ECOWAS that any intervention would meet popular opposition—and guarantee civilian bloodshed.

Big packaged-food sellers have done reasonably well in tumultuous times. Sales were buoyant during the pandemic, which kept consumers out of restaurants. Even now sales are strong. Buyers seem unwilling to give up the convenience of eating at home. Food makers have been able to pass on to them higher costs of inputs, caused in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As inflation comes down, companies may benefit: their costs may fall more quickly than the prices they charge to consumers.

Kraft Heinz, a big American multinational that owns such brands as Heinz ketchup and Oscar Mayer sausages, reports its quarterly earnings on Wednesday. Earnings per share last quarter exceeded expectations, as did revenue. Expectations are even higher this time.

But trouble is simmering. A backlash against ultra-processed foods is becoming more intense. Some activist investors want food firms to sell more wholesome grub and to be more transparent about the “health profile” of products. That might not go down well in the boardroom.

Wednesday marks Earth Overshoot Day, the day on the calendar on which humans have used more resources than ecosystems can generate for the whole year. From now until January 1st 2024 humanity will be using more natural resources—including fish stocks, fibres and medicines provided by plants and the ability of forests to sequester carbon, among many other things—than the planet can supply this year.

By consistently overspending its biological budget, humanity is reducing the biodiversity on which its survival depends. The overshoot date, calculated by the Global Footprint Network, a think-tank, using data collected by the UN, has been coming earlier almost every year since 1971.

Rich countries, unsurprisingly, are the most profligate. A study published in 2022 in Lancet Planetary Health, a journal, found that America and the EU were respectively responsible for 27% and 25% of the overuse of natural resources. The global south was responsible for just 8%.

Enayat al-Zayyat, an Egyptian writer, penned only one book. She never got to see it published. In her mid-twenties she took her own life. Her contemporaries whispered that a publisher’s rejection of her novel had driven her to despair. The vulnerable, semi-autobiographical debut, “Love and Silence”, was published posthumously in Arabic in 1967. It was widely, but briefly, praised. And then it was forgotten.

Almost three decades later Iman Mersal, an Egyptian poet, came across a rare copy of “Love and Silence” in a market in Cairo. Drawn to the writing, she decided to do research into Zayyat’s life, spending years speaking to those who knew her and uncovering the tragedies and joys of her short life in 20th-century Egypt.

“Traces of Enayat”, which was published in Arabic in 2019 and in English this week, is the culmination of those efforts. But the book is not quite a biography. It is, rather, an account of Ms Mersal’s feverish attempts to retrace the steps of a lost author.

The governing council of the European Central Bank (ECB) must be itching to go on holiday after months of difficult interest-rate decisions. But before they set their email auto-replies, the ECB faces a final call on Thursday. Rates might go up by another quarter of a percentage point. But the council’s more doveish members may prefer to hold off until they regroup in a few weeks.

Price rises in the euro zone have slowed: both headline and core inflation (which strips out energy and food prices) stood at 5.5% in June. But the private-sector economy is weakening and business sentiment is sagging, especially in Germany. If monetary policy is indeed working to cool both inflation and growth, the ECB could be close to pausing rate hikes, as other central banks have done. But the available data may not yet support a change of direction. Do not email in the meantime: the central bankers are out of the office, but will be back with a re-assessment in September.

The Russia-Africa Summit which starts on Thursday in St Petersburg was meant to be a diplomatic victory for Vladimir Putin. Since Russia’s president began his full-scale invasion of Ukraine the Kremlin has redoubled its efforts to woo African states, not least for their political influence: the continent’s 54 countries hold more than a quarter of votes at the UN General Assembly.

But the reported turnout—17 leaders versus 43 at the previous meeting in 2019—shows the limits of Russia’s appeal. A few attendees are customers of the Wagner Group of mercenaries; others want Russian arms. Some see Mr Putin as an ally in promoting a more multilateral world. But African countries are generally pragmatic. Russia has less economic clout than America, China or the EU. And its recent withdrawal from a deal to release Ukrainian grain exports will have harmed African interests. As a result many of the continent’s leaders may have decided that attending would have offered Russia a public-relations win too cheaply.

North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, is having a party—and, for the first time in years, he has invited guests. On Thursday Chinese and Russian delegations will watch a military parade that celebrates “Victory Day”—the 70th anniversary of the day North Korea claims, controversially, to have won the Korean war. No one else is known to have entered the country since it closed its borders at the start of the covid-19 pandemic, apart from a new Chinese ambassador who arrived with his staff in March and an American soldier who dashed across the border last week.

Don’t expect a grand reopening soon. The pandemic allowed Mr Kim to exert even tighter control over his heavily policed fief, and to continue developing nuclear weapons. As he has China’s and Russia’s support, chidings from America or South Korea have little sting. Mr Kim is having far too good a time to let his revelries end.

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, meets President Joe Biden in Washington on Thursday amid signs she is ready to pull her country out of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In 2019 Giuseppe Conte’s populist coalition signed up to the programme of infrastructure projects that spans Eurasia, the Middle East and Africa. The pact has been one of the few bones of contention between America and its ally. It is due for renewal by the end of this year.

Ms Meloni has won friends in America by supporting Ukraine both diplomatically and militarily, despite being yoked in government to two parties, the Northern League and Forza Italia, once closely linked to Russia. Since becoming prime minister, she has also dropped her fiery Eurosceptic rhetoric. That too is appreciated in Washington. But Mr Biden is politically distant from the hard-right Ms Meloni and has been reluctant to invite her to the table with other European allies. Ditching the BRI could bring her closer to the in-crowd.

In “Different Times: a History of British Comedy”, David Stubbs, a culture writer, charts the country’s changing sense of humour. Post-war comedy, he argues, was disinterested in altering the status quo—although that is news to anyone who has watched Monty Python. But he observes that from the late 1970s comedy merged with activism: stand-ups such as Alexei Sayle and Ben Elton fought Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative governments armed with gags. A decade of foul-mouthed shows followed, which were filled with righteous anger. Then comedy entered a new phase: political correctness.

Mr Stubbs sees this not as a straitjacket for comedians but as a liberation. He says that scrapping offensive tropes such as “dolly birds, amiable sex pests, comical Asians [and] nancy boys” enabled comedians to explore a broader sweep of British life. It is indeed good that comedians are no longer “punching down”—but comedy thrives on transgression. If comedians become too nice they might stop punching at all.