Nvidia, the world’s most valuable semiconductor company, is something of a canary in the coalmine. When it announces second-quarter results on Wednesday, its report will be parsed for insights into the global artificial-intelligence economy. Analysts expect the company to post sales of approximately $28.7bn for the three months ending in July—more than twice as much as in the same period last year. Since the start of 2024, Nvidia’s share price has surged by over 160%.

Yet investors smell trouble. In early August rumours began swirling about design issues delaying the rollout of Blackwell, Nvidia’s latest AI chip . The company said that it was confident that production would ramp up in the second half of the year. Another worry is whether businesses are adopting AI more slowly than expected. So far, tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon—Nvidia’s main customers—are still heavily investing in new data centres. Nvidia’s forecast for the next quarter will give an early sign of whether this trend will continue.

On August 24th French police arrested Pavel Durov as he stepped off his private jet near Paris. So far details of the crimes that the founder of Telegram is alleged to have committed have been scant. Judges have until Wednesday to charge him.

The void of information has been filled by speculation. Some suspect geopolitical motives, noting the messaging app’s role in Russia’s war against Ukraine, both as a disseminator of information and a military communication tool. When Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, insisted that Mr Durov’s detention was “in no way a political decision”, conspiracy theories only proliferated.

Others, such as Elon Musk, the owner of X, see it as a battle over free speech. That concern is not unfounded. Politicians, both authoritarian and not, are pressuring social-media apps to delete content they don’t like. But Telegram’s hands-off approach to moderation has allowed content to flourish that is straightforwardly illegal, including the sharing of child sexual-abuse material.

Can she sustain the momentum? That is the question pundits are asking as Kamala Harris embarks on Wednesday on a two-day bus tour of southern Georgia. The Economist’s forecast model suggests that Ms Harris has a two in five chance to win the Peach State, a remarkable improvement compared with Joe Biden’s one in five chance when he was on the ticket.

Democrats are keen to take credit for the improvement in their prospects in the swing state, but Mr Trump is helping them, too. At a rally in Atlanta earlier this month the former president reignited a feud with Georgia’s popular Republican governor, bruising his chances with conservative voters in the suburbs. Although the two now seem reconciled, Mr Trump will have plenty to prove when he returns to Georgia. The infighting diverts attacks from Ms Harris who at last week’s Democratic convention received an on-stage endorsement from Geoff Duncan, Georgia’s Republican former lieutenant-governor, who split with Mr Trump after the 2020 election.

For some millennials, Abercrombie & Fitch might still evoke moose logos, upturned collars and sexy black-and-white catalogues of the fashion brand’s early-aughts heyday. For their parents, it might summon the overpowering scent of “Fierce”, a cologne that was a teenage favourite. Both groups would probably find Abercombie’s shops and merchandise unrecognisable today.

In 2006 Mike Jeffries, the company’s then boss, bragged that the preppy brand was “exclusionary” and went after “the cool kids”. His successor, Fran Horowitz, prides herself on paying closer attention to what young buyers want. The brand now stocks more denim sizes. In its “Wedding Shop”, it offers outfits and accessories for burdened bridesmaids. The revamp appears to have worked: in May Abercrombie reported a record $1bn in net sales for the first quarter. Investors are expecting similarly strong results from the second quarter when the company reports on Wednesday. In 2023 Abercrombie’s share price rose by 285%, outperforming even Nvidia’s, the world’s most valuable chipmaker.

The roster of movies and stars at this year’s Venice Film Festival, which starts on Wednesday, looks especially plentiful. Angelina Jolie will become the opera diva Maria Callas, an opera diva, in “Maria”. Daniel Craig, known for playing James Bond, will be transformed into an American junkie in Mexico in an adaptation of William Burroughs’s novel “Queer” by Luca Guadagnino, an Italian director. George Clooney and Brad Pitt will come together in the action-comedy “Wolfs”.

Two blockbuster sequels are also launching at the fest. Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” reprises the director’s dark fantasy epic from 1988, and “Joker: Folie à Deux” sees the return of Joaquin Phoenix as the eponymous supervillain, this time starring alongside Lady Gaga.

Documentaries include a probe of the Mexican-American border by Erroll Morris and an intimate portrait of a professional “mistress dispeller” in China, who delicately breaks up affairs to save marriages, by Elizabeth Lo, a filmmaker from Hong Kong. The jury, headed this year by Isabelle Huppert, a French actress, can look forward to a great show—and some tough decisions.