After being expelled from his homeland in 1972, the academic has grappled with questions of political belonging – a major theme of his son’s mayoral campaign

The night before Mahmood Mamdani was expelled from Uganda in 1972, a senior professor from the university where he had been employed as a lowly teaching assistant wandered into his family home, looking for spoils. The rest of the family had already left – for the UK, the US and Tanzania – but 26-year-old Mamdani had decided to remain until the final day of the three-month period that Idi Amin, the Ugandan president, had designated for all Asians to leave the country. Passing over the furniture and other remnants of decades of family life, the professor hit upon a carton of Johnnie Walker Red, which Mamdani invited him to take home.

Decade after officials promised to cut flood risks, Edgemere residents and experts say it continues to be vulnerable

This article was produced in partnership between Floodlight, New York Focus and the Guardian.

Baba Ndanani has lived in one of New York City’s most flood-prone neighborhoods for more than 20 years, and he knows the risks all too well.

US president said ‘we’ll work something out’ in reference to meeting with the New York City mayor-elect

Donald Trump has signaled he may soon meet with New York City’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, telling reporters that Mamdani “would like to meet with us”, adding that “we’ll work something out” – despite trading sharp words for each other previously.

“He would like to come to Washington and meet, and we’ll work something out,” the US president said late on Sunday, referring to Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist and former state assemblymember who won the New York City mayoral election earlier this month.

The Big Apple is awash with festive cheer during the holiday season

Between 1934 and 1936, artist Dorothy Waugh was commissioned to create 17 posters for the National Park Service, a groundbreaking opportunity for a female designer at the time. Her designs, which were both accessible and avant-garde, are being celebrated in an exhibition for the first time at New York’s Poster House. Blazing A Trail: Dorothy Waugh’s National Parks Posters is on display until 22 February 2026

Having left her husband, Shaw’s daughter moves in with her at the family’s Manhattan apartment and soon tensions arise – wry, sweet, melancholic but somewhat insubstantial

Fiona Shaw finds some tremendous form in this upmarket dramedy of mother-daughter tension and first-world problems, and Katherine Waterston is (as ever) really good. There’s plenty of amusement and wry, sophisticated sadness here, though co-writer and director Gaby Dellal has confected what is, in the end, a pretty middleweight movie.

Shaw plays Kit, an elegant and wealthy widow living in a handsome apartment on Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan, known for her witty disdain for those less stylish than herself and about to publish a memoir of life with her late husband, a collector of Chinese art. Out of the blue her grown up daughter Charlotte (Waterston) appears, having run out on her abusive rancher husband; she intends to stay for a while with her mother in her childhood Park Avenue home while she figures things out.

The 28-year-old artist’s style steers clear of the political wife cosplay of pastel skirt suits in favor of something more playful and youthful, yet still elegant

It is the most traditional of assets for any ambitious young male politician: a fashionably dressed, beautiful young wife. But as with everything else about the rise of Zohran Mamdani, his wife, Rama Duwaji, represents a new era of politics which speaks to a new generation of voters.

Married to the soon-to-be leader of the biggest city in the US, Duwaji, 28, is arguably the US’s first generation Z “first lady”. Duwaji is an artist and illustrator of Syrian heritage, whose work explores themes of Arab identity, female experience and social justice. Working in paint, line-drawing, ceramics and animation, she graduated with a master’s degree in fine art from New York’s School of Visual Arts in 2024. Her thesis was titled Sahtain!, an Arabic expression which translates as “bon appetit”, and explored the communal act of making and sharing a dish and its role in Middle Eastern culture.