Newsweek International articles from August 2006

Newsweek International archives from August 2006

Mail Call.(Letter to the editor)
August 7, 2006... The AIDS Battle Readers, all pleased with our June 5 cover story on AIDS, shared their own views, concerns and stories. One wrote about her brother's AIDS death, another about his friend's. The rest reiterated the need for AIDS education...

Back to Square One? Singh might end the 'normalization' process unless Musharraf cracks down on jihadist groups, but that may be the wrong message.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Ron Morea, Sudip Mazumdar and Zahid Hussain It's a good thing Manmohan Singh is not easily excitable. In the aftermath of the bloody Mumbai train blasts that killed nearly 200 people last month, the Indian prime minister has faced...

A Bang-Up Business in Illegals; The United States tightens its border. And 'coyotes' couldn't be happier--or richer.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Monica Campbell The town of Altar has all the trappings of a way station on the underground railroad that ferries illegal aliens from Mexico to the United States. Located 80 kilometers south of the Arizona border, the grimy...

The Drug Lord's Dame; A secret affair reveals Colombia's 'pact with the devil.'.(Virginia Vallejo, Pablo Escobar, and politicians and traffickers relations)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Steven Ambrus For more than a decade Virginia Vallejo held her tongue about her torrid love affair with Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. But when the former newscaster finally broke her silence last month, her sensational...

Bosnia Reborn; Europe's one time wasteland, devastated by war, ideology and ethnic hatred, is staging one helluva comeback.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Ginanne Brownell (With Kris Anderson in London) Elvir Causevic left sarajevo in 1990, just before the war engulfed Bosnia and smashed it to smithereens. Now 33 and educated in America, a member of Yale University's research staff,...

Pinball Wizard ... 2. 0; Japan's modern video arcades are awesome! But they may be luring the young away from responsibility.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Brad Stone One rainy night in a tokyo arcade, a twentysomething teacher who wishes to be known as Momo saved the world from the evil forces of the Principality of Zeon. He was playing Mobile Space 0079, a videogame based on the...

The New Space Race; With the demand for white-knuckle rides into the stratosphere expected to soar, countries are vying to build spaceports for rocket-bound tourists.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Michael Hastings and Allan Madrid The future of the space industry is a 70-square-kilo-meter piece of desert in New Mexico near the White Sands Missile Range, about an hour's drive from the nearest city, Las Cruces. The skies are...

Iran Is Giddy, but Worried; Casting the conflict in apocalyptic terms hasn't resolved the nuclear issue--and won't help Lebanon either.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Nisid Hajari is Newsweek International's managing editor. The rhetoric at friday prayers last week blew as fierce and hot as the dry wind outside. In a cavernous hall at Tehran University, Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami thundered against...

The Post-Neoliberal Age; We have put in place new rules of the game for gas companies that correspond to the new situation in the world market.(Interview)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Jimmy Langman Alvaro Garcia Linera's official title is bolivian vicepresident, though that doesn't quite capture his position in the Latin American left. The 43-year-old mathematician and soci-ologist--and prolific author--is, most...

Europe's Hour: Come and Gone? Ever since Washington decided 'war-war' was for men and 'jaw-jaw' was for wimps, the United States has been a spent force in the Middle East.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Denis MacShane (MacShane, a Labour M.P., was Tony Blair's minister for Europe from 2001 to 2005.) In 1992 a certain Jacques Poos, the unknown foreign minister of Luxembourg, announced grandly that "the hour of Europe has come."...

No Emerging Emergency; Even at their May high, the picture for emerging markets was different from the technology bubble of 1999, or even Japan in 1989.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Ruchir Sharma (Sharma is a co-head of global emerging markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management.) Emerging markets seem to be following a financial-market pattern charted by legendary investor John Templeton: "Bull markets are...

The Good Life.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Karla Bruning, Amber Haq, Allan Madrid, Marian Smith,Meghan McCain Style: Sitting Out By Karla Bruning It was only a matter of time before today's style-obsessed young consumers turned their attention to the patio. Chic...

Casualty of War; Steven Green went to Iraq vowing to 'kill'em all.' The Army says he went way too far.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Sarah Childress and Michael Hirsh (With Michael Hastings in New York) Even before he went to Iraq, Steven Green scared people. Growing up in oil-rich Midland, Texas, a small community full of pumping jacks, pickup trucks and...

Perspectives.
August 7, 2006... And we want it to stop now. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, at a joint press conference with U.S. President George W. Bush, speaking about resolving the conflict in Lebanon. "The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite." U.S. Democratic...

Periscope.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Owen Matthews, Michael Isikoff, Karen MacGregor, Zvika Krieger, Silvia Spring Russia: Another Hot Front Is Russia trying to provoke a war on Georgia's border? Last week saw the latest in a series of flare-ups as Georgian troops...

Games for Good; These videogames are as much about spreading awareness as entertainment.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Allan Madrid You are a frog who happens to live on a farm. Your aim is to pick up as many grapes, oranges and other fruit as quickly as you can. But the fruit is going rotten, and you've got to compete with worms, donkeys and...

Q & A: Daisuke Enomoto.(Interview)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Brad Stone it's good to be Daisuke Enomoto, or "Dice-K," as the Internet multimillionaire is known in Japan. In September, he will become the fourth private individual to pay $20 million to visit the International Space Station,...

Drinking Tech: Bottle Meters; A new wireless application makes for precise pours.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Benjamin Sutherland Bartenders aren't happy about this use of the airwaves. In July, Hotel des Balances in Lucerne, Switzerland, fit its liquor bottles with wireless flow meters, made by Beverage Metrics, that keep track of how...

Letters.(Letter to the editor)
August 14, 2006... Failing the Future Readers of our June 12 report on Europe's failing schools agreed the system is broken. "Excellent report," praised one; "timely," agreed another. "The malaise extends to higher education," said a third. The rest blamed...

Capitalist Manifesto; A specter is haunting Europe. It's the gospel of free markets, loosed from chains.
August 14, 2006... Byline: Stefan Theil Europe could use more people like Ehssan Dariani. The 26-year-old entrepreneur runs a hot Internet start-up called studiVZ--Europe's fastest-growing social network for university students. Since setting up in a cheap...

Unwelcome Visits; Why Japan's political establishment may be ready for a break with the tradition of paying respects at Yasukuni.
August 14, 2006... Byline: Christian Caryl (With Akiko Kashiwagi and Naoko Kozuki in Tokyo) It's that time of the year again. "It is a matter of individual freedom as to how one offers condolences to those who died at war," wrote Japanese Prime Minister...

Are They Worthy? Despite the shocking extremes, new studies claim CEO pay matches performance, and increasingly so.
August 14, 2006... Byline: Rana Foroohar (With Barrett Sheridan in New York) Ogling executive pay is the spectator sport of business. The catcalls from the stands have gotten louder as new studies throw out eye-popping statistics about how rich CEOs are...

Force of Nature; Environmentalism is no longer the province of the left. Conservative politicians and big business have both jumped on the bandwagon.(Cover story)
August 14, 2006... Byline: Emily Flynn Vencat (With John Sparks in New York, Karla Adam in London and Akiko Kashiwagi in Tokyo) It seems like a hippie entrepreneur's dream come true: an ecostore with cash registers powered by rooftop wind turbines, skylights...

Summer Substance; Headed for the beach? These may not be light reads, but they definitely are riveting. And don't forget the sunscreen.(The Delivery Room; Theft: A Love Story; District and Circle; The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox)(Book review)
August 14, 2006... Byline: Tara Pepper Summer reading doesn't have to be all smut and fluff. It can make you mourn, yearn, empathize and even think. When fall comes around, you'll not only be rested, but wiser. Some choice vacation picks: The Delivery...

Armistead And 'Tony'; A deception travels from life to novel--to big screen.(Interview)(Brief article)
August 14, 2006... Byline: Devin Gordon In 1993, author Armistead Maupin befriended, via telephone, a 14-year-old boy named Tony who'd written a memoir about being sexually abused. Gradually, however, Maupin began to suspect that "Tony" was the woman who was...

Now Comes The Next War; Before the war, half the Lebanese supported Hizbullah. Now more than 85 percent do.
August 14, 2006... Byline: Rami G.Khouri (Khouri is editor-at-large of the Daily Star in Beirut.) The Lebanese Shiite movement Hizbullah has battled Israel tenaciously for nearly a month, at horrendous cost to the people and infrastructure of Lebanon. Soon...

Iran Follies; Why U.S. policy toward Tehran will only make matters worse.
August 14, 2006... Byline: Nisid Hajari (With Maziar Bahari in Tehran and Zvika Krieger in New York) On Iranian state TV these days, the appeals to solidarity with Hizbullah are anything but subtle. One slick video collage zips from U.S. President George W....

Appointment In Damascus; In March I asked an old friend what he though would happen in Lebanon. 'It's not Syria's problem anymore,' he told me. 'We gave Lebanon to Iran.'.
August 14, 2006... Byline: Robert Baer (Baer, a former CIA officer, is author of "Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude.") In March I ran into an old friend in Damascus, a Syrian businessman close to President Bashar al-Assad....

Japan's Not-So-Hot Recovery; The signs of strength in sales and investment are strong by Japanese historical standards, but pale in comparison with the United States.
August 14, 2006... Byline: Gail Fosler (Fosler is chief economist of the Conference Board, a global not-for-profit business-research group in New York.) Financial markets and "reflation bulls" overstate the underlying strength in Japan's nascent recovery....

The Good Life.
August 14, 2006... Byline: Ginanne Brownell, Amber Haq, Sana Butler, Zvika Krieger, Cathy Lu Shopping: Discreet Boutiques By Ginanne Brownell Judging by the new film "The Devil Wears Prada," life inside the fashion trenches is all about Chanel suits...

Squeezed in The Middle; They were 'saviors of the Senate.' But the Gang of 14 may find that moderation doesn't pay at the polls.
August 14, 2006... Byline: Jonathan Darman and Holly Bailey Fran DeWine just wanted to talk about apple pie. Campaigning last month for her husband, Ohio Republican Sen. Mike DeWine, she handed constituents a family cookbook, complete with Mike's favorite pie...

Perspectives.
August 14, 2006... People in Israel and in Lebanon have suffered enough. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, urging the Security Council to act quickly to resolve the conflict "A low-intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely...

Periscope.
August 14, 2006... Byline: Richard Wolffe and John Barry, Owen Matthews and Anna Nemstova, John Sparks, Richard Wolffe, Karla Bruning, Chrissy Balz Exclusive: Making Plans for Civil War The Bush administration insists Iraq is a long way from civil war,...

The Greening of America; With Windmills, Low-Energy Homes, New Forms Of Recycling And Fuel-Efficient Cars, Americans Are Taking Conservation Into Their Own Hands.(Cover story)
August 14, 2006... Byline: Jerry Adler (With Jessica Ramirez, Karen Springen, Brad Stone, Karen Breslau, Keith Naughton, Jamie Reno, Ken Shulman, Matthew Philips, Staci Semrad, Margaret Nelson, A. Christian Jean, Andrew Murr and Jac Chebatoris) One morning...

Washington: Shades Of Green; To activists he's a one-man earth-wrecking machine. But George W. Bush thinks of himself as a conservationist.(Cover story)
August 14, 2006... Byline: Richard Wolffe (With Karen Breslau) Before moving into the White House, George W. Bush built the kind of vacation home that Al Gore might have designed. His Texas ranch captures rain and wastewater for landscaping. Solar panels line...

Technology: Hooray, Hard Disk! Experts agree that the amazing gains in storage density at low cost will continue for decades.
August 14, 2006... Byline: Steven Levy If there's a bottle of vintage champagne you've been saving, next month is the time to pop it open: it's the 50th anniversary of hard-disk storage. Don't laugh. On Sept. 13, 1956, IBM shipped the first unit of the RAMAC...

Environment: Smog Beaters.(Brief article)
August 14, 2006... Byline: Benjamin Sutherland Smog is a fact of life in most cities, but several Italian municipalities think they've found a way to beat it. A new type of sidewalk brick breaks down carbon monoxide, a poisonous byproduct of automobile...

Lotion. Scrubbing. Pedicures.(Brief article)
August 14, 2006... Byline: Naoko Kozuki You've tried everything on those flaky feet of yours. Maybe you need the Garra rufa treatment? These tiny fish nibble away dead skin and are used as a treatment for psoriasis sufferers in certain areas of the world,...

Mail Call.
August 21, 2006... A Terrorist's Death Our June 19 report on Zarqawi's death garnered unexpected responses from readers. "Good riddance," wrote one. But, pointed out another, "many more people have died from U.S. bombs." A third said, "Our job won't be any...

Room With A View; Anybody who's anyone in Europe these days is buying a vacation retreat. And they're not doing it close to home. Think Croatia, Bulgaria or Morocco.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Stryker Mcguire (With Karla Adam and William Underhill in London and Ginny Power in Paris) A year and a half ago, Erich Schmidt had a bright idea. "Why pay other people to rent a house for holidays," he thought, "when I could just...

On the Baltic Beaches; For half a century they were obscured by the Iron Curtain. Now they're Europe's latest getaway.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Stefan Theil Ludorf Manor, in the former East Germany, was a wreck when Manfred Achtenhagen bought it in 1998. Built in 1698 by Baron von Knuth, it had been plundered and expropriated as "class-enemy property" by the invading...

Cash and Carry; Tiny Montenegro rides high on Russian money.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Owen Matthews Russians just love Montenegro. The tiny republic, which became the world's newest nation after voting recently for independence from neighboring Serbia, is an island of Slavic culture on one of the most beautiful...

Oil's Dirty Laundry; Why are oil prices so high? Partly because the industry is dominated by incompetent monopolies.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Stephen Glain Remember the giant companies that once dominated the world oil market as the Seven Sisters? Of course, they have long since been expelled as owners from the Middle East to Mexico, and must now beg and barter for...

Second Thoughts; Support for joining the EU has fallen dramatically, driven in part by the high cost of living by European rules.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Owen Matthews (With Sami Kohen in Istanbul) Once, Europe was a sweetshop, and Turkey was an eager kid with his face pressed to the window. Just two years ago, polls showed that more than 70 percent of Turks wanted to join the...

The Celebrity Soloist; 'Core' classical artists sell themselves as well as sing.(Danielle de Niese)
August 21, 2006... Byline: Tara Pepper A self-confessed member of the MTV generation who admits to having Coldplay on her iPod and a pronounced "pop-culture side" to her personality might not seem a likely candidate to become one of opera's most feted young...

What Else Ends With Castro.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Jorge G. Castaneda (Castaneda is Global Distinguished Professor of Politics and Latin American Studies at New York University.) As always in countries like Cuba, speculation is by definition idle. No one knows whether Fidel Castro...

A New Man for The Mideast?(Hassan Nasrallah)
August 21, 2006... Byline: Rami Khouri (Khouri is editor-at-large at the Daily Star in Beirut.) He appears, almost mystically, every decade or so in the Arab world--a charismatic, militant figure who challenges Israel, defies the United States and rallies...

California Hustlin'; The shameless appeal of American Apparel.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Jennifer Ordonez (With Andrew Romano and Joanna Broder) Spend an hour talking to Dov Charney, founder of American Apparel, and he is likely to start yelling: about his passion for his edgy clothing company, for sexy women, for being...

World of Knowledge; From their student bodies to their research practices, universities are becoming more global.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Richard Levin (Levin is the president of Yale University.) As never before in their long history, universities have become instruments of national competition as well as instruments of peace. They are the locus of the scientific...

Paying The Price; Europe's universities must start considering innovative new methods of raising money if they want to stay competitive.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Tony Blair (Blair is the prime minister of Britain.) Academics have a venerable tradition of sharing ideas and knowledge across national boundaries. In today's shrinking world, the universities that employ them must also look...

Sowing Seeds; From Cornell in Qatar to Monash in Malaysia, satellite campuses are a booming business.
August 21, 2006... Byline: William Underhill The campus architecture suggests Arabia, and the surrounding sands stretch to the horizon. But for 350 students, this is a tiny patch of Scotland in the Dubai desert. They'll receive their degrees from Heriot-Watt...

Wanted: Foreigners; Universities are competing to attract the best, brightest and richest students.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Ginanne Brownell (With Akiko Kashiwagi in Tokyo) Students who want to obtain their degrees abroad have never had more options. For decades, the best, brightest and richest typically chose between Oxbridge and America's top...

The Web Finds A Job; like so much on the net, it took a while. but online education is coming into its own.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Emily Flynn Vencat Studying in Iraq or Uganda doesn't mean having to pass up a diploma from a world-class university anymore. Not when so many are available online. Oxford University, to cite just one example, has offered its...

Chasing Cash; University treasuries used to be sleepy and slow. But now the race to pile up money is on.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Stephen Glain It was clear the good times were over. After the dot-com crash, University of Washington treasurer V'Ella Warren saw that record growth in the college's endowment was finished without a professional at the helm. "I...

This Rampart Is Rising; In many nations, class barriers to college are growing.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Rana Foroohar (With Jason Overdorf in New Delhi, Tracy McNicoll in Paris and Akiko Kashiwagi in Tokyo) When students take to the streets, they're usually united against something like war or racism. But when Indian students took to...

No Degrees Necessary; China expands its vocational training to narrow the economic divide.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Quindlen Krovatin China is turning to vocational training as a means of prolonging its economic ascendancy and quelling unrest. It's an urgent priority, given that recent college graduates can't find jobs and the lack of...

Sexing Up Science; Western educators and industrialists team up to boost engineering's appeal.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Mac Margolis and Karla Bruning (With William Underhill in London, Jason Overdorf in New Delhi and Corinna Emundts in Berlin) With his unkempt hair, halogen smile and soft spot for Tamil poetry, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is not your...

Med-School Makeover; The new field of 'narrative medicine' is reintroducing doctors to listening.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Mary Carmichael Dr. A. Scott Pearson's patient had a problem--two problems, actually, and only one of them seemed fixable by a surgeon. The patient, an elderly man, needed to have a tumor removed from his colon. He also didn't want...

'A' Stands For Arabic; Americans have been urged to take up the language. For many, it's a lucrative choice.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Andrew Romano (With Chrissy Balz) As a college senior, Dana Stroul had just decided to study Arabic--and Mom was, well, skeptical. "We had some heavy talks," says Stroul. But this was after 9/11, and it wasn't long before the...

Crunch This; B-schools rebound from an identity crisis.(business and M.B.A.s)
August 21, 2006... Byline: Tara Pepper One little-known aftershock of the corporate scandals that began with Enron was an M.B.A. backlash. At a time when companies were scrutinizing every penny they spent, they also questioned the value of advanced business...

This Way Out; A new American dean in France on the b-school crisis and how to fix it.(Interview)
August 21, 2006... Byline: Rana Foroohar One answer to the M.B.A. backlash comes from J. Frank Brown, the new dean of Europe's top B-school, INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. A former head of PricewaterhouseCoopers' $3.5 billion advisory-services unit, Brown...

Phi Beta Capitalism; Inspired by spinoffs like Google and Sun, schools worldwide take start-up 101.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Stefan Theil What do Google, Yahoo and Sun Microsystems have in common? Like hundreds of Silicon Valley firms, they all trace their roots to Stanford University. The wealth, jobs and economic dynamism thus created have not been...

Teaching Humanity; In our globalized world, an arts education is more crucial than ever as a way to cultivate sympathy for others.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Martha Nussbaum (Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago.) We live in a world that is dominated by the profit motive--which suggests to concerned citizens that...

With Rooms to Grow; Universities embrace the design revolution.(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... Byline: Stefan Theil As education turns into an increasingly competitive global business, universities are using design more than ever as a way to set themselves apart. They're employing star architects like Americans Frank Gehry and...

SHARED WISDOM; For decades, Asian universities have followed western practices. now it's time for them to take the lead.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Kishore Mahbubani (Mahbubani is dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (NUS) and author of "Can Asians Think?") A revolution is coming in the field of global education. Up to now, all leading universities have relied...

The Right To Learn; Students around the world are demanding access to higher education. But it's not always easy to provide.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Vartan Gregorian (Gregorian is the president of Carnegie Corporation of New York and president emeritus of Brown University.) In America, higher education has long been considered not a privilege but a right. The 1862 passage of the...

The Good Life.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Ginanne Brownell (Brian Byrnes Joseph Contreras Michelle Jana Chan) Travel: Northern Charm By Ginanne Brownell If you can't stand the heat or the crowds of Greece, Italy or Spain, consider heading "up north" to the beach...

Perspectives.
August 21, 2006... "This was intended to be mass murder." London Police Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson, on the foiled plot to bomb planes heading to the United States from Britain "As long as there is Israeli aggression, it is our right to fight...

Periscope.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Michael Hastings and Scott Johnson (Tracy McNicoll Jonathan Mummolo Allan Madrid Ramin Setoodeh) Iraq: Is Moqtada Losing His Grip? American and Iraqi forces face a major problem in Baghdad: how to deal with the Mahdi Army,...

Identity Angel; The program looks for the 'holy trinity'--three key data points of a person's identity.
August 21, 2006... Byline: Benjamin Sutherland (With Karla Bruning) Thieves have been stealing identities for a long time, but the Internet has no doubt accelerated the trend. A big reason is that search technology makes it easier to pull together information...

Blogwatch.
August 21, 2006... Fed up with workplace discrimination, women are now fighting back in the equal-opportunity environment of the blogosphere. Ana Marie Cox broke into the scene a few years ago with the political blog Wonkette (wonkette.com ), in the United...

A New Lens.(water hydrogel combination)(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... Byline: Allan Madrid A new lens can focus without external electronics. A team led by engineer Hongrui Jiang at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has made a microscopic lens out of a droplet of water surrounded by a ring of hydrogel, a...