A meeting of NATO’s military chiefs in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, on Friday will focus on two issues. The first is assessing the progress of the alliance’s “deter and defend” strategy—regional plans aimed at making NATO more assertive in the face of growing threats. The second will be NATO’s support for Ukraine.

A command has recently been established to plan and co-ordinate the delivery of weapons and training for Ukraine’s armed forces. The chiefs will probably also discuss Ukraine’s urgent pleas to be allowed to use Western missiles against military targets in Russia. However, that is a political decision. Following a visit to Kyiv on Wednesday by America’s top diplomat, Antony Blinken, and his British opposite number, David Lammy, there were hints of a change in policy coming soon. The final say will rest with the notoriously cautious President Joe Biden. That could come when he meets Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in Washington later this month.

This week around 600,000 people in Timor-Leste gathered for a special guest. Almost half the country, where nearly everyone is Catholic, watched the pope deliver an open-air mass. It was one of many events conducted by His Holiness across Asia in recent days. In his only foreign trip this year, and the longest of his papacy, he has visited remote jungles in Papua New Guinea and mosques in Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country.

On Thursday he presided over mass in Singapore’s national stadium, a venue that Taylor Swift recently headlined. On Friday, the last of the tour, he hosted an “interreligious dialogue” with people from the city-state, one of the world’s most religiously diverse countries. He hopes to stress two messages. The first is Asia’s importance for the Catholic church, as believers dwindle in the West. The second is promoting religious harmony. As the pope put it in Indonesia, “we are all brothers and sisters, all pilgrims, all on our way to God”.

The world’s most sanction-hit economy continues to defy expectations. GDP data released on Friday is expected to show that Russia’s economy grew by about 4% year on year in the second quarter of 2024. That is extremely fast. Inflation remains far too high, at an annual rate of close to 9%, but Russians are nonetheless doing very well. Household incomes are growing rapidly in real terms. Consumer confidence, plumbing depths across the rich world, is close to all-time highs in Russia.

This wasn’t the plan when Western governments implemented unprecedented sanctions on Russia in 2022. But Vladimir Putin has found workarounds. Russia’s president has redirected hydrocarbon exports from Europe to Asia and drawn on Russia’s huge accumulated cash reserves to juice the economy . If Russia ever comes to the negotiating table to find an end to the war in Ukraine, it will not be for economic reasons.

Britain’s prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, will meet Joe Biden in Washington on Friday. It is Sir Keir’s second call at the White House; he visited America’s president shortly after entering office in July. Their talks will focus on the Israel-Hamas conflict and Ukraine.

On Gaza, the two have their differences. Mr Biden did not endorse Britain’s recent decision to suspend 30 of its 350 licences for exporting weapons to Israel. But they largely see eye-to-eye on Ukraine, particularly on recent reports of Iran’s supply of ballistic missiles to Russia. Echoing George W. Bush’s warning in 2002 of an “axis of evil”, David Lammy, Britain’s foreign secretary, said this week: “We see a new axis of Russia, Iran and North Korea.” Sir Keir’s Labour Party has built strong ties to the Democrats. But the prime minister is not expected to meet Kamala Harris, the vice-president and Democratic nominee in November’s election, or her opponent, Donald Trump.

“Pink Friday 2”, released in December 2023, made Nicki Minaj the first female rapper to achieve three number-one albums on the Billboard charts. Her accompanying tour, which resumes this month across America, is the most lucrative ever staged by such an artist. On Friday the album is relaunched in a “deluxe edition”, with new tracks and remixes, which is sure to be received with glee by the Barbz, Ms Minaj’s notoriously fervent fandom.

The Barbz’s pugnacity mirrors Ms Minaj’s own. The fights she delights in picking with fellow woman MCs (most notably Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion) come with the added threat of her cyber-footsoldiers. Her beefs recall the performative hostility of rival boxers ahead of a title fight. The antagonism may often be real enough. Still, one might reasonably wonder if a new row will flare up just in time to promote this latest product.