Macron spent an hour with the Pope on Friday and will skip every Mass on the tour, because a French president at a Mass would bend the country’s rules on state and religion. So hundreds of thousands of people fill the Champs-Élysées this morning while the head of state is elsewhere, and his wife and prime minister attend in his place. I like it, actually. The absence is as carefully staged as any attendance would have been.

Araghchi told reporters at the UN that Tehran would reopen Hormuz within seven days “if the necessary conditions are met,” and that those conditions already sit in the memorandum both sides signed in June. The offer went through Qatar. So it’s more or less an invitation to reread the homework. Two readouts followed. A US official told the BBC that positive talks are happening through mediators, nuclear issues included. The Wall Street Journal says Trump rejected the deal and privately doubts Iran will deliver (my excerpt cuts off mid-word on a renewed bombing campaign). Both can be true, since one is what you tell a reporter and the other is what you tell your staff. A seven-day clock announced at a UN podium mostly starts for the audience.

The one I keep returning to is smaller. South Africa’s new ambassador to Washington, Roelf Meyer, told the BBC that “white genocide” doesn’t exist, and that being a white Afrikaner is what gives him standing to say so. Afrikaner refugee applications have been stalling, and US visa restrictions were announced ten days ago, so it reads as a choice of messenger as much as a rebuttal. Some corrections have to arrive in a particular accent before anyone hears them. Whether the man he’s answering is listening is another question.

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