Table of contents for 4 April 2025 in Guardian Weekly

My Big Apple ‘A high schooler’s window on the city that never sleeps. No matter how many times I look out, the view is always a little different. Sometimes, I wonder if there’s another kid somewhere doing the same thing, looking at their own piece of the city.’ Do you have a recently taken picture you’d like to share with Guardian Weekly? Scan the QR code or visit theguardian.com/pictures-guardian-weekly and we’ll print your best submissions…

Turkey’s antigovernment protesters were this week weighing their options, amid calls by the main opposition leader for weekly rallies, a growing economic boycott and a groundswell of fired-up student demonstrators determined to stay on the streets. The leader of the Republican People’s party (CHP), Özgür Özel, expanded a call to boycott goods and services from companies perceived as close to the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, during a rally in support of the jailed Istanbul mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu. Speaking to the hundreds of thousands of opposition supporters who filled a park in Istanbul last weekend, Özel took aim at the Doğuş Group, a Turkish conglomerate that owns the pro-government NTV channel, and its ties to Erdoğan. “The Doğuş Group will be buried underground, as it fears this gathering,” Özel said. The…

‘It’s not very helpful really,” said Owen Sandford, 27, of the government’s spring economic statement last week. “I understand they’ve got a tough job, but we’ve got a tougher job trying to survive.” Sandford is in receipt of universal credit and has been applying for work – but he is struggling. “A lot of us have got kids,” he said outside the jobcentre just behind Blackpool’s famous tower. “There’s so many families that live in poverty, that can’t pay the bills and are getting into debt.” And the government’s financial plans, he added, don’t help people like him. “Energy keeps going up, council tax keeps going up, [the] food shop is rising every week. The only thing not going up is my money.” Rachel Reeves’s statement included sweeping welfare cuts,…

No one knows how Kamran Hasan became a militant. The history-loving 23-year-old had returned home from Islamabad, where he worked as a chartered accountant, and had his hopes set on a degree in education. But then in June, he disappeared. A brief phone call to his father came days later. “He told me, ‘I am going to the mountains,’” said his father, Mohammad Akram, who knew that meant only one thing: his son was joining the militant insurgency that had rocked their home region of Balochistan for decades. “I begged him no, asked if it was reasons of money or family that led him to take this step. But he did not give any more details and disconnected the call.” Hasan’s story has become an increasingly familiar one in homes…

The Burmese painter Htein Lin’s art bears the imprint of his years in a Myanmar jail, where he created hundreds of paintings using prison uniforms as his canvases and makeshift tools including syringes, soap blocks and cigarette lighters. “I had no canvas, no brushes, no paint. But I had to make art,” said Htein Lin from his home in Myanmar’s Shan state. “I befriended the prison guards to smuggle in paint, scavenging for materials wherever I could. ” Htein Lin’s first full retrospective, Escape, at Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery, centres on a series of prison paintings, 000235, named after the number assigned to him by the International Committee of the Red Cross during his incarceration in Myanmar from 1998 to 2004. The exhibition spans the period before his imprisonment, for allegedly…

There were cries of joy in progressive parts of Rio last Wednesday as Brazil’s supreme court ruled that former president Jair Bolsonaro should stand trial for an alleged coup plot. “No amnesty! No amnesty!” one elated lefty roared from his balcony into the sunny autumn afternoon. Across the bay in the city of Niterói, the composer Edu Krieger was so delighted by the prospect of Bolsonaro serving time he wrote a song – a parody of a Tom Jobim bossa nova classic called Waters of March – celebrating the down-fall of the “coup-mongering fascist”. “It was a feeling of relief,” Krieger, one of many progressive Brazilians who abhor the far-right populist for his attacks on culture and human rights, said of the court’s decision. Thousands of kilometres north, deep in…

It was change that won it. That was the single word to which Labour eventually boiled down all its complex ambitions; the six-letter slogan plastered triumphantly across its manifesto, because by the summer of 2024 change was pretty much the only thing the people of an exhausted country could all agree on. What kind of change exactly had almost ceased to matter. Anything but this, millions of us told ourselves, as we scattered our votes in all directions. It was clear there were tensions between that urgent, almost reckless hunger for change and the naturally careful, cautious instincts of a steady-as-you-go incoming prime minister and chancellor. But Labour papered over them with the impenetrable mantra that, actually, if you think about it, “stability is change”. Well, actually, it isn’t. That…

Like many British schoolchildren, Ava Pickett chanted a rhyme about Henry VIII’s six wives: “Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived. ” It has stayed in her head ever since. So much so that her play 1536 pivots around the last days of Anne Boleyn, the second wife. Pickett’s history lessons covered Boleyn’s rise – a passion so great the king bent laws to marry her – as well as the torrid details of her downfall and beheading. Pickett believed the “facts” (that Boleyn committed treason, that she slept with her brother) until she didn’t. “The older I got,” says the 31-year-old, “the more I thought, ‘I don’t buy that.’” Named after the year of Boleyn’s death, 1536 comes at the queen’s story sideways. She is not seen on stage but…

This book arrives at an interesting moment. Elon Musk has declared himself a “free speech absolutist”. JD Vance worries that free speech in Europe is “ in retreat ”. Donald Trump issues an executive order “restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship”. Meanwhile, journalists are routinely abused, threatened with lawsuits and branded enemies of the people. US federal agencies circulate lists of red-flag words such as “equality”, “gender” and “disabled”, and reporters are denied White House access for referring to the Gulf of Mexico by its actual name. Free speech is, shall we say, an elastic concept. In fact, as Fara Dabhoiwala explains in this meticulous and much-needed history, it has long been a “weaponized mantra” in a public sphere dominated by the moneyed and the powerful. Our modern…

1 ECONOMICS ‘End of an era’ warns Canada as US tariffs loom Canada’s prime minister said the era of deep ties with the US “is over”, as governments from Tokyo to Berlin to Paris sharply criticised Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on car imports, with some threatening retaliatory action. Mark Carney warned Canadians that Trump had permanently altered relations and that, regardless of any future trade deals, there would be no turning back. The new levies on cars and light trucks were due to take effect on Thursday this week, a day after the US president’s so-called “Liberation day” tariffs on imports into the US. Stock markets fell heavily early this week after Trump suggested the new tariffs would hit “all countries” and not only those with the largest trade imbalances with…

Since the arrest last month of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main political rival, Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, on what are clearly trumped-up charges of corruption and terrorism, Taksim Square, the city’s biggest tourist site and hub of political protest, has been lying empty, cordoned off by police. In my 50 years living in Istanbul, I have not seen as many so-called security measures on the streets as I have over the past few days. Taksim’s metro station and many of the city’s other busiest stations have been closed. The regional government has restricted car and intercity bus access to Istanbul. The police are checking incoming vehicles, and anyone suspected of travelling to the city to protest is turned away. Here and all over the country, televisions are permanently switched on…

Donald Trump won back the White House with a promise to transform the US economy. Millions of Americans, struggling with higher prices and bigger bills, elected a president who pledged to revive his country’s industrial heartlands – and leave the world to pick up the bill. On Wednesday this week – a day previously dubbed Liberation Day by the president and his aides – Trump had vowed to pull the trigger and impose a historic barrage of tariffs on goods from overseas he claimed would fund an extraordinary revival. Ten weeks after obtaining power, Trump said he would raise tariffs on all products from countries that charge tariffs on US exports; hit goods from Canada and Mexico with sweeping duties; introduce steep tariffs on foreign cars, computer chips and drugs;…

It is hard to describe the putrid stench of the decaying sargassum seaweed blanketing miles of shoreline in Soubise, a fishing village in Grenada. The pungent odour wafts into passing vehicles, persisting long after they have left the Caribbean island’s coves, where the ocean has deposited masses of the seaweed, which turns red then black as it rots. Many residents of Soubise, one of the areas worst affected, say they have learned to live with the problem, which has plagued the island, and others like it, for years. Last month scientists in Florida said they thought they had identified a weather phenomenon in 2009 as the “tipping point” of the problem, which they said is caused by shifting winds churning up the ocean and bringing deepwater nutrient concentrations to the…

FRED HAMPTON JR WAS DAYS AWAY from taking his first breath when his father was assassinated. Still in his mother’s womb, he would have sensed the shots fired by police into his parents’ bedroom at the back of 2337 Monroe Street, Chicago. He would have felt the adrenaline rushing through his mother’s veins, been jolted by her violent arrest. Could he also have somehow sensed the moment of his father’s death? His dad was Fred Hampton, leader of the Illinois chapter and deputy chair of the national Black Panther party, who was sleeping beside his pregnant fiancee when 14 Chicago police officers burst into the apartment. They shot him in bed, twice in the head. Hampton, who was 21, was killed on the spot. The attack – up to 99…

The “Signalgate” scandal has confirmed what Europeans already knew. The Trump administration’s disdain for Europe is deep and the transatlantic fracture is structural. While our leaders publicly play down the significance of the unravelling that is manifestly under way, few actually sound as convinced in private. Hopes persist that Europe can prevent the most extreme manifestation of the collapse in the relationship, be it an invasion of Greenland, the withdrawal of US forces from Europe’s Nato member states or an all-out trade war. Most urgently, European leaders are focused on ensuring that if (or perhaps when) the US throws Kyiv under the bus, it is Europe collectively that will somehow succeed in securing a free, independent and democratic Ukraine. But there should be no illusion that this will happen by…

‘Part of the Frick’s appeal is that it is a great museum that hardly feels like a museum at all. It has the feeling of being someone’s home, its contents selected by a singular eye. That’s because it was and they were. Both home and eye belonged to one man, the Pennsylvania-born coke and steel magnate Henry Clay Frick. The collection has doubled in size since his death in 1919. The building, which remained the family home until 1931, was enlarged to convert it into a museum that opened in 1935. Nevertheless, “It has such an intimate feel”, says Axel Rüger, the new director of the New York institution on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. A Gilded Age mansion of remarkable opulence, it is on the verge of reopening…

It might seem unfathomable to us now, but F Scott Fitzgerald’s third novel was something of a let-down when it was published 100 years ago; his previous books, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned – there had also been a novella, The Diamond As Big As the Ritz, and short stories including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – had been more commercially successful and found greater favour with critics. Fitzgerald’s tale of obscure origins, extreme wealth and obsessional romantic desire appeared too unlikely, too contrived and, perhaps, too uncomfortable a reminder of class and financial inequality and its consequent social schisms to be recognised for what it was: a masterly exploration of delusion, self-delusion, myth-making and complicity. Fitzgerald himself died 15 years after its publication believing…

I sit in my front garden, which is surely a contender for the world’s smallest meadow – a tiny square, rich with native grasses, primroses, lungwort, crocuses and the last of the snowdrops. Leaves poke through the soil, telling me that scabious and knapweed will soon bloom, along with betony, meadowsweet and viper’s bugloss. The one red campion, which has been in flower since December, will be joined by others, and the whole space, in all its tiny glory, might buzz with the hum of a thousand insects. Except it’s already buzzing. After a few days of fine weather, the male hairy-footed flower bees emerged. Some will have come from the nesting habitats I made for their mothers – miniature cob walls of loam, sand and straw in terracotta pots,…

ECONOMY Ministers fear for possible impact of Trump tariffs Ministers were braced this week for the impact of likely tariffs on the UK as part of Donald Trump’s latest round of trade barriers. The stakes for the government are high – forecasters have said a 20 percentage point increase on tariffs on UK goods and services would cut the size of the British economy by 1% and force the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, into tax rises this autumn. Even before the US president announced the measures, senior government figures said Labour may have to target pensioners and wealthier taxpayers at the autumn budget. The Institute for Fiscal Studies warned the chancellor may be forced to consider a freeze on tax thresholds, hikes to capital gains and pension taxes. MPs are expected…

WHEN 21-YEAR-OLD BERKAY GEZGIN left the interior of Istanbul city hall, a squad of police was waiting for him outside. Protests that flooded the streets outside the headquarters of his political hero, detained mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, had begun trickling away by midnight, but hundreds of riot police remained clustered around the municipality building. Gezgin became the face of youth support for İmamoğlu when he met him on the campaign trail during his first run for mayor in 2019, coining the slogan “Everything will be fine”, which the Istanbul mayor later used in his campaign. As Gezgin left city hall and looked for his parked motorcycle, the student was snatched by waiting security forces and bundled into a police car. His lawyer, Cemil Çiçek, believes the police targeted him for arrest:…

It is a political shock that is almost certain to end Marine Le Pen’s ambitions for the 2027 presidential election and throws her far-right party into chaos just as it was setting its sights on taking power in France. Barred from running for political office for five years with immediate effect after being convicted of embezzling European funds for her party, Le Pen’s political future is now thrown into doubt. She will probably not be able to mount a fourth campaign for the presidency in two years’ time. The conviction of Le Pen and 24 other party members for embezzlement of European parliament funds is a huge blow to her party, which has long tried to present itself as the honest, squeaky-clean alternative to old-school politicians with their hands in…

Supporters of the climate group Just Stop Oil have announced that, after three years of disruptive protests, they are ending their campaign of civil resistance. Hannah Hunt, whose speech on Valentine’s Day 2022 marked the beginning of the campaign, made the announcement outside Downing Street in London. She said: “Three years after bursting on the scene in a blaze of orange, at the end of April, the Just Stop Oil campaign will be hanging up the hi-vis. “Just Stop Oil’s demand to end new oil and gas is now government policy, making us one of the most successful civil resistance campaigns in recent history. We’ve made fossil-fuel licensing front page news and kept over 4.4bn barrels of oil in the ground, while courts have ruled new oil and gas unlawful.”…

Democrats are furious. And they want their leaders to get mad, too. “I wish you’d be angry,” a constituent told Representative Gil Cisneros, a California Democrat, at a recent town hall. At an event in Minnesota featuring Democratic attorneys general, an activist voiced a similar sentiment – “Get angry, man” – punctuating the message with a profanity. The anger agitating the party, slow to build, is now coursing through the electorate and pulling in Americans terrified the country is descending into authoritarianism. Democrats – with no strong leader to guide them and little power to wield in Washington – are scrambling to harness the sudden fury. At rallies and protests, voters are venting their fury with Donald Trump and his empowerment of Elon Musk’s assault on federal agencies, stoking what…

I grew up in a predominantly white Christian community in Sydney’s western suburbs. I was a pretty traumatised, messed-up kid. I had a lot of anger, mostly towards the people closest to me, but because I couldn’t do anything about that I just went around with a lot of rage that I had no way of getting rid of. A family member had a hatred of “Asians” because of the second world war. My grandfather also hated “Asians”, and said things like “make sure you lock your doors” and “you can’t trust them”. This was when the Australian senator and One Nation leader Pauline Hanson was out there saying a lot of “anti-Asian” stuff. Around that time I had a medical problem and the medication I was put on gave…

Sweet, smoked, hot … what’s the difference between the various paprikas? A re there any substitutes ? “Paprika brings warmth, it brings colour and it brings another layer of flavour,” says Monika Linton, founder of Brindisa. “Even just a sprinkling over goat’s cheese on toast, hummus or any dip, along with a bit of olive oil, will bring it to life.” Crucial to both Spanish and Hungarian cuisines, paprika is made by drying peppers (generally, Hungarian varieties are air-dried, the Spanish stuff is smoke-dried) and grinding them to a powder. “Paprika brings a certain richness,” says Jeremy Salamon, chef/owner of Hungarian restaurant Agi’s Counter in New York. “It has this unique, vegetal, unripe fruit-like quality, and lends itself to different dishes.” While he generally has sweet (“ as a flavour…

✱ All solutions published next week Across 8 Still developing latest things in better toy soldiers (8) 9 Dismal cold house I avoided, one out of many (6) 10 Lit one after my cigar (6) 11 Indicators to assess Groucho on the radio? (8) 12 Fell over during unobjectionable music? (4) 13 Chap’s court case involving old college at various points in the past (10) 15 Decide not to meet comedian (5-2) 16 Bears seen around river beaches (7) 18 Nonconformist mostly tucked into quantity of wine, employing a bit of brain (10)  19 Courage shown by former King going to Troy (4) 20 Nobody accepting Ness rippling? Rubbish (8)  22 Right to switch components by agency (3,3) 23 Small piece, not advisable for swell organ (6) 24 Aerospace work?…

Across 1 Spanish currency replaced by the euro (6) 4 Scottish team playing at Parkhead (6) 8 Plant yielding a sugar substitute (5)  9 Secret ____ (7) 10 Afloat – liquid which dissolves a substance (7) 11 Gave off light (5)  12 Check for errors (9) 17 Gather in a heap (5)  19 Place to change into swimming costume (7) 21 Stiffness of manner (7) 22 Camel’s cousin (5)  23 Fellows who won’t disagree (3-3) 24 Proviso (6) Down 1 ‘I come to bury Caesar, not to ____ him’ (6) 2 White/orange seafood speciality (7)  3 He met (anag) (5) 5 All together (2,5)  6 Trunk, sans head or limbs (5) 7 Bank – cant – tip; NE acre (anag) (6) 9 Nifty camera function (9)  13 Beyond suggestive (7)…