On Friday data will probably reveal that India’s economy grew at an annual rate of nearly 7% in the three months to June. By most countries’ standards, that is rapid. But in India it will be the slowest rate of expansion in five quarters, down from 7.8% in the first quarter. Blame weaker household demand and geopolitical tensions, as well as the election that ran from mid-April until June, which caused the government and companies to put off spending.

Will economic growth pick up the pace again? The election returned the Bharatiya Janata Party to power, though with a far weaker mandate. The rebuke has led the party to raise spending in rural areas, which boosts consumption. However, some analysts worry that a coalition government will find it harder to implement the reforms needed to sustain growth in the long term. Narendra Modi, the prime minister, wants India to become a developed nation by 2047. But that would require GDP growth of over 7% for the next two decades.

On August 30th 2023, Gabon became the latest country in Francophone Africa to succumb to a military coup. Ali Bongo, the ousted president, had inherited the top job from his father, who had ruled the petrostate of 2.4m people since 1967. Mr Bongo’s attempt, in 2023, to rig elections proved a step too far. But the officer who overthrew him, Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, is anything but a revolutionary: then the head of the Republican Guard, he is the former president’s cousin.

Mr Oligui Nguema seems to be in no hurry to usher in democracy. A year after appointing himself the “transitional president”, he remains every inch the actual president. But the Western countries that might protest have kept quiet so far. Unlike most of his fellow putschists in French-speaking Africa, Mr Oligui Nguema has maintained ties with France and its allies. With Russia gaining friends and influence throughout the region, the West would prefer to keep oil-rich Gabon on its side.

At their annual jamboree in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, central bankers hailed the fall of inflation. European policymakers have had much to cheer: inflation in Europe has proven less stubborn than in America. Preliminary estimates released on Friday showed that the euro zone’s annual inflation rate fell to 2.2% in August, from 2.6% in July. It is now tantalisingly close to the ECB’s target of 2%. That followed chirpy reports from Germany and Spain on Thursday. Germany’s annual inflation rate slowed to 2%, from 2.6% in July. In Spain, the rate fell to its lowest in a year.

The data will inform the ECB ’s decision on whether to cut interest rates for the second time this year in September. Although the numbers are encouraging, policymakers may anyway decide to keep rates on hold. High wage increases have kept services inflation hovering around 4% since November. It rose to a ten-month high of 4.2% in August. The final stretch is always the hardest.

On Friday the Scottish National Party will host its 90th annual conference in Edinburgh. It will not be a happy anniversary. The party was once convinced it could force a fresh independence referendum, after Scotland voted to remain in the United Kingdom in 2014. But the triumphalism that has suffused previous gatherings has dissipated.

Britain’s general election in July culled the party’s contingent of MPs at Westminster from 48 to nine. The Labour Party has clawed back scores of seats in Scotland’s old industrial regions and younger cities—once a fertile recruiting ground for nationalists—driving the SNP back to its rural heartlands. Moreover, a police investigation is under way following a scandal related to the SNP’s finances.

All that makes for an unpromising backdrop to the next elections to the Scottish Parliament, which must be held by May 2026. The party has run Scotland’s government since 2007—the vote will determine whether it will continue to do so.

The past decade saw a remarkable transformation in the life, career and art of Nick Cave. A terrible and tragic catalyst was the death of his teenage son, Arthur. The Australian singer-songwriter’s work altered profoundly, towards experimental, free-form sound. To many of his fans, Mr Cave himself underwent a Tolstoy-esque conversion to a kind of secular sainthood, becoming a thoughtful agony uncle on his blog, Red Hand Files, where he responds to public questions with letters and images. He also left behind decades as a major cult artist to become an arena-filling star.

A new album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Wild God”, is released on Friday. It sees him change direction once again, back to the ensemble playing of anthems and piano ballads that first defined him. It is an exuberant record, rich in blues- and gospel-rock. The album feels like a release from mourning. And in one song, titled “Joy”, overtly declares itself so.