10/5 to 10/11, 2025

Good morning folks, and welcome back to your weekly global digest. It’s a busy week, so stay with me here. We’re going to go through it together. As always, this is This Week, Basically. I’m Robyn Davies. Let’s start unpacking the chaos.

The week began in Pyongyang, where North Korea rolled out its latest missiles in a midnight military parade attended by Chinese and Russian officials. Kim Jong-un smiled broadly as the new intercontinental weapons passed, a clear message to Washington that the country is not isolated but aligned. Western analysts called it a “show of partnerships,” though not necessarily of strength — North Korea remains under heavy sanctions and struggling economically. Still, the optics matter. Beijing’s envoy sat beside Kim, applauding. Moscow sent senior military advisers. It was the kind of symbolism North Korea craves: not a hermit kingdom, but a member of an emerging bloc standing against the West.

In Israel, tens of thousands gathered in Tel Aviv to demand the return of hostages still held in Gaza. Many have been rallying every week since the October attacks, but this demonstration was billed as the last — a final collective plea before new negotiations. Families carried photographs, sang softly, and told reporters they were running out of both hope and energy. The Israeli government insists talks are ongoing, though details are scarce. For those waiting, the sense of endlessness may be the hardest part.

In Iran, the contradictions continue. The country has become a global hub for gender reassignment surgeries, attracting patients from across the Middle East and even Europe. Yet within Iran, transgender citizens describe being pressured into operations they don’t want. Under Iranian law, transition surgery is legal and even subsidized but homosexuality is not. Activists say that creates a cruel equation: people coerced to change their bodies to avoid persecution for who they love. The state calls it compassion; critics call it coercion.

Meanwhile in Paris, President Emmanuel Macron’s surprise decision to reappoint Sébastien Lecornu as prime minister has been met with a mix of disbelief and fatigue. The appointment, his third reshuffle in two years, has been called “a bad joke” by opposition leaders. Lecornu, a loyalist with a reputation for caution, faces a fragmented parliament and deep public frustration. Macron’s approval ratings are the lowest of his presidency, and his party is running out of fresh faces to promote. In French papers, one headline captured the mood: “More of the Same.”

In Washington, the administration has fired several Black officials in senior positions, part of what insiders describe as a broader purge meant to “restore cohesion.” The White House denies any racial motive, but the optics are glaring: a largely white cabinet growing even less diverse. Critics say it reflects not just ideology, but insecurity; a leader more comfortable among loyalists than among challengers.

Across the Atlantic, the debate over monuments is entering a new chapter. In cities across the U.S., statues of Christopher Columbus that were toppled or removed during the 2020 protests are quietly reappearing. Restored and repaired, they’re being relocated to Italian American clubs, churches, and private gardens  . In Richmond, Virginia, a statue that was dragged into a lake now stands near a bocce court in New York. Boston’s decapitated Columbus has been mended and placed among saints in a churchyard. To supporters, it’s heritage reclaimed; to others, it’s history rewritten. The statues are now symbols twice over — first of discovery, then of division.

New York, meanwhile, is fighting a different kind of territorial battle, over green space . The city is denser than ever, with the worst housing shortage in sixty years, and nearly every open lot has become contested ground. Neighbors protest plans to build on tiny playgrounds or community gardens. Planners argue that housing is as essential as trees. In Jackson Heights, residents rallied to save a quarter-acre plot behind a church; in Lower Manhattan, activists fought for years to preserve a small sculpture garden before finally losing. The tension isn’t new, but the stakes keep rising. As one urban planner put it, “Every patch of grass feels like the last one.”

Elsewhere in the city, life moves in the usual strange directions. At the Museum of Modern Art, actors Bobby Cannavale, James Corden, and Neil Patrick Harris reunited for a new production of Yasmina Reza’s play Art. Their chemistry reportedly drew cheers from the normally reserved MoMA crowd. The show, about friends arguing over a blank white canvas, felt like an apt metaphor for modern friendship, and modern New York, full of noise, taste, and competing meanings.

Music, too, found itself under scrutiny this week. A viral essay asked whether a single generation (specifically, millennials) had “ruined” modern music for everyone else. The piece argued that algorithmic playlists and nostalgia cycles have flattened innovation, leaving pop culture chasing its own echoes. The reactions were swift: younger listeners pointed to streaming economics and corporate consolidation, not taste, as the real culprits. But the argument struck a chord, so to speak; the sense that music feels less surprising than it once did, even as there’s more of it than ever.

And somewhere between nostalgia and renewal sits New York’s relationship to its own public art. The Columbus statues are back, but they’re quieter now, tucked away. The city’s parks are shrinking, but the fights to save them are louder. Art openings, street fairs, protests, block parties, all competing for the same few feet of urban ground. It’s a portrait of a city, and a country, learning to live with its contradictions.