Newsweek International articles from April 2004

Newsweek International archives from April 2004

Mail Call: Passionate Opinions.(Letter to the Editor)
April 5, 2004... Our Feb. 16 cover story on the crucifixion of Jesus, and the controversy surrounding Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ," drew hundreds of responses. Many thanked us. "It's the best Biblical piece in a news magazine," gushed one....

Throw the Bums Out! Right, left, center--whom do Europeans really want to vote for these days? The answer: none of the above.
April 5, 2004... Byline: Christopher Dickey, With Stefan Theil in Berlin, Barbie Nadeau in Rome, Eric Pape in Madrid and Marie Valla in Paris Guess which European politician made this speech last week, and where: "The crucial problem of our time is the...

Business: The Price is Wrong; No matter what officials say, consumers are convinced that the euro is jacking up prices, and phantom inflation is eating away at the new Europe.
April 5, 2004... Byline: Karen Lowry Miller, With Cristiana Fabiani in Rome, Eric Pape and Andrew Ehrenkranz in Paris and Stefan Theil in Berlin Italy is in trouble, and the euro is taking the fall. Caught in a weak recovery, Italy now rivals Germany as the...

Radical Retreat; Conservative Muslim parties have failed to win the hearts and minds of voters.
April 5, 2004... Byline: Joe Cochrane, With Lorien Holland in Kuala Lumpur and Peter Janssen in Solo Two and a half years ago, in the wake of September 11 and the war in Afghanistan, political observers were raising alarms about the fate of Indonesia, the...

A Meeting of the Minds; Small museums in France and America swap their best works.("Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet! The Bruyas Collection From the Musee Fabre, Montpellier' at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)(Critical Essay)
April 5, 2004... Byline: Peter Plagens Art collector Alfred Bruyas (1821-77) was looking for what he called "the solution" to the problem of, well, the whole unpleasantness of modern life. Bruyas thought he'd find the answer in "a painting that unites...

Mind Bending; So, you say, ESP is for New Age wackos? Go talk to your parrot.
April 5, 2004... Byline: Michael Meyer Years ago, when I was a boy, I used to dream of finding a trilobite, the fossilized remains of a 300 million-year-old Cambrian creepy-crawly. One sunny day I happened to be walking across a field full of small, flat...

Free For All; Corruption scandals and voter cynicism are fueling a wide-open race to replace Fox.
April 5, 2004... Byline: Joseph Contreras It might have been the stuff of political satire were it not so painfully true to life. A prominent member of the Mexico City legislature named Rene Bejarano was speaking on a morning television news program nearly...

Interview: Facing High Expectations; Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, whose coalition just won a landslide vote, aims to showcase progressive Islam.(Interview)
April 5, 2004... Byline: Joe Cochrane Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, 64, handed the fundamentalist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, or PAS, one of its worst-ever defeats in last week's elections by touting a modern, progressive Islam. His ruling...

Interview: A 'Dysfunctional' System; The former foreign minister, now running for president, argues that institutional change must be a priority.(Interview)
April 5, 2004... Byline: Scott Johnson Jorge Castaneda, Mexico's foreign minister from 2000 to 2003, last week announced that he was running for president in 2006. Castaneda, a former columnist for NEWSWEEK International, hopes to run as an independent...

'No' Wins by Default; The anti-euro forces go home without a vote.(Brief Article)
April 5, 2004... Byline: William Underhill Will Britain ever sign up for the euro? That question can be shelved now that the No Campaign has closed up shop and declared victory. In 2002, when the battle over British entry into the eurozone peaked, the No...

Portrait of a Family; Few firsthand accounts exist of the Saudi clan that produced the master terrorist Osama bin Laden. His forthright sister-in-law Carmen is set to change that.(Brief Article)
April 5, 2004... Byline: Christopher Dickey Her Chanel sunglasses are pushed up in her dark hair. When she brushes back a loose strand, the emerald-cut diamond half as wide as her ring finger flashes in the crisp light of a Geneva afternoon. Her short...

The God Effect; America's religious conservatives aren't the only ones who object to science on spiritual grounds--so do Europe's Greens. The big winner is Asia.(Cover Story)
April 5, 2004... Byline: Lee M. Silver, Silver is professor of molecular biology and public affairs at Princeton University and author of "Remaking Eden." Many thousands of years ago, most of our ancestors were barely subsisting on whatever food nature...

A Conflict of Values; Many people fiercely oppose the fruits of technology and science. Perhaps religion can offer a solution.(Interview)
April 5, 2004... Byline: Tom Masland When George Ellis isn't dealing with subjects like "The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time," a book he co-wrote with physicist Steven Hawking, he's grappling with the really tough problems of our time--namely, the...

Vive la Revolution! Europe's bigger problems are regulations, and a fear of risk.(Industry Overview)(Cover Story)
April 5, 2004... Byline: Rana Foroohar, With Alison Brooks in Paris White-coated scientists don't usually take to the streets, but they did earlier this month at Paris city hall. More than 2,000 French lab directors resigned in protest over a research...

The Price Of Caution; To reduce risks to consumers, Europe is putting common chemical products under intense scrutiny.(Cover Story)
April 5, 2004... Byline: William Underhill Heavy industry is scarce in the pastoral patch of northern Sweden where Margot Wallstrom spent her childhood back in the 1950s. Is it safe to assume, then, that she was spared exposure to the nasty pollutants that...

The Age of E-Voting; Collecting votes on the Web and with electronic touch screens may invite election tampering by hackers. But governments seem determined to go ahead with it.
April 5, 2004... Byline: Sarah Sennott and Adam Piore, With Steven Levy and Marie Valla, Graphic by Josh Ulick It's an enticing vision. sipping a Margarita on your luxury yacht, you run through the choices in your head one last time while scanning the...

A Mix-Up in Priorities; By lavishing money on cures for bioterror attack, America ignores prosaic diseases that kill millions.
April 5, 2004... Byline: Mac Margolis When Lee Reichman speaks in public, he likes to warm up the audience with a provocative graphic. He calls it a "disease scorecard." Listed on the left are some of the best-known illnesses of our time, and, on the...

Swinging the Votes; Technology is helping predict elections--and upset them.
April 5, 2004... Byline: Eric Pape, With Holly Bailey and Liat Radcliffe Mireia Nebot isn't your garden-variety revolutionary. The 29-year-old Barcelona resident leads a busy life as a language-school administrator and organizer of independent film...

A Churchman In Vietnam; Pham Minh Man.(Interview)
April 5, 2004... Byline: Kenneth L. Woodward In his light-blue shirt, black slacks and gray leather sandals, Pham Minh Man looks like many other prosperous Vietnamese on a late Sunday afternoon, except for the clerical collar. In a surprise move last...

Loser Dog Nation.
April 5, 2004... Byline: Kay Itoi This may be the year of monkey, but Japanese will remember 2004 as the Year of Loser Dogs, thanks to an ongoing national debate. It started with Junko Sakai's book, "Loser Dogs Barking," out since October. Single and...

Perspectives.(Brief Article)
April 5, 2004... Byline: Quotation sources from top to bottom: BBC, Financial Times, Associated Press, The Washington Post, BBC (2), Associated Press "What peace process?" Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, responding to a question about the impact of...

Periscope.
April 5, 2004... Byline: Mark Hosenball and Michael Hirsh, Frank Brown, Tim Culpan, Peter Hudson, Michael Hastings, Brad Stone, Colum Murphy, Nicki Gostin, Tara Pepper, Lorraine Ali EXCLUSIVE Investigating Chalabi For years, Ahmad Chalabi, head of...

Tip Sheet.(brief items)
April 5, 2004... Byline: Sana Butler, Raina Kelley, Alexandra A. Seno, Dave Roos, John Sparks FASHION Designer Togs For Tykes Syria Lam spent $300 for a wine-red, velvet Simonetta suit for her 3-year-old son to wear to a wedding. She considered it...

Revisiting Vietnam.
April 12, 2004... Our Feb. 23 story comparing the Vietnam years of John Kerry and George W. Bush led readers to take aim at the president. Said one, "What an irony it would be if the 'war president' were to lose the election because of Vietnam." A veteran was...

Society: Affirmative Action? Oui! At long last, France takes a page from America in order to manage diversity--and bring minorities into elite schools.(Paris Institute of Political Sciences)
April 12, 2004... Byline: Marie Valla The young people of Vaulx-en-Velin once famously burned cars and threw stones at French police. That was 15 years ago, but for teenagers in this poor and largely immigrant suburb the future still offers little beside...

An Indian Champion; Vajpayee is stunningly popular and appears ready to lead his party to another election victory. But can one man's charisma carry the weight of a nation?(Cover Story)(Biography)
April 12, 2004... Byline: Ron Moreau and Sudip Mazumdar Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is not the picture of health. The 79-year-old leader is overweight, has had both knees replaced and is physically feeble. With the help of two security guards...

Interview: A Leader Riding High; As he heads into nationwide elections, India's prime minister takes credit for spurring both peace and growing prosperity.(Interview)(Cover Story)
April 12, 2004... Byline: Sudip Mazumdar and Ron Moreau Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was all smiles as he sat down for an exclusive interview with NEWSWEEK's Sudip Mazumdar and Ron Moreau at his official residence in New Delhi late last week....

Fanning the Flames; Beijing's dictates are getting Hong Kong fired up.
April 12, 2004... Byline: Alexandra A. Seno Until she joined Hong Kong's dramatic 500,000-person protest last July, retired bank employee Lam Sau-wan didn't think of herself as someone with powerful political convictions. Yet last week, despite the pouring...

Empire of The Spirit; Byzantium is still alive in an ambitious new exhibit.("Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557)," at New York's Metropolitan Museum )
April 12, 2004... Byline: Vibhuti Patel Byzantium describes so many myths and so many important periods of the sacred arts that it's sometimes hard to remember that it also describes what once was a living, breathing city. Even as a place name, however,...

A Dictator Dreams of Home; Jean-Claude Duvalier is pining for a comeback. But the United States and many Haitians frown on that idea.
April 12, 2004... Byline: Joseph Contreras, With Malcolm Beith in New York and Marie Valla in Paris Jean-Bertrand Aristide was not the first Haitian leader to fly into exile aboard a U.S.-supplied plane under intense pressure from a Republican...

Best of the Best; A NEWSWEEK study shows family firms are outrunning their rivals on all six of the leading stock indexes in Europe, and ranks the top 10 companies.(Cover Story)
April 12, 2004... Byline: Karen Lowry Miller Not so long ago Jean-Marie Messier and Bernard Arnault seemed to have much in common. Both CEOs were using buoyant stock prices to buy out rivals and expand their French empires worldwide. They served on each...

Hunting the Last Nazis; Seeking justice for the Holocaust while there's still a little time.
April 12, 2004... Byline: Frank Brown He is a dignified man with wavy white hair, upset at the course of a conversation. What happened 63 years ago in a Lithuanian forest? "It's a lie," he says. He never fired a shot. Besides, he claims there were no Jews...

Italy: The Reign Ends; The Benettons set the modern standard for Italian family empires, in part by letting pros run the show.(Cover Story)
April 12, 2004... Byline: Karen Lowry Miller, With Barbie Nadeau in Rome In the mid-1950s, Luciano Benetton was a bored clerk in a clothing shop in the northern Italian village of Ponzano. Inspired by raves over a lemon-yellow sweater his teenage sister had...

Multiple personalities; Photographer Tomoko Sawada has chosen to confront her identity crisis by taking pictures--lots of pictures--of herself. Even her mother might not recognize her.
April 12, 2004... Byline: Kay Itoi Tomoko Sawada is the Robert De Niro of Japanese photography. Just as the actor gained weight to prepare for his role in "Raging Bull," Sawada put on five kilograms before starting her 2001 self-portrait series based on...

The Great Deception; The war to end all wars was started by men, leaders who lied to their people, not seemingly random events.
April 12, 2004... Byline: Michael Meyer The central event in "Lord Jim," Joseph Conrad's classic novel of cowardice and courage, is a bump. A freighter steaming across a Pacific Ocean smooth as glass on a moonlit night hits something unseen and utterly...

Interview: 'I'd Like to Go Back'; Baby Doc claims life was better under his iron rule.(Jean-Claude Duvalier)(Interview)
April 12, 2004... Byline: Christopher Dickey and Marie Valla Jean-Claude (baby doc) Duvalier, son of the late dictator Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier, ruled Haiti between 1971 and 1986, when he fled to France. He has lived there ever since. Accused but never...

'Sarko' Versus Villepin; President Jacques Chirac and his party just got creamed in elections. Now the real fun begins.
April 12, 2004... Byline: Eric Pape, With Marie Valla French voters spoke loudly and Jacques Chirac said he "heard." But what exactly did the president hear? In recent regional elections, nearly two thirds of French voters picked parties outside the ruling...

Reading Faces; Our definition of what's normal changes over time.
April 12, 2004... Byline: Temma Ehrenfeld Back in the 1870s, Charles Darwin's cousin Francis Galton wanted to define the face of a criminal. He assembled photographs of men convicted of heinous crimes and made a composite by lining them up on a single...

Between Swimming and Crawling.
April 12, 2004... Byline: Temma Ehrenfeld Imagine a grotesque salamander-like creature, nearly a meter long, weighing 20 kilograms or more. It stands in a shallow stream on massive arms with its elbows permanently bent, balancing on the tips of its fingers....

Software: Lost in Translation; Search-engine translations are still imperfect at best--but new statistical methods could help raze the Tower of Babel.(Cover Story)
April 12, 2004... Byline: Mac Margolis and Jonathan Adams, With Andrew Ehrenkranz in Paris Frank Sinatra's rendition of the tune "The Girl From Ipanema" might not have been a hit if it weren't for Norman Gimbel, the songwriter who translated the Portuguese...

The Perils of Interventionism; It was once a matter of course for Washington to intervene forcibly to change regimes, collect debts, restore order and preach democracy.
April 12, 2004... Byline: Karl E. Meyer, Meyer is editor of the World Policy Journal and author, most recently, of "The Dust of Empire." The greatest difference between European and American imperialism is that Europeans are used to imperialism and that...

Al Franken; Please, Be Yourself!(Interview)
April 12, 2004... Byline: Adam Piore For years Al Franken was best known for his hilarious rendition of a supportive, unlicensed 12-step therapist named Stuart Smalley on the comedy show "Saturday Night Live." He played a quiet man in pastel sweaters who...

A White Guy in Harlem.
April 12, 2004... Byline: Malcolm Beith It always plays out roughly the same way. I get in a cab downtown. "East 127th Street, between Fifth and Madison," I tell the driver, advising him to take the FDR Drive because it's quicker. Mr. Know-It-All-Cabby...

The Dark Road Ahead; Testing time: The United States cannot afford to fail in Iraq. But its enemies seem to be multiplying.
April 12, 2004... Byline: Rod Nordland, Melinda Liu and Scott Johnson, With John Barry, Daniel Klaidman, Tamara Lipper and Mark Hosenball in Washington and Gameela Ismail in Cairo The video sells for less than $1 at any market in Baghdad. On the soundtrack...

Perspectives.(Brief Article)
April 12, 2004... Byline: Quotation Sources From Top To Bottom: The Washington Post, Ha'aretz, New York Times, WPHT-AM, Telegraph, The Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters "It's disgusting." Eighteen-year-old Fallujah resident Jamal Mehsen, after a...

Periscope.
April 12, 2004... Byline: Sarah Schafer, William Dobson, George Wehrfritz and Hideko Takayama, Frank Brown, Jonathan Adams, Michael Isikoff, Lorraine Ali, Karen Springen, Tara Pepper, Nicki Gostin CHINA It's All Part of the Plan China's bureaucrats...

Snap judgement: Books.(Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History)(Venus as a Boy)(L'Histoire Recente du Cambodge et Mes Prises de Position)(Book Review)
April 12, 2004... Byline: Michael Hastings, Gianne Brownell, Eric Pape Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History by Lee Harris September 11 raised a vexing question: "Why do they hate us?" Lee Harris dispenses with hand-wringing about...

All Eyes on Google; In six years, two students turned a simple idea into a global phenomenon. Now competitors are searching for a way to dethrone the latest princes of the Net.(Cover Story)
April 12, 2004... Byline: Steven Levy, With Brad Stone in San Francisco Short of "you're under arrest" there are very few things that the leaders of a young technology company would like less to hear than "Bill Gates thinks you've kicked his butt and now he...

Tip Sheet.(Salsa music and dancing)
April 12, 2004... Byline: Malcolm Beith, Ginanne Brownell and Andrew Ehrenkranz, Nadezhda Titova, Ginanne Brownell, Alison Brooks and Hideko Takayama TRAVEL LIVING LA VIDA LATINA By Malcolm Beith So you wanna salsa? Join the club. Salsa--the...

Mail Call; A Growing Force.(Letter to the Editor)
April 12, 2004... Responding to our March 1 story on Iraq's Shiites, one reader warned against "dividing the world on the basis of religion." Another said neither Shiites nor Sunnis can "guarantee democracy for a long time." The Revival of the Shiites ...

Tycoon Takeover; A new report measures the oligarchs' influence.
April 19, 2004... Byline: Christian Caryl It's no secret that a handful of "oligarchs" dominate the Russian economy, but until now the details have been murky. No one knew all the names in the oligarchy, exactly what they own, how many industries they...

Tilting at Windmills; Economic woes have Germans rethinking their attachment to environmentalism.
April 19, 2004... Byline: Stefan Theil For decades, environmentalism has been close to a national obsession in Germany. The Green Party was invented here as a counterculture movement in the 1980s; today Green ministers help run the country. All across the...

The Viagra Wars; Could a little blue pill be the savior of endangered animals? Conservationists are having none of it.
April 19, 2004... Byline: Craig Simons, With Melinda Liu in Beijing Before getting his big idea, William von Hippel sat through an otherwise unexceptional lecture on traditional Chinese medicine in 1997. As China adopts Western habits--sedentary jobs,...

Why Cheaters Don't Win: A Proof.
April 19, 2004... Byline: Karin Bennett Charles Darwin was no slouch. He came up with the idea that a human trait will persist from one generation to the next only if it confers an evolutionary advantage--now a basic tenet of science. But Darwin could never...

Prehistoric Cat Lovers; Our love affair with felines may date to the first farmers.
April 19, 2004... Byline: Temma Ehrenfeld Among the many accomplishments of ancient Egypt, the domestication of cats surely ranks as one of the most important--at least to cat lovers. These slinky little predators came in handy for controlling the mice and...

Haunting Questions; What does it take to turn a decent man into a killer?(Links)(Book Review)
April 19, 2004... Byline: Malcolm Jones It's easy to see why Nuruddin Farah's name keeps coming up as a likely recipient of a Nobel Prize in Literature. He has the good fortune--from a writer's point of view--of being a native of Somalia, a Third World...

The Coalition: Holding Allies Hostage; If the United States can't provide better security, its friends can hardly be blamed for not wanting to stick it out as targets.(Cover Story)
April 19, 2004... Byline: Melinda Liu and William Dobson, With Michal Karnowski in New York, George Wehrfritz and B. J. Lee in Seoul, Kay Itoi and Hideko Takayama in Tokyo and Joanna Kowalska in Warsaw If the violence sweeping across Iraq continues,...

America on The Couch.(cultural anthropologist and marketing guru Clotaire Rapaille shares insights about his adopted country)(Interview)(Biography)
April 19, 2004... Byline: Eric Pape Do Americans have anything to learn about themselves from a French guy? It may seem a dubious proposition. But then again, cultural anthropologist and marketing guru Clotaire Rapaille is hardly your average Frenchman. As...

Opinion: The Elusive Costs of War.(Cover Story)
April 19, 2004... Byline: Jeffrey E. Garten, Garten is dean of the Yale School of Management. As America's occupation of Iraq takes a turn for the worse, there is a risk of widening collateral damage. A growing quagmire could roil politics throughout the...

Perspectives.
April 19, 2004... Byline: Quotation sources from top to bottom: Associated Press, New York Times, BBC, Reuters (3) "The lid of the pressure cooker has come off." British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, as Coalition soldiers engaged in fierce battles with...

Periscope.(international affairs)
April 19, 2004... Byline: Rana Foroohar, Richard Wolffe, Joe Cochrane, Eric Pape, Sarah Schafer and Alexandra A. Seno, Jonathan Adams, Marc Peyser, Sean Smith, Liat Radcliffe, Nicki Gostin THE ECONOMY Searching for Jobs The mystery of the jobless...

Tip Sheet; Smart stragegies for your money, health, family, technology, design, real estate and travel.
April 19, 2004... Byline: Adam Piore With Sarah Sennott in London, Barbie Nadeau in Rome, Kay Itoi in Tokyo, Andrew Ehrenkranz in Paris, Sarah Schafer in Beijing, Ginanne Brownell HEALTH SUMMER SLIM BY ADAM PIORE In the dead of winter, who can...

The New Golden Age; Tourism, once the privilege of the wealthy, is becoming available to more people than ever before. Led by Asia's burgeoning middle class, the industry is poised to prosper--all the while helping travelers gain a new, deeper understanding of their world.
April 19, 2004... Byline: William Underhill Imagine you're young, Chinese and in search of once-forbidden thrills. Your country's supercharged economy means easier access to money. And its more relaxed politics means a passport is on offer for the first...

Living Like Locals; Many holidaymakers are already accustomed to arranging their trips online. Now they're using the Web to connect with residents at their final destinations who provide everything from restaurant recommendations to a bed for the night.(VirtualTourist.com)
April 19, 2004... Byline: Malcolm Beith Last fall 57-year-old Geoff Wright and his wife traveled from Britain to rural Pennsylvania to stay with an online buddy they'd met on VirtualTourist.com (VT). Their host drove them around for two days, showing them...

Cruising for Customers; Contrary to popular belief, the Internet hasn't killed off travel agents. It's turned them into savvy specialists.
April 19, 2004... Byline: Sandy Lawrence Edry and Sarah Sennott When Willie Stewart opened the Stewart Travel Centre in the quiet Scottish town of Prestwick 32 years ago, he created a small, all-service agency. "If it moved, I booked it," says Stewart, 58....

Asians Get Going; Newly rich and mobile, travelers are pouring out of China and India. They're sticking close to home for now, but it's only a matter of time before they fan out across the globe, reshaping the tourist landscape.
April 19, 2004... Byline: George Wehrfritz, With Alexandra A. Seno in Hong Kong, Sudip Mazumdar in New Delhi, Mark Russell in Seoul and Hideko Takayama in Tokyo Zhe Lijuan has grown fat on Chinese dumplings--so much so that she recently opted to spend a bit...

Farmhouse Fun: The Chinese Hit the Road; Urban professionals, in love with their cars, are looking for somewhere to go. That's great news for farmers.
April 19, 2004... Byline: Craig Simons Xu Jing parks his Honda Odyssey beside a burbling stream and takes out the fishing rods. The 33-year-old banker, his wife, Yang Lei, and a friend are trying to catch their lunch in a 10-square-meter concrete pool in...

Royal Treatment; Corporate travelers are taking to the skies again and getting a lot more for their money. Today's business class looks like yesterday's first class. That's great for executives, but what does it mean for the airline industry?
April 19, 2004... Byline: Rana Foroohar Business-class travel used to mean some nice extras--a bigger chair, more entertainment choices and maybe a better meal. But these days, corporate travelers can increasingly expect five-star service in the skies. In...

Time Travelers; No job? Don't sweat it. Burned-out, fed-up workers are taking time off to regroup. The 'gap year' isn't just for kids anymore.
April 19, 2004... Byline: Anna Kuchment, With Sana Butler in New York and Sudip Mazumdar in New Delhi Two years ago Bill Wohler and his wife, Lynn Brinton, left their jobs for a dream vacation. Brinton, who was working long hours as a public-relations...

Learning to Relax; Education vacations: Holidaymakers are trading sunscreen for spiral notebooks and hoping to gain something more than a mere tan.
April 19, 2004... Byline: Sana Butler Unlike most visitors to Jamaica, Kofi Agorsah couldn't care less if it rains. After all, the black-studies professor from Oregon comes not for the sun and surf but to trek into the rain forest and study the Maroons,...

A Home Away From Home; Serviced Apartments: With their focus on decor and serious service, long-stay accommodations are earning new respect.
April 19, 2004... Byline: Michelle Jana Chan Louis Vincent-Gave, a director at the financial research house GaveKal Research, used to travel between the company's London and Hong Kong offices several times a year. What he wanted was a home away from home,...

Play Like Pros; Always dreamed of riding the Tour de France or driving a Formula One race car? Now you can. Amateur athletes step up to the plate.
April 19, 2004... Byline: Adam Piore, With Alison Brooks in Paris, Emily Flynn in London and John David Sparks in New York Rene le Cam's patients know him as their friendly family dentist. But every July, the diminutive 51-year-old from Provence, France,...

The Spectator Spirit: If You'd Rather Just Watch; Start planning now for this summer's two great sporting events. You're up against some hard-core fans.
April 19, 2004... Byline: Tara Pepper, With Toula Vlahou in Athens A passion for sports has taken Australian fan Woz Livingstone, 30, to 150 countries around the world. He's followed cricket to the West Indies, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Dubai, India and...

The rich don't travel like the rest of us.
April 19, 2004... Byline: Rob Long Let's be honest with each other, just for a moment. The real thrill of a first- or business-class seat on the airplane doesn't come with the hot towel or the freshly baked cookie. It comes before takeoff, as you nestle...

New Travel Toys; A range of innovative gadgets can help make every journey smoother -- or at least a lot more fun.(Brief Article)
April 19, 2004... Byline: Karin Bennett Why settle for the in-flight movie? New technology allows you to select all the films and music you need to keep you entertained from Santiago to Sydney. The trend for this year's digital accessories is getting more...

Entente Not-So-Cordiale.
April 19, 2004... Byline: William Underhill It's early morning in Patisserie Valerie, a Soho cafe that feeds the habits of London's hard-core francophiles. Walls are hung with Toulouse-Lautrec; the windows are stacked with aorta-clogging pastries. Like the...