The Monocle Minute

New Yorkers have a high tolerance for bad behaviour. The city’s embattled mayor, Eric Adams, knows this better than anyone. In September 2024, nearing the end of his first term, Adams was indicted on a range of corruption charges related to his alleged entanglement with Turkish businesses and politicians. Most New Yorkers assumed that all this would sink his chances of being re-elected later this year. But no – five months on, the mayor’s case is set to be dismissed by the Department of Justice (DOJ). Adams, a longstanding Democrat, has forged an unlikely alliance with Donald Trump, rooted in a mutual disaffection for the previous administration’s handling of immigration.

Adams might have survived his brush with bribery and conspiracy charges but there is a good chance he may not survive his entanglement with the president. This week, four of the mayor’s deputies announced their resignations in protest at the DOJ dismissal. Meanwhile, New York governor Kathy Hochul, who has the power to remove Adams from office, is exploring best-case-scenarios to chart “a path forward”. All this just as the Adams’ campaign for November’s ballot shifts into gear.

Yet it leaves New York and its citizens in a state of profound uncertainty about who should be in charge. Despite the allegations against the mayor, there may not be much appetite for an alternative: Adams’s only real challenger is likely to be former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who quit in 2021 following sexual-misconduct allegations.

The city is still struggling with an uptick in violent crime and many New Yorkers have also had enough of a migrant surge that has seen more than 200,000 mostly illegal newcomers pour into the city, overwhelming social services and costing almost $4.6bn (€4.4bn) over the past two years. As with last year’s presidential election, safety and security are certain to dominate New York’s mayoral campaign, leaving Adams, a former NYPD captain, with a likely edge. While New Yorkers are a broad-minded bunch, we’re also notoriously change-averse, having re-elected every incumbent mayor since 1993.

If Adams can survive Governor Hochul’s axe, his re-election chances are strong – and illuminative. A tough-on-crime yet socially centrist platform is exactly what Democrats need to reboot the narrative after their historic loss in November’s presidential election. Could another indicted New Yorker really stand the best chance in this election?

David Kaufman is an editor and columnist at the ‘New York Post’. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

As the US and Russia meet in Saudi Arabia this week for talks about bringing the Ukraine conflict to some kind of resolution, representatives of Kyiv have been conspicuously absent (writes Christopher Lord). But in addition to US secretary of state Marco Rubio and Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, who led the almost five-hour conversation in Riyadh, there was one subtle voyeur to the proceedings that had an intimate perspective on it all. Placed before each seated delegate was a golden box of tissues. These papery props are a firm fixture in the highly choreographed world of Gulf diplomacy. Take a look at any press shot of a sheikh, emir or sultan hosting foreign dignitaries and somewhere amid the proceedings, likely obscured by a bouquet of jet-lagged flowers, there will almost certainly be a willowy leaf of aloe-scented paper protruding from a gold, leather or wooden case. What is the purpose of all these Kleenex?

Having attended quite a few formal get-togethers in the Gulf, I can vouch that the freezer-room air-con tends to be cranked so that nobody is breaking a sweat. But their purpose is less for dabbing brows and more of a social cue: a sign that you are in the gentler setting of the Majlis (sitting room) and not the brusque world of the boardroom. You have to be ready to settle in for the long haul when attending meetings in the Middle East: before business is even considered there is coffee, small talk, maybe even food. Their view is: don’t rush. Take a moment to choose your words carefully and then emphasise the point by plucking a tissue and crumpling it elegantly between one’s palms. World leaders should take note the next time they have a sheikh in town: soft power should be very soft and preferably come in a fetching gold box.

Some football teams wait a long time before a major victory (writes Carlota Rebelo). For Cairo club Al-Ahly, it has been a 30-year wait to have its first permanent stadium. Designed by Gensler, the world’s largest architecture firm, the 42,000-seat venue will feature an undulating asymmetric façade and a sunken pitch.

This partially submerged design, which Gensler claims is a first, helps to keep the stadium cool and provides a solution to height restrictions imposed by the flight paths of nearby Sphinx International Airport. But the venue, sitting just off the highway between Cairo and Alexandria, is just one part of Egypt’s “project of the century”, which will result in a new “sports city” including a museum, university, training academy and hotel.

“Our design aims to create a landmark venue that embodies the spirit of the club and acts as a cultural and economic catalyst for the region,” Tayomara Gama, the sports leader for Europe at Gensler, tells The Monocle Minute. “We want to leave a lasting effect both in Egypt and beyond.”

Cathy Olmedillas is the founder of Studio Anorak, a London-based children’s publishing house. The company publishes three magazines: Anorak, Dot and Chew, the latter of which is its latest title. Here, Olmedillas talks us through the bright outlook for children’s publishing.

The theme of the latest issue of ‘Anorak’ is peace. How do you deal with geopolitical topics in a magazine for children?
I love working to make subjects like this more child-friendly. I always try to find subjects and themes that are relevant to children without delving too much into politics or the doom and gloom that surrounds us. In the magazine we try to make children realise that there are a lot of positive and peaceful things happening in the world.

Tell us about your new food magazine, ‘Chew’.
We are becoming increasingly disconnected from our food sources, from the magic contained in each ingredient. Every issue of Chew is dedicated to a specific ingredient; the first edition is all about oranges. There is so much to be discovered about the history of everyday ingredients. One issue on oranges is probably not enough.

Many people are worried about children using smartphones. How does a magazine such as yours address this issue?
The reason that I started publishing Anorak in 2006 was because I couldn’t find a magazine that I wanted to read with my child. Since that first issue, I have watched social media, the internet and mobile phones take over. The success of our magazines, especially over the past four to five years, has been a rebuke of screen culture.

You can listen to the full interview with Cathy Olmedillas on the latest edition of ‘The Stack’ on Monocle Radio.

Alexei Korolyov tells us about the refurbishment of one of Vienna’s most important modernist buildings.