Newsweek International articles from April 2006

Newsweek International archives from April 2006

Mail Call; A Clash of Values.(Letter to the editor)
April 3, 2006... Denmark's Cartoon Controversy Fareed Zakaria's Feb. 13 article "Islam and Freedom" raises many interesting and worrying questions. Denmark has been taught a lesson. While we are recovering from the boycotts, numerous abuses of our flag,...

Can China Save GM? The auto giant is ice cold in Detroit, red hot in Shanghai.(General Motors)
April 3, 2006... Byline: Michael Hastings (With Sarah Schafer in Beijing) No question, General Motors looks like a dying company on its home turf. With its market share in decline and losses mounting, GM has been selling everything not bolted to a factory...

A 'Fragile Foundation'; Massive anti-Thaksin street protests underscore a growing disillusionment with democracy in Asia.
April 3, 2006... Byline: George Wehrfritz and Joe Cochrane (With Marites Vitug in Manila, Jonathan Adams in Taipei and B. J. Lee in Seoul) It might look as if history were repeating itself: just as in the 1970s, ' 80s and '90s, defiant protesters have taken...

Why Privacy Won't Matter; Google, Yahoo and Microsoft desperately want to know every last thing about what you do, say and buy. Here's how they'll do it--and why we'll let them.
April 3, 2006... Byline: David H. Freedman A friend takes your picture with her cell phone, and puts the phone back in her purse. But the gadget isn't dormant. It gets to work figuring out who you are, and sends that information, along with your precise...

The Rise and Fall of Berlusconi; Is Italy's flamboyant leader going down in flames?(Cover story)
April 3, 2006... Byline: Christopher Dickey (With Jacopo Barigazzi in Milan, Eric Pape in Paris, Barbie Nadeau In Rome and Friso Endt In The Hague) The lights were set up, the camera was ready. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi stood in front of the...

The Politics Of Protest; At bottom, Europe's problem is that its leaders know only how to say Non.
April 3, 2006... Byline: Denis MacShane In May 1968, as a student, I crossed the channel to join the uprising in Paris. To borrow Wordsworth, bliss was it that spring to be young, and to be in Paris was very heaven. Then, we wanted to change the world. The...

The Right Touch; Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi is the Greenspan of energy, the world's most listened-to muse.
April 3, 2006... Byline: Stephen Glain Quick, name a leader whose every word can roil or calm the markets from Tokyo to Wall Street. Now that U.S. central bank boss Alan Greenspan is retired, and his successor is still settling in, that description may...

Hamas: Out of Money; A new cabinet starts out in the hole.
April 3, 2006... Byline: Kevin Peraino If you think you have a lousy job, meet Omar Abdel-Razeq. Last week the soft-spoken economist was named as Hamas's choice to be the Palestinian Authority's next Finance minister. The 48-year-old professor happened to...

Is This a Strategy For Success? Washington's good news in Iraq isn't quite what it seems.(Tall Far, Iraq no longer under Qaeda control)
April 3, 2006... Byline: Rod Nordland (With Ayad Obeidi in Tall Afar) At last, President Bush had news he could use from Iraq. He devoted an entire speech in Cleveland last week to the story of how the town of Tall Afar was wrested from Qaeda control and...

Portraits of The Artist; Magritte's photographs mirror the absurdity of his paintings.
April 3, 2006... Byline: Daniela Perdomo When RenA[c] Magritte was 13, his mother committed suicide by jumping into the River Sambre. He was there 17 days later when her body was fished out of the water, naked but for her face, which was obscured by her...

The Last Word Ashraf Qazi: 'Serious'--Or A Civil War?(Interview)
April 3, 2006... Byline: Malcolm Beith Since the February bombing of the sacred Askariya Mosque in Samarra, Iraq has been consumed by sectarian violence. Hundreds have died in reprisal killings carried out by Sunni and Shia militias, while the insurgency...

The Last Word: Li Datong--Loosening Up 'Under Pressure'.(Interview)
April 3, 2006... Byline: Melinda Liu Early last year, New York Times researcher Zhao Yan was detained by Chinese authorities after the paper published an article accurately predicting that Chinese leader Jiang Zemin would retire. His editors said Zhao...

Europe Needs Its Own Koizumi; Timing is critical. Japan first pushed financial reform, which forced labor reform. In Europe, labor reform came first, inciting mass protest.
April 3, 2006... Byline: Angel Ubide (Ubide is a fellow at the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels.) Only a few years ago leaders of the European Union bubbled with confidence about their economic future, and Japan looked like a lost cause. Now,...

The Good Life.(trends)
April 3, 2006... Byline: Sana Butler (Michael Hastings Raina Kelley Silvia Spring Joseph Contreras) Shopping: Personal Best No need to let a busy schedule stand in the way of your new spring wardrobe. Just have a personal shopper do the legwork for...

Perspectives.
April 3, 2006... "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is." Former Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi, on the rising sectarian violence in the country "This is humiliating for Islam... Cut off his head." Muslim cleric Abdul...

Periscope.(meshed briefs)(Interview)
April 3, 2006... Byline: George Wehrfritz (Rana Foroohar Michael Hirsh, Mark Hosenball and John Barry Michael Isikoff Holly Bailey Lorraine Ali Karen Springen) India: Let Your Money Free A U.S. delegation led by Sen. Charles Schumer met with officials in...

BlogWatch; A mainstream media snapshot of what's hot (and what's not) in the ever-widening world of web logs. for full links go to Newsweek.com.(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... Humanrightsfirst.org is blogging the trial of one of the dog handlers at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Celebs, beware. Gawker recently launched Gawker Stalker (gawker.com/stalker), a mash-up of celebrity sightings with Google...

Mail Call.(Letter to the editor)
April 10, 2006... A Nuclear Danger? Readers of our Feb. 13 report were split on Iran's nuclear threat. "Iran has as much right to nukes as Israel," said one. Another wrote, "With nuclear weapons involved, we can't misinterpret this debate." ...

Seen on the Streets; The French protests are about much more than jobs. Elites don't get it.
April 10, 2006... Byline: Olivier Roy (Roy is the author of "Globalized Islam" and is a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris. Write him at oroy@compuserve.com.) It is oddly disconcerting, for a Frenchman, to watch the latest...

Reversal of Fortune; Should Russia be booted out of the West's exclusive club, the G8? Of course not.
April 10, 2006... Byline: Owen Matthews Peter the Great built St. Petersburg in hopes that its sweeping neoclassical boulevards would prove to a skeptical Europe that Russia was no longer a barbarous Asian principality but part of mainstream Western...

The Return of the Caudillo; A retired Army officer may become the latest 'man on horseback' to gain power through the ballot box.
April 10, 2006... Byline: Joseph Contreras and Sally Bowen A crowd of several thousand gathered in the city of Chiclayo last month to greet the man who could very well become Peru's next president. The compact candidate Ollanta Humala and his equally...

The CW? Ignore it. Opinion: Never mind the headlines. Ukraine's Orange Revolution is alive and well.
April 10, 2006... Byline: Adrian Karatnycky (Karatnycky, the former president of Freedom House, heads the Orange Circle, a New York NGO founded to assist Ukraine's democratic transition.) Listening to the fevered commentary that greeted the two most recent...

Pocketbook Policing; Washington has finally found a strategy that is putting real pressure on the regime--going after its sources of cash, all across the world.
April 10, 2006... Byline: Christian Caryl (With Mark Hosenball in Washington, George Wehrfritz in Taipei, B.J. Lee in Seoul, and Akiko Kashiwagi in Tokyo) Swiss businessman and Asian-art collector Jakob Steiger never figured in headlines before last month....

The Box Is King; The humble shipping container has revolutionized commerce, for better and worse, by cutting costs and offering sealed anonymity to all traders, legal or not.
April 10, 2006... Byline: Christian Caryl The city of Busan, South Korea's largest port, feels like a room crammed with oversize furniture. Apartment buildings and hotels crowd into a narrow strip between steep hills and a deep harbor. There is no view of...

The Feminine Kingdom; Hatshepsut promoted peace, prosperity and great art.
April 10, 2006... Byline: Vibhuti Patel A thousand years after the Pyramids were built, Queen Hatshepsut, widow and half sister of King Thutmose II, ascended Egypt's throne when the latter died prematurely in 1473 B.C. As regent for her infant nephew and...

The Last Word--Wadah Khanfar: Al-Jazeera, All the Time.
April 10, 2006... Byline: Vibhuti Patel Al-Jazeera has its sights set on CNN and the BBC. Founded 10 years ago in Doha, the controversial Arab television network plans to launch a 24/7 English-language channel at the end of May, Al-Jazeera International....

Vanishing Acts; The world's treasures are under siege as never before. So get out and see as many as possible--before they disappear.(Cover story)
April 10, 2006... Byline: Mac Margolis (With Barbie Nadeau in Naples, Sana Butler in New York and Quindlen Krovatin in Beijing) When Ernest Hemingway wrote "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," a holiday outing was the last thing he had in mind. Who could have known...

Substitute Holidays; One resort's tragedy is another's boon.(Cover story)
April 10, 2006... Byline: Ginanne Brownell with Hallee Berg Since explorer David Livingstone first clapped eyes on Victoria Falls in 1855, an entire tourist industry has built up around them. Visitors to the Zimbabwean side go bungee-jumping off the main...

The Curse of Approval; If UNESCO designates it, they will come. Does identifying world heritage sites do more harm than good?(Cover story)
April 10, 2006... Byline: Barbie Nadeau (With Katka Krosnar in Prague) In 1240, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II built his military fortress, Castel del Monte, on a lonely hill in central Puglia, where he had a perfect view of approaching enemies. He...

Guests Welcome; Tourists don't deserve their bum rap. Without them, Provence might become a derelict bastion of mediocre food.(Cover story)
April 10, 2006... Byline: Peter Mayle (Mayle is the author of "A Year in Provence" and, most recently, "Confessions of a French Baker.") Tourists are guilty, so we are frequently told, of a number of crimes: upsetting the ecological balance of Mount...

Damage Control; Despite their bad reputation, tourists can also be one of the world's greatest forces for preservation.(Cover story)
April 10, 2006... Byline: Alex Kerr (With Kasia Gruszkowska in London and Daniela Perdomo in Paris) Nobody much likes tourists. They have a reputation for being loud, rude and disruptive. They are blamed for everything from prostitution to environmental...

Lots of Room at the Inn; Foreigners are keeping Japan's famed ryokan alive.(Cover story)
April 10, 2006... Byline: Christian Caryl Japan's traditional inns--called ryokan --are generally small, family-owned establishments that specialize in sumptuous, old-fashioned cuisine. Guests are encouraged to lounge around in yukata, or traditional...

Designed by Human Hands; Sometimes it's better not to go 'back to nature.'.(Cover story)
April 10, 2006... Byline: Stefan Theil What do the Austrian alps, Philippine rice terraces and India's Kerala Backwaters have in common? True, they are some of the world's most beautiful--and ecologically diverse--landscapes. But they're also the product of...

Giving Back; Hotels Make It Easier To Make A Difference.(Cover story)
April 10, 2006... Byline: Alexandra A. Seno (With Michelle Jana Chan) When Bill Frew checked into the Hotel de la Paix in Cambodia in January, he planned to eat, drink and relax in five-star luxury, as well as see Angkor Wat. Frew, an American senior...

Friendlier Footprints; Improving Relations with the Locals.(Cover story)
April 10, 2006... Byline: Jenny Hontz It's not easy to provide five-star luxury in the midst of a treasured wilderness without damaging the environment. But the King Pacific Lodge in British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest manages that difficult feat. For...

Behind the Curtain; An intimate look at a too-popular tribe.(Cover story)(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... Originally of Tibetan origin, the Naxi people settled in China's Yunnan province about 2,000 years ago. They brought with them the Dongba religion--a mix of animist spirit and ancestor worship--and developed their own ceremonial music, as well...

Artificial; Skiing in a desert? Surfing in the snow? The leading 21st century hotspots will be simulated.(Cover story)
April 10, 2006... Byline: Tara Pepper (With Sarah Schafer in Macau and Vibhuti Patel in Dubai) Desert sand and temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius might deter some skiers, but not Mickdad and Minhal Bhojani. Whenever they need a downhill fix, the teenage...

Rebuilding the Past; Monuments destroyed by war are rising again.(Cover story)
April 10, 2006... Byline: Stefan Theil A 14-hectare site, just off Unter den Linden, Berlin's old imperial boulevard, has long been the city's most fought-over chunk of real estate. There, after 15 years of heated debate, demolition began last month on the...

Beyond Nature; Waves, snow, subs and ice.(Cover story)(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... Humankind has been trying to re-create nature's wonders since the first cavemen prayed for rain. That didn't work so well. But in recent years, we've gotten better at designing systems that put the natural elements to work for us. Here are four...

End of the Road; The real threat to travel is that our sense of wonder will vanish along with all the exotic destinations.(Cover story)
April 10, 2006... Byline: Marcel Theroux Far is not so far anymore. When I took my first long trip to India in 1986, I didn't speak to my parents for five months because the phone lines were so bad. I collected my mail at the Poste Restante counter each...

If You're Going...(Cover story)
April 10, 2006... Chapter One The world's treasures may be disappearing, but that doesn't mean you should forgo comfort and style when you go see them. Our picks: THE COMMUNE BY THE GREAT WALL, CHINA: Located an hour's drive from Beijing, these 11...

Power Flows to The Oil States; Since 2002, oil exports have seen revenues more than double, and surpluses quadruple, while the accounts of importers deteriorate.
April 10, 2006... Byline: Norbert Walker (WALTER is the chief economist at Deutsche Bank.) One dramatic but largely overlooked change in the global balance of economic power is the shift of wealth toward countries that supply energy and raw materials. Most...

The Good Life.(tourist tips)
April 10, 2006... Byline: Joseph Contreras (Linda Stern Joseph Contreras Karen Springen) Transport: Scooting Around By Silvia Spring With temperatures--as well as the price of public transport--on the rise, it's the perfect time to leave your car...

Perspectives.
April 10, 2006... "It was like falling off a cliff for three months, waiting to hit the ground." Journalist Jill Carroll, who was released unharmed March 30 after being held by kidnappers for 82 days "Yes, I know we have made tactical errors, thousands...

Periscope.(Japan; Africa; Germany; Andy Card resigns; video Bordergames; "The Da Vinci Code"; "This is Our War" )(Correction notice)
April 10, 2006... ***** CORRECTION: Correction: The original version of this article incorrectly stated that the Pentagon told Japan that the transfer of 8,000 U.S. Marines from Okinawa to Guam would cost $10 billion. The correct cost of the move is $7.5...

Toss the Wallet and Grab the Mobile.
April 10, 2006... Byline: Emily Flynn Vencat Forgetting to take your mobile phone when you leave for work in the morning may soon be debilitating for Europeans. Sure, the vast majority of workers already rely on their mobiles for everything from listening...

Slowing Down Internet Time.(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... Byline: Michael Hastings With a shelf life of less than 60 days, the average Web page, like most things on the Internet, is ephemeral. A new organization, Earthcapsule.com, is looking to save lost pages for posterity by reviving an old...

International Mail Call.(Letter to the editor)
April 24, 2006... Aging, But Active Readers of our Feb. 20 cover story on exercise and aging were unanimous in their praise of the report. Calling it "first-rate," one letter writer advocated walking: "It triggers the release of endorphins." Another, a...

Voices in the Darkness; Essays by Iranian intellectuals reveal the complexity of life caught between the mullahs and modernity.(My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Byline: Andrew Nagorski Beyond the headlines spawned by Iran's nuclear ambitions, beyond the confrontation between Iranian political and religious leaders and Western governments trying to devise some way to keep them in check, there's a...

Cutting a Deal With Tehran; Washington should leave its ambitions for regime change to developments within Iran--namely, prosperity and a sense of security.
April 24, 2006... Byline: Mahmood Sariolghalam (Sariolghalam is an associate professor of international relations at the National University of Iran.) Richard Nixon deserves more credit. His historic 1972 trip to China was indeed, as the president himself...

The West is Red Again; A rancorous election in Italy, protests in France. The Bolshie old days are back.
April 24, 2006... Byline: Christopher Dickey (With Jacob Barigazzi in Milan, Barbie Nadeau in Rome and Tracy McNicoll in Paris) The hammer and sickle quivered on wind-blown red flags as young men and women, shouting old slogans of revolution, marched through...

His Way Works; Spain's Zapatero may have quietly found the secret to balancing high economic growth and social harmony.
April 24, 2006... Byline: Stryker Mcguire and Eric Pape (With Mike Elkin, Cathleen McGuigan and Alex McRae) Shortly after Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero became Spain's prime minister, his chief economic adviser ran a little business-school experiment. Go out...

Mapping Crime; Police around world are using technology to anticipate where the bad guys will strike next.
April 24, 2006... Byline: Mac Margolis (With Steven Ambrus in Bogota and Sumeet Chatterjee in Mumbai) A decade ago, BogotA had a bad name. Violent crime was out of control. Rather than simply buying more guns or patrol cars, BogotA's cops went for something...

Opinion: Latin Lessons; Stagnating France and Italy could do worse than to learn a little Spanish.
April 24, 2006... Byline: Denis Macshane (MacShane, a Labour M.P., was British minister of Europe until 2005.) Se habla espanol? The question answers itself in more and more American cities. By contrast, Spain's two biggest neighbors, France and Italy,...

Sliding Backward; An ugly nationalist mood is brewing in Ankara, stalling once hailed reforms.
April 24, 2006... Byline: Owen Matthews (With Sami Kohen in Istanbul) Whatever happened to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the outspoken prime minister whose bold reforms brought Turkey to the very threshold of Europe? He was a rebel who loosened the Turkish...

War of Wills; Behind the summit smiles, China may pose the most serious challenge to America and its global vision.(Cover story)
April 24, 2006... Byline: Melinda Liu (With Richard Ernsberger Jr. in New York, Joseph Contreras in Miami, Stephen Glain in Washington, Joe Cochrane in Burma, and Daniel Pepper and Alexandra Polier in Sudan) This week's long-awaited summit between Hu Jintao...

Trade: Clash of the Titans; China's refusal to revalue its currency is pushing the two countries toward conflict.(Cover story)
April 24, 2006... Byline: C. Fred Bergsten (Bergsten is director of the Institute for International Economics and coauthor of "China: The Balance Sheet: What the World Needs to Know Now About the Emerging Superpower" (PublicAffairs, 2006).) The United...

Deals That Work; With the world caught up in merger mania again, studies suggest fewer tie-ups will fail, this time.
April 24, 2006... Byline: Karen Lowry Miller No question, merger mania is back in the news. In a deal first broached five years ago, Alcatel is buying Lucent this month for $13.5 billion. AT&T has bid $83.4 billion for BellSouth, and Mittal Steel is...

Portrait of a Queen; Seldom-seen pictures reveal a jovial Elizabeth II in honor of her 80th birthday.
April 24, 2006... Byline: Ginanne Brownell To her critics, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II is a stiff and off-putting curmudgeon, hostile to modernizing the monarchy and rather unfeeling toward her heirs. But a new photo exhibit at Windsor Castle to...

Shooting on Location; With fluid storytelling and savvy marketing, a pair of ambitious brothers is transforming China's film industry.(Wang brothers)
April 24, 2006... Byline: Alexandra A. Seno When Beijing film producer James Wang Zhonglei ran into his old friend Zhang Ziyi at Cannes last May, he told the Chinese actress that he had a big "headache" because he didn't have a leading lady for his new...

Pollution: Losing Some Luster; With gold prices skyrocketing, environmentalists are taking aim at one of the world's dirtiest industries.
April 24, 2006... Byline: Jimmy Langman At first Mario Mautz didn't think much about the Pascua Lama gold mine, 60 kilometers from his fields in Huasco, an agricultural valley in northern Chile. But then Mautz, who grows avocados and fruits, learned that...

Here's Dr. Doom; A founding father of environmentalism has embraced fatalism--and the public loves it.(James Lovelock )
April 24, 2006... Byline: William Underhill James Lovelock has a modest explanation for his success. At the age of 86, the grand old seer of the environmentalist movement is high on the best-seller lists again with an account of the coming eco-apocalypse....

The Last Word: Javad Zarif--Finding the 'Missing Link'.
April 24, 2006... Byline: Malcolm Beith Last Tuesday fiery Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proudly boasted that his country had joined "the club of nuclear countries" after successfully enriching uranium. The move defied U.N. calls for Tehran to...

The European Property Bust; Germany is a sobering harbinger for Europe; with the labor force peaking, vacancy rates are high, and demand for office space is slack.
April 24, 2006... Byline: M. Leanne Lachman (Lachman is an executive in residence at Columbia Business School and a governor of the Urban Land Institute Foundation.) In Europe's major cities, residential and commercial real estate has shared in the...

The Good Life.
April 24, 2006... Byline: Peter Suciu (B. J. Lee Hallee Berg Lauren Mack) Technology: Project A Little Better By Peter Suciu Robert Fowkes owns more movies than your local video store. His collection tops 6,000 titles-- from "Pleasantville" to...

Perspectives.
April 24, 2006... [Israel] is heading toward annihilation." Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, lashing out at the Jewish state days after saying that Tehran can now enrich uranium strong enough to produce nuclear fuel "It make my day." ...

Periscope.
April 24, 2006... Byline: Stephen Glain (Mark Hosenball Jacopo Barigazzi Christian Caryl and Akiko Kashiwagi Andrew Romano Dorothy Kalins Silvia Spring Devin Gordon) World Economy: No More Easy Money Is the age of easy money over? After years of cheap...

A Rooftop Windmill Of Your Very Own.
April 24, 2006... Byline: Benjamin Sutherland As projects to build "wind farms" of massive, electricity-generating wind turbines continue to multiply, so do the ranks of "not in my backyard" protesters. The turbines, some with blades that sweep as high as a...

BlogWatch; A mainstream-media look at what's hot and what's not in the fluid and highly changeable world of international weblogs.(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Is Goldman Sachs chairman Henry Paulson Jr.'s sideline as chair of the Nature Conservancy undermining shareholders' interests? Burning issues like this one get aired on dealbreaker.com, a Wall Street blog. Iraqi bloggers tell us what life...