PRESPACK — SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2026
Politics · Power · Culture · Fashion
TODAY'S HEADLINES
BANGKOK — THE DIPLOMACY OF THE EMPTY CHAIR
Diplomats walk out. International cooperation carries on.
WASHINGTON — THE REPUBLICANS' CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD
An approaching election exposes the rivalries inside Trump's political machine.
AMERICA — A DEMAND FOR CHANGE, BUT TO WHAT?
The electorate is dissatisfied. The opposition has yet to convince it.
PARIS — THE RETURN OF THE STREET
France's unofficial second parliament prepares to assemble.
YEREVAN — THE PRICE OF SAVING NATURE
International promises encounter the inconvenient question of who pays.
DELHI — THE DRIVER STAYS IN THE HOTEL
Rory McIlroy discovers that a golf course can still defeat technology.
MARIO SORRENTI — WHEN FASHION ENTERS THE MUSEUM
Loro Piana, the Menil Collection and the art of creating an atmosphere.
LETIZIA BATTAGLIA — THE CAMERA AGAINST SILENCE
A major Turin exhibition revisits fifty years of photographic memory.
JESSICA LANGE — AMERICA THROUGH A DIFFERENT LENS
The American landscape as a geography of memory.
ROGER CORMAN — POE RETURNS TO TURIN
Vincent Price, Gothic nightmares and the extraordinary economy of imagination.
THE OBSERVER'S DESK — THE POLITICS OF ABSENCE
Institutions may continue functioning long after confidence has departed.
WORLD & POWER
BANGKOK — THE DIPLOMACY OF THE EMPTY CHAIR
Diplomats walk out. International cooperation carries on.
Nearly half the delegates reportedly walked out during remarks by Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov at a meeting of the International Monetary and Financial Committee in Bangkok.
According to Reuters, the protest included senior European central bankers, among them Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel and Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey. The walkout expressed opposition to Russia's war in Ukraine.
Yet the committee subsequently agreed on its final statement. Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan, who chairs the committee, emphasized that the institution had accomplished its business.
There is something wonderfully revealing about this episode.
International institutions are designed to make disagreement manageable. They cannot abolish disagreement. Indeed, the modern diplomatic ritual increasingly consists of performing disapproval while preserving the machinery of cooperation.
The delegates leave the room. The institution continues its work. Everyone returns home having demonstrated a principle.
The communiqué survives.
Source: Reuters, October 17.
WASHINGTON — THE REPUBLICANS' CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD
An approaching election exposes the rivalries inside Trump's political machine.
President Donald Trump has criticized senior aides and political operatives over the Republican midterm campaign, according to Reuters reporting published Saturday.
The tensions reportedly involve James Blair, the political operation surrounding MAGA Inc., and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
Disagreements concern campaign expenditure, electoral redistricting and candidate selection. The White House disputes accounts attributed to unnamed sources, while Trump publicly defended Wiles on Friday.
The congressional elections are scheduled for November 3.
American politics has a peculiar talent for transforming electoral uncertainty into an internal struggle for control.
The immediate question is not merely whether Republican candidates can persuade voters. It is who controls the campaign's money, personnel and strategy — and who will be held responsible for the results.
Political loyalty does not eliminate institutional rivalry.
In fact, it may intensify it.
Source: Reuters, October 17.
AMERICA — A DEMAND FOR CHANGE, BUT TO WHAT?
The electorate is dissatisfied. The opposition has yet to convince it.
An AP-NORC poll published October 15 found widespread dissatisfaction with Washington and President Trump's performance.
The survey included 1,119 adults, among them 925 registered voters. Its reported margin of error for registered voters was approximately 4.2 percentage points.
Democratic respondents expressed somewhat greater enthusiasm about voting than Republican respondents. Yet the poll also revealed considerable dissatisfaction with both major parties.
The demand for change is not necessarily a mandate for the opposition.
American voters may reject an administration's performance without developing much confidence in its alternative.
This is one of the recurring paradoxes of democratic politics: an electorate may be perfectly capable of deciding what it dislikes while remaining profoundly uncertain about what it wants.
That distinction will matter beyond November.
Source: Associated Press — AP-NORC survey, October 15.
PARIS — THE RETURN OF THE STREET
France's unofficial second parliament prepares to assemble.
France faces nationwide demonstrations on Saturday, bringing together students, trade unionists and supporters of the Yellow Vest movement.
Reuters reports that protests originating in schools in the northern suburbs of Paris have expanded into a wider movement over living costs, public services and inequality.
The CGT trade union supports the mobilization.
President Emmanuel Macron has defended the right to protest while calling for peaceful demonstrations. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has warned of possible unrest.
The demonstrations come as France approaches its 2027 presidential election amid deep political fragmentation.
France possesses two political constitutions.
One is written, institutional and presidential.
The other is performed in the streets.
The Fifth Republic was designed to protect executive authority against parliamentary instability. But the concentration of authority in the presidency has another consequence: almost every major grievance eventually becomes a confrontation with the President himself.
The French street is not an alternative legislature. It is something more troublesome — an unpredictable source of political legitimacy.
Sources: Reuters, October 17 · Associated Press.
YEREVAN — THE PRICE OF SAVING NATURE
International promises encounter the inconvenient question of who pays.
Delegates are preparing to gather in Armenia for the United Nations COP17 biodiversity conference.
According to Associated Press reporting, the financial resources mobilized to protect ecosystems remain substantially below the international targets adopted in Montreal in 2022.
Governments agreed to protect 30 percent of important land and water areas by 2030, alongside major financing commitments.
International environmental law increasingly consists of ambitious collective commitments supported by uncertain national implementation.
The difficulty is not drafting another declaration. It is determining who must pay, who must act, and what follows when governments fail to deliver.
In that respect, biodiversity diplomacy resembles the wider international legal order: impressive in its normative architecture, considerably less impressive in its machinery of enforcement.
Source: Associated Press — Biodiversity financing.
THE NINETEENTH HOLE
DELHI — THE DRIVER STAYS IN THE HOTEL
Rory McIlroy discovers that a golf course can still defeat technology.
At the DP World India Championship, the narrow fairways and strategic doglegs of Delhi Golf Club have persuaded Rory McIlroy to leave his driver out of the bag.
The course measures approximately 6,900 yards. Its defenses are not principally length but trees, angles and the penalties attached to misplaced tee shots.
McIlroy has opted to rely on fairway woods and long irons.
Meanwhile, storm interruptions have disrupted the tournament schedule. Saturday's reporting described Ángel Hidalgo, Joost Luiten and Adrian Meronk sharing the lead at eight under par, with the field at different stages of their rounds.
There is a pleasing irony in watching one of the game's most formidable drivers voluntarily surrender his principal weapon.
Delhi offers a reminder that golf architecture can defeat technology without adding another hundred yards.
A well-positioned tree may be worth considerably more than a newly constructed bunker.
Sources: Golf Monthly — McIlroy's equipment decision · Indian Express — Tournament report.
THE ART OF GLAMOUR
MARIO SORRENTI — WHEN FASHION ENTERS THE MUSEUM
Loro Piana, the Menil Collection and the art of creating an atmosphere.
For its Autumn/Winter 2026–27 campaign, Loro Piana has chosen the Menil Collection and the Rothko Chapel in Houston as settings for photographs by Mario Sorrenti.
The campaign includes models Jacqui Hooper, Noor Khan, Selena Forrest and Sigrid de L'Epine.
The result belongs to an increasingly interesting tradition of fashion advertising: photographs that construct a complete atmosphere rather than merely display garments.
The architecture, artworks and restrained palette become part of the story.
The distinction between a fashion photograph and a catalogue photograph is not the price of the clothes.
It is the presence of a world.
The most memorable fashion images suggest that the woman wearing the clothes has a life before the photograph and will continue living after it.
Sorrenti understands that elegance is often most persuasive when it appears incidental.
THE PHOTOGRAPHS: View Mario Sorrenti's Loro Piana Autumn/Winter 2026–27 campaign.
Photography: Mario Sorrenti. Images © their respective rights holders.
CULTURE & THE ARTS
LETIZIA BATTAGLIA — THE CAMERA AGAINST SILENCE
A major Turin exhibition revisits fifty years of photographic memory.
An exhibition devoted to Italian photographer Letizia Battaglia opens today, October 17, at CAMERA, the Italian Centre for Photography in Turin.
Letizia Battaglia. Works 1970–2020 runs until February 7, 2027.
Battaglia's photographs occupy a special place in the history of Italian photojournalism. Her work is inseparable from Sicily's violent political and criminal history, but it cannot be reduced to a photographic record of the Mafia.
She photographed a society: its rituals, children, streets, poverty, gestures and silences.
The camera can perform an extraordinary political function without becoming an instrument of propaganda.
It can preserve what power would prefer to forget.
The documentary photograph is not merely evidence of an event. It is also evidence of a way of seeing.
Exhibition: CAMERA Torino.
JESSICA LANGE — AMERICA THROUGH A DIFFERENT LENS
The American landscape as a geography of memory.
Turin's Musei Reali are presenting Still Image, an exhibition of more than 200 photographs by Jessica Lange, running until February 7, 2027.
The exhibition includes work inspired by Highway 61, the great American road stretching from Minnesota towards New Orleans.
Here the American landscape becomes a geography of memory rather than a Hollywood backdrop.
There is an America that exists in political speeches and another that survives in photographs.
The second is usually quieter, older and more difficult to explain.
Exhibition: Musei Reali Torino — Still Image.
THE SILVER SCREEN
ROGER CORMAN — POE RETURNS TO TURIN
Vincent Price, Gothic nightmares and the extraordinary economy of imagination.
Cinema Massimo continues its Roger Corman retrospective today with three films in their original-language versions, subtitled in Italian.
4:30 p.m. — HOUSE OF USHER (1960)
Vincent Price presides over the decaying family mansion in Corman's first Edgar Allan Poe adaptation.
6:30 p.m. — THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964)
A richly colored meditation on aristocratic power, plague and the illusion that wealth can purchase immunity from mortality.
8:30 p.m. — X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES (1963)
A scientist acquires the ability to see beyond ordinary human perception, with increasingly disturbing consequences.
Corman's reputation for economy sometimes obscures his real achievement.
He understood that a small budget could become an aesthetic discipline.
In the Poe films, painted interiors, saturated colors and theatrical dialogue transform limited resources into a remarkably coherent imaginary world.
And X poses a question worthy of a philosophical treatise: what happens when the desire to see everything becomes incompatible with the ability to live?
Cinema listings: House of Usher · The Masque of the Red Death · X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes.
THE OBSERVER'S DESK
THE POLITICS OF ABSENCE
Institutions may continue functioning long after confidence has departed.
Bangkok, Paris, Washington.
Three cities. Three political dramas. Three variations upon the same question: what happens when established institutions cease to command the confidence of those who must operate within them?
In Bangkok, diplomats leave a conference room to protest the presence of a Russian minister. The meeting continues, and its final statement is adopted.
In Paris, demonstrators challenge the government from outside the institutions of the Fifth Republic. Their protest is not a parliamentary vote, but it is nevertheless an assertion of political authority.
In Washington, the struggle over the congressional elections has become, according to Reuters, a struggle within the President's own political organization.
These are not identical events. Their causes, consequences and moral significance differ considerably.
But they illuminate a common feature of modern government.
Institutions are not sustained by formal rules alone.
A constitution may distribute powers. An international organization may prescribe voting procedures. A political party may establish offices, committees and chains of command.
None of these arrangements can manufacture confidence.
And confidence, once withdrawn, does not necessarily produce institutional collapse.
More often, the machinery continues to operate.
The conference adopts its communiqué. The French government remains in office. The American campaign proceeds towards election day.
It is tempting to mistake this continuity for stability.
Yet the distinction between an institution that continues to function and one that continues to command authority is among the most important distinctions in political life.
The twentieth century furnished enough examples of governments that survived long after their legitimacy had begun to disappear.
The twenty-first century has become remarkably skilled at preserving the appearance of institutional normality.
The chairs remain arranged around the table.
The microphones are switched on.
The communiqué is ready.
What remains uncertain is who still wishes to sit down.
— The Observer's Desk
FROM THE KITCHEN
RISOTTO AL BAROLO
A Piedmontese dish for an October evening.
For four people: 320 grams of Carnaroli rice, one small onion, approximately 250 ml of Barolo, hot beef or vegetable stock, butter, Parmigiano Reggiano and a little olive oil.
Soften the finely chopped onion in butter and olive oil. Add the rice and toast it gently. Pour in the Barolo and allow the alcohol to evaporate. Continue cooking with hot stock, adding it gradually.
After approximately 16–18 minutes, remove from the heat and finish with cold butter and grated Parmigiano.
The result should be fluid, glossy and intensely aromatic.
A modest suggestion: do not use a wine you would be embarrassed to drink.
POOR RICHARD'S ALMANACK
“When the delegates abandon the conference, the communiqué becomes considerably easier to write.”
— Poor Richard, October 17, 2026
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