Newsweek International articles from December 2005

Newsweek International archives from December 2005

Mail Call: Sound Mind and Body.(Letter to the Editor)
December 5, 2005... Readers responding to our Oct. 17 articles on stress and the heart emphasized the importance of a healthy life-style and attitude. "Illness is often caused by deep-seated emotions," one contended. Another advised "counseling, antidepressants or...

The North Pole Heats Up; As global warming melts the Arctic pack ice, one of the world's most remote and potentially energy-rich regions is becoming more accessible. And the race to stake a claim to the icy wastes is picking up speed.(Cover Story)
December 5, 2005... Byline: William Underhill Who would want Hans Island? It's a barren, windblown chunk of uninhabited rock measuring less than 1.5 square kilometers. And with the North Pole just a few hundred kilometers away, conditions--midwinter...

The Big Energy Chill; This winter's heating bills may mark a turn to the new era of higher oil prices. But there's an upside: the business case for alternatives is warming up quickly.(alternative energy market)(Cover Story)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Brad Stone (With Emily Flynn Vencat in London and Hideko Takayama in Tokyo) Energy prices are starting to make the rich world feel poor. The European Union recently warned that heating costs are set to rise "sharply," even in...

Autos: Going the Extra Mileage; With gas prices skyrocketing, even American automakers--the world's biggest guzzlers--are searching for new ways to save.(Cover Story)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Keith Naughton Inside Ford Motor Co.'s cavernous wind tunnel, a thin stream of smoke glides gracefully over the new Lincoln Zephyr. But what catches the eye of aerodynamic engineer Wayne Koester is a tiny somersault of smoke just...

Urban Renewal? Bangalore's poor infrastructure has sparked a bitter feud over city versus rural needs.
December 5, 2005... Byline: Ron Moreau and Sudip Mazumdar Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw has a lot invested in Bangalore, the mecca of southern India's new economy. She was born in the city--and in 1978, as a young chemist, she started the biotechnology company Biocon,...

Now What? Dayton 10 Years Later. In Serbia today, 'extremism means promoting the ideals of a normal life,' says Jovanovic.
December 5, 2005... Byline: Zoran Cirjakovic and Rod Nordland Anniversaries torment Cedomir Jovanovic. For a young man in a big hurry, there was little solace in celebrations last week marking 10 years since the Dayton peace accords ended the Bosnian war....

Coalition Politics: What Price Loyalty; As America debates its future in Iraq, U.S. allies face an awkward question. How long do they keep their forces in?
December 5, 2005... Byline: William Underhill (With Barbie Nadeau in Rome and Kasia Gruszkowska in London) Tony Blair knows all about loyalty. Without complaint, the British prime minister has taken years of flak for supporting the U.S. on Iraq. In the last...

My Life in Combat; Fed up with the coverage in Iraq, soldiers are penning their own blogs. Hollywood can't be far behind.
December 5, 2005... Byline: Tara Pepper Colby Buzzell had spent nearly nine months as a U.S. infantry soldier based in Mosul, Iraq, when his battalion was involved in a ferocious gun battle that engulfed the city. Scrolling through news Web sites the next...

It's A Mall World After All; Critics love to hate shopping centers as symbols of all that is wrong with American culture. But as they go global, they are stimulating economic growth throughout the developing world.(Cover Story)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Mac Margolis (With Sudip Mazumdar in New Delhi, Sumeet Chatterjee in Mumbai, Quindlen Krovatin in Beijing, Joanna Kowalska-Iszkowska in Warsaw, William Underhill in London and Alexandra Polier in Nairobi) When the Los Angeles firm...

Qin Yaqing; A New Breed In Beijing.(vice dean, China Foreign Affairs University)(Interview)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Melinda Liu As Beijing's economy and global influence continue to grow, so does the relationship between China and the United States. When George W. Bush visited China recently, he asked for greater currency reforms,...

It's Time for A Turnaround; Japan's corporate balance sheets are in better shape than at any time since the 1970s.
December 5, 2005... Byline: Henry Blodget (Blodget, a former securities analyst, writes frequently for Slate and other publications. He owns Japan-focused index funds.) On Nov. 1, a software glitch at the Tokyo Stock Exchange shut down trading for the better...

Deluxe Delights.
December 5, 2005... The priciest presents are the easiest ones to find. It's the affordable--yet still luxurious--gifts that are the trickiest to pick out, and they were our focus for this year's holiday gift guide. From stylish Zegna ties from Italy to Dr....

Ten Eco-Friendly Companies; Alternative-energy projects used to be the stuff of high-school science fairs. But pricey oil has changed the game, and the stories of these firms show that new technologies are winning over investors and customers, as well as saving the environment.(Cover Story)
December 5, 2005... ***** CORRECTION: In "Ten Eco-Friendly Companies" (Dec. 5, 2005), a reference was made to the disposal of palm-oil waste by Aarhus of Port Newark, N.J. In fact, the company, AarhusKarlshamn USA, Inc., does not refine or sell the palm oil...

Perspectives.
December 5, 2005... Byline: Quotation sources: AP, New York Times, Guardian, Reuters, AP, Reuters "[It is] genocide against the Iraqi people." Abdel-Ilah Nijm, a 28-year-old Iraqi house painter, on the recent suicide bombing outside a hospital in Al...

Periscope.
December 5, 2005... Byline: Alan Isenberg and Christopher Dickey, Stefan Theil and William Underhill, Joe Cochrane, Mary Carmichael, B. J. Lee and Ben Whitford, Sarah Schafer and Jonathan Ansfield, Nick Summers, Elise Soukup, Sean Smith IRAN: Reined in by the...

Sony Gets Caught With Slipped Discs.
December 5, 2005... Byline: Steven Levy Benjamin Franklin once remarked that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. In that case, someone should immediately dispatch a cadre of psychiatrists to the...

Letters.
December 12, 2005... Counterfeit Goods Readers praised our Oct. 24 cover story on the widespread trade in fakes that threatens the global economy. "A great job," cheered one, "keep up the good work." Echoed another, "You made some interesting and overdue...

Not Quite Paradise; Tourism numbers are way down, for good reason.
December 12, 2005... Byline: Kevin O'Flynn and Anna Nemtsova You're dropped in by a military helicopter, and off you go, reveling in some of the finest untouched powder skiing in Europe. This isn't France or Switzerland but southern Russia, on the slopes of...

Religion Versus Reality; Who is this man--a mystic, a bumbling political novice or an imminent threat to Iran's established order?
December 12, 2005... Byline: Richard Ernsberger Jr. (With Ladane Nasseri in Tehran and Alan Isenberg in New York) After Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran, he played a Persian version of the American actor Jimmy Stewart in the 1939 movie "Mr....

Face of the Future; Britain's long-suffering Tories dream of a born-again 'Camerlot.' Is charismatic David Cameron their savior?
December 12, 2005... Byline: Stryker McGuire (With Kasia Gruszkowska in London) In the distance, you can barely discern them: a ragged band of politicians and camp followers emerging from the wilderness. This is Britain's Conservative Party today. After eight...

Building Blocks; At next week's East Asia Summit, there will be talk of creating a regional common market and, eventually, a single currency. Are those plausible ideas or a pipe dream?
December 12, 2005... Byline: Christian Caryl (With Joe Cochrane in Bangkok, Marites D. Vitug in Manila, Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop in Singapore and Lorien Holland in Kuala Lumpur) Just imagine: it's a sunny winter's day in 2045, and you're arriving in Bangkok...

Who Needs Electrons? Light can carry more information faster than electricity. Now engineers want to use it in computers.
December 12, 2005... Byline: Michael Hastings Last Christmas, Dr. Mario Pannicia received a gift not even Santa Claus could deliver. He and his colleagues at Intel's Silicon Photonics Lab succeeded in making the first laser out of silicon, the stuff of...

Talking to The Demons; Schizophrenia is no longer seen as a genetically predetermined disease.
December 12, 2005... Byline: Tara Pepper Mike Harris left Cambridge, England, for university in Scotland filled with the natural enthusiasm for starting an independent life. But he couldn't handle all the partying and drugs on campus. After a year he had moved...

A Native Speaker; The campaign of Bolivian indigenous leader Evo Morales is lending hope to the region's poor but increasingly assertive underclass.
December 12, 2005... Byline: Jimmy Langman On the ballot, he is listed as Sixto Jumpiri, one more candidate in the Bolivian national elections later this month. But to the Aymara and Quechua Indians of the Bolivian highlands, he is better known as Apu Mallku,...

Interview: 'Our Own Hands'; The presidential front runner on discrimination, development, the rights of indigenous Bolivians.(Congressman Evo Morales)(Interview)(Excerpt)
December 12, 2005... Byline: Jimmy Langman On Dec. 18, six months after Bolivian President Carlos Mesa was forced to resign by a wave of street protests spearheaded by indigenous peoples, South America's poorest country will again go to the polls. If...

Two Views of a Firing; The Lavagna affair is local. The fallout could be global.(Roberto Lavagna)
December 12, 2005... Byline: Mac Margolis and Brian Byrnes It's not necessarily about you. Global investors would do well to remember that as they watch the unfolding melodrama in Argentina. When quixotic President Nestor Kirchner fired his Finance minister,...

China Is On The Move; Of all the threats to its economic boom, Beijing officially encourages one, mass internal migration. It's a very smart choice.
December 12, 2005... Byline: Stephen Glain The conventional view of China counts three basic threats to its economic boom: corruption and disrespect for the rule of law, environmental degradation and the tide of rural migrants who threaten to overwhelm its...

Immigration: No Way To Work; The plight of Asia's migrant workers is a growing scandal.
December 12, 2005... Byline: George Wehrfritz and Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop (With Jonathan Adams in Taipei and B. J. Lee in Seoul) Kumar has little to show for his three and a half years mixing concrete at Singapore construction sites, without a single day off....

Raiders of the Lost Art; Can Rome use the trial of a high-profile museum curator to help end trafficking in stolen antiquities?
December 12, 2005... Byline: Eric Pape and Barbie Nadeau For decades, tombaroli --tomb raiders--have pillaged Italy's archeological sites for artifacts. Despite a 1939 law prohibiting the export of antiquities pulled from Italian soil, they--aided by ingenious...

Opinion: Power for Three; In the decades ahead, Japan, India and China will all jostle for regional influence. Call it tripartite Asia.
December 12, 2005... Byline: George Wehrfritz On the eve of the milestone East Asian Summit in Malaysia, China's state media last week trumpeted Beijing's "constructive attitude" toward the meeting. Yet in a briefing on prospects for the confab, senior...

Shimon Peres; Serving 60 Years to Life.(Interview)
December 12, 2005... Byline: Joanna Chen Shimon Peres, 82, has been a key figure in Israeli politics for six decades, serving as prime minister twice and holding an impressive number of major cabinet posts. In 1994 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Yasir...

The Good Life.
December 12, 2005... Byline: Ginanne Brownell, Michelle Jana Chan, Reinhard Engel, Michael Hastings, Tara Weingarten Fashion: Crazy For Cashmere By Ginanne Brownell Cashmere... just the sound of it is enough to send shoppers swooning with visions of...

International Perspectives.
December 12, 2005... "This is one of the scars on the conscience of our generation." U.N. General Assembly president Jan Eliasson, on World AIDS Day "You show the world you're not living by the principles you profess to believe in, and you lose all...

Periscope.
December 12, 2005... Byline: Rod Nordland, Andrew Romano, Karen Lowry Miller, William Underhill, Matthew Preusch, Nick Summers, Ramin Setoodeh Egypt: Brotherhood Bust-up Egypt's monthlong series of elections began with unprecedented openness and freedom...

Evolution of a Scientist; As recounted in a compelling new exhibit, his discoveries on a fateful voyage 170 years ago shook his faith and changed our conception of the origins of life.(Charles Darwin)(Biography)
December 12, 2005... Byline: Jerry Adler (With Anne Underwood and William Lee Adams) On a December night in 1831, HMS Beagle, on a mission to chart the coast of South America, sailed from Plymouth, England, straight into the 21st century. Onboard was a...

Getting Your Body (And Soul) Wired.(touch technology transmits through the body)
December 12, 2005... Byline: Kay Itoi In his gadget-filled office at Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Prof. Kohji Mitsubayashi tells a visitor to touch a transmitter with one hand and a receiver with another. Voila! A jaunty TV jingle blares from a pair...

Blog Watch; A mainstream-media look at weblogs.(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... From Afghanistan to Iraq to Kosovo, find military blogs from all over the world at milblogging.com, which indexes blogs by active-duty soldiers, veterans, news reporters and more. A venture-capital-funded superblog, Pajamas Media (osm.org),...

Ask the Technologist.(Letter to the Editor)
December 12, 2005... I'm looking for a digital camera--not a mobile phone--that has wireless built in. Wouldn't that offer greater flexibility to share photos with people? -Ted, Cleveland, Ohio Nikon has two cameras--the Coolpix P1 and P2 units--that...

The Master Of Moscow; Russia's capital city is a golden egg. The Kremlin aims to seize it in yet another play for power and privilege.
December 19, 2005... Byline: Michael Meyer Moscow is not merely Russia's capital. It is a treasure chest. The city is home to four fifths of the country's national wealth. It boasts more billionaires than New York or London. Everything and everyone is here:...

Viktor Yushchenko; Scarred by the Revolution.(Interview)
December 19, 2005... Byline: Rod Nordland With new elections only four months away, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's political problems are beginning to mount. The Ukrainian economy is tanking, the Orange coalition has fallen apart and a bitter dispute...

Who's to Blame? The Jilin mess has ruined Hu's candor campaign.
December 19, 2005... Byline: Melinda Liu and Jonathan Ansfield A 43-year-old apparatchik, Wang Wei wasn't the type to make headlines. Just a few months ago, he'd become the city of Jilin's deputy mayor responsible for, among other things, industrial management...

The Discomforts of Home; An innovative new housing project outside Tokyo aims to keep residents sharp by throwing them off balance. Duck!
December 19, 2005... Byline: Kay Itoi Most people, in choosing a new home, look for comfort: a serene atmosphere, smooth walls and floors, a logical layout. Nonsense, says Shusaku Arakawa, a Japanese artist based in New York. He and his creative partner, poet...

Heizo Takenaka; Not Quite Out Of the Woods.(Interview)
December 19, 2005... Byline: Fareed Zakaria, Christian Caryl and Hideko Takayama Heizo Takenaka has long been Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's point man for economic reform in Japan. After Koizumi was overwhelmingly re-elected in September, he appointed...

A 'Great' Second Act; Biz guru Jim Collins has advice for do-gooders.(Good to Great and the Social Sector)(Book Review)
December 19, 2005... Byline: Daniel McGinn (With Jessica Silver-Greenberg) In certain professions, there's a standard set of ambitions. Every TV star wants to be in movies. Every teeny-bopper starlet wants to record an album. And every business-book author...

To Save World Trade: Plan B.
December 19, 2005... Byline: Jeffrey E. Garten (GARTEN is the Juan Trippe Professor at the Yale School of Management. He can be contacted at jeffrey.garten@yale.edu.) The mood among the trade ministers gathering in Hong Kong this week is likely to be downbeat....

The Good Life.(includes multiple articles )
December 19, 2005... Byline: Stefan Thiel, Sana Butler, Ginanne Brownell, Florence Villeminot and Hideko Takayama, Michelle Jana Chan, Silvia Spring, Tracy McNicoll Wine: The Return Of Riesling By Stefan Theil It's the biggest comeback in the world of...

Cutting Edge; Medical progress is measured in many ways. As robotic surgery comes of age, scientists work to exploit the body's immune system. A look ahead.
December 19, 2005... Byline: Jennifer Barrett Stuart Forbes celebrated his 60th birthday on April 11. A week later, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. "It was quite a month," says Forbes, who runs a consulting firm outside Boston. When biopsies confirmed...

How to Break the Chain.(alcoholism)
December 19, 2005... Byline: Michael Craig Miller, M.D. (MILLER is editor in chief of the Harvard Mental Health Letter. For more information, visit health.harvard.edu/NEWSWEEK.) Remember "Just say no"? It was a slick motto, but a terrible remedy for drug and...

The Ultimate Transplant; Surgeons are ready to offer burn victims entire faces from donors, but there are risks.
December 19, 2005... Byline: Karen Springen For thousands of people whose faces have been disfigured by third-degree burns or other injury, life often becomes an endless series of painful operations. Surgery is performed to transfer skin to the face from the...

Bracing for a Plague; The physician charged with preparing the world for a flu pandemic reflects on the threat.(Dr. David Nabarro )(Interview)(Excerpt)
December 19, 2005... Byline: Geoffrey Cowley Dr. David Nabarro was going about his business on Sept. 12 when the head of the World Health Organization hit him with a three-Rolaid question. Would he mind moving from Geneva to New York--right away--to oversee...

Heaviness For The Holidays; David Ansen weighs in on some of the best of the year as Hollywood starts unveiling its Oscar hopefuls.(Munich)(Movie Review)
December 19, 2005... Byline: David Ansen Are we in a bad mood, or what? This may be remembered as the Year of the Depressive Movie. When I toted up my top-10 list, I wasn't surprised at how few big studio movies there were: it was a dog year for Hollywood....

Perspectives.
December 19, 2005... Byline: Quotation sources from top: New York Times, BBC, Washingtonpost.com, BBC, San Francisco Chronicle, Reuters "It's crazy for us to play games with our children's future." Former U.S. president Bill Clinton, responding to the United...

Periscope.
December 19, 2005... Byline: Owen Matthews and Kevin Peraino, Mark Hosenball, Ethan Porter, Sean Smith, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Elise Soukup, Iran: Bolstering Its Defenses What is Iran up to? Russia's giant arms-export company Rosvooruzheniye announced...

For Gamers, X Marks the Spot.
December 19, 2005... Byline: Steven Levy I had barely reclaimed my breath from an exhilarating 160kph-plus race through the streets of lower New York City when the notice came. "Westerby" wanted to chat--and race me head-to-head. I hadn't even realized that I...

BlogWatch; A mainstream media look at the hottest weblogs. For full links go to Newsweekinternational.com.(Brief Article)
December 19, 2005... Reportedly run by Al-Jazeera staffers, Don't Bomb Us at dontbomb.blogspot.com tries to answer the criticisms leveled against the controversial network. Want a deeper look at Africa? Knight Ridder's Africa correspondent Shashank Bengali...

Mail Call: Cheney's Cheney.(Letter to the Editor)
December 26, 2005... Readers of our Nov. 7 cover story on the CIA-leak investigation found the charges brought against Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, troubling. Wrote one, "You reveal what's wrong with U.S. leadership." Said another, "Cheney and Libby...

Flying South; How rapidly rising capital flows between poor nations are starting to reshape the geography of investment.
December 26, 2005... Byline: Mac Margolis (With Ron Moreau in New Delhi, Monica Campbell in Mexico City, Quindlen Krovatin in Beijing and bureau reports) Reinventing a fancy product for one fussy client can be lousy business. Manufacturers make their margins on...

The Future of the Dollar; Jumping up is not likely--not with that debt burden.
December 26, 2005... Byline: Stephen Glain The smart money is betting, once again, that the days of the almighty dollar are numbered. And just because this prediction was startlingly wrong for 2005 doesn't mean it's wrong again for 2006. After a yearlong...

Time to Ascend; Gordon Brown: Britain's chancellor of the Exchequer is chafing to take over from Tony Blair. But the P.M. is a hard act to follow.(Cover Story)
December 26, 2005... Byline: Stryker McGuire When historians look back at post-World War II Britain, they may write that John Major and Gordon Brown had two things in common. They both served their country as chancellor of the Exchequer. And they both went on...

Born To Run; Shinzo Abe: Japan's chief cabinet secretary is the early favorite to succeed Koizumi.(Junichiro Koizumi)(Cover Story)
December 26, 2005... Byline: Christian Caryl and Hideko Takayama The prime minister calls a snap election, he wins by a landslide and his party returns to Parliament with a huge majority. What happens next? Certainly not a public struggle over who's going to...

Seoul's Mr. Fix It; Lee Myung Bak: The capital's mayor has his sights set on a bigger target.(Brief Article)(Cover Story)
December 26, 2005... Byline: B. J. Lee In the nearly 20 years since South Korea became democratic, citizens have grown frustrated by what they consider to be indecisive national leadership. That may explain why Seoul Mayor Lee Myung Bak, 64, is so popular. The...

An Unlikely Pioneer; Michelle Bachelet: The first woman to be elected to lead a major Latin American nation could well be an agnostic, socialist, single mother. But that's just what Chileans like about her.(Cover Story)(Biography)
December 26, 2005... Byline: Jimmy Langman and Joseph Contreras The events of Sept. 11, 1973, turned Michelle Bachelet's world upside down. On that morning the 21-year-old medical student watched Chilean Air Force fighter jets fire rockets into the presidential...

Blasts From The Past; Oscar Arias and Daniel Ortega: Old warhorses on the stump.(Brief Article)(Cover Story)
December 26, 2005... Byline: Joseph Contreras They are throwbacks to a bygone era when the world had two superpowers and the bush wars of Central America mattered to the outside world. As president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias played the earnest apostle of the...

Beauty Gets Ugly; Jean-Paul Agon: He has a lot of experience in tough times, and he'll need it now.(L'Oreal S.A.)(Brief Article)(Cover Story)
December 26, 2005... Byline: Rana Foroohar In April Jean-Paul Agon takes over as CEO of L'Oreal with a hard act to follow. Briton Lindsay Owen-Jones has presided over 21 straight years of double-digit profit growth at the 14 billion euro company, which owns...

Big Deals, Bad Odds; Pascal Lamy: The new chief is in a race to rescue the WTO from irrelevance.(World Trade Organization)(Cover Story)
December 26, 2005... Byline: Karen Lowry Miller Pascal Lamy says it is hard to overstate the complexity of big trade deals. Consider that in the Doha round of talks, 149 countries are addressing some 20 topics and must reach a deal by consensus. "You don't...

Mr. Inside's Moment; Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo: In June, this 25-year company veteran takes over Nokia, the mobile-phone giant that everyone else is gunning for.(Cover Story)
December 26, 2005... Byline: Karen Lowry Miller It's never easy to follow in the footsteps of a legend. Nobody knows that better than Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, 52, who will become CEO of Finnish mobile-phone giant Nokia in June. Jorma Ollila will step down after...

Beauty in the Beasts; Wayne Rooney, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Lionel Messi: The brightest stars at next summer's World Cup may well be a trio of headstrong but divinely talented youngsters.(Cover Story)
December 26, 2005... Byline: Malcolm Beith It's difficult to spot a diamond in the rough. It's even harder to see the beauty in, say, a pig. But football--known as the beautiful game--has, on occasion, transformed what some might consider rather ordinary...

Small But Powerful; Ai Miyazato: The Japanese golf star aims to win a major championship.(Brief Article)(Cover Story)
December 26, 2005... Byline: Kay Itoi Watch out, Michelle Wie. Next year another young Asian female is set to turn the world of golf on its head. Ai Miyazato, a 20-year-old sensation from Okinawa, Japan, recently won a qualifying LPGA tournament in Florida by...

Whose Forest? The palm-oil business is pressuring wildlife.
December 26, 2005... Byline: Lorien Holland In Malaysia and Indonesia, palm oil is viewed as the "wonder oil." It's easy to see why: Malaysia's production of the oil has doubled over the last 20 years, while Indonesia's has tripled. Between them, Malaysia and...

Living With Fear; One year after the tsunami, with populations rapidly moving back to the coastline, Asian governments seem no better prepared for another disaster.
December 26, 2005... Byline: Joe Cochrane (With Lorien Holland in Kuala Lumpur) Ratte Kongwat Mai refuses to move away from her beachfront home. One year ago ocean waves measuring up to 21 meters obliterated her neighborhood in the tiny Thai fishing village of...

'Conditions Aren't Ripe'; Ma Ying-jeou, head of Taiwan's pro-mainland KMT, says Beijing is not pushing unification anymore.(Interview)
December 26, 2005... Byline: Jonathan Adams The next presidential election in Taiwan is more than two years away, but there's already a front runner. Ma Ying-jeou, the 55-year-old mayor of Taipei, is seen as a shoo-in to be the candidate for the opposition...

Changing Partners? Britain hoped to remake Europe in its own image. It has succeeded chiefly in alienating its allies.
December 26, 2005... Byline: William Underhill Ambassadors are a cagey bunch. Publicly, they speak in the coded language of diplomacy. But what are the somber suits really thinking? Try this: the new members of the European Union are "rude" and "ungrateful."...

Fiddling After Paris Burned; A month after widespread riots, France's efforts to address the 'root causes' of the unrest are looking more and more like purely cosmetic changes.
December 26, 2005... Byline: Eric Pape and Christopher Dickey Kids in football uniforms run laps around a lit field in the early December twilight. They are specks in a vast cityscape of massive gray housing projects on the far fringe of the Paris sprawl....

Monuments And Money; Rome is starting to lose its priceless archeological legacy to neglect, and a lack of attention and funds.
December 26, 2005... Byline: Barbie Nadeau In A.D. 64 Nero built his palatial golden palace, the Domus Aurea, sparing no expense in the most elaborate display of decadence Rome had ever seen. Frescoes adorned the walls of its 150 rooms, inlaid with precious...

The Gene Hunter; Thomas Hudson: His lab is homing in on the precise causes of specific diseases.(Cover Story)
December 26, 2005... Byline: Mary Carmichael To call Dr. Tom Hudson modest would be putting it, well, modestly. One of the world's premier investigators of genetically linked disease, he discovered four years ago that DNA is inherited in chunks--the principle...

Making the Great Leap; Takeshi Kaneshiro: With his charismatic performance in the Chinese movie musical 'Perhaps Love,' the popular Asian actor is poised to become a truly global star.(Cover Story)
December 26, 2005... Byline: Alexandra A. Seno When Takeshi Kaneshiro closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep, he dreams in Japanese. Usually. "It depends on the people in the dream," says the actor, 32. Born in Taipei to a Chinese mother and a Japanese...

Wise Beyond Her Years; Q'orianka Kilcher: Redefining the look of female stardom.(Cover Story)
December 26, 2005... Byline: Sean Smith She's only 15, but Q'orianka Kilcher has already had her first midlife crisis. "On my 14th birthday, I was really sad because I felt that I hadn't accomplished anything," she says. "I was crying, saying, 'What am I going...

Free Trade Is Not Enough; A New 'New Deal': After a contentious WTO meeting, the voices arguing for greater government intervention in economies are growing louder.(Cover Story)
December 26, 2005... Byline: George Wehrfritz (With Sudip Mazumdar in New Delhi) Free trade can kill economies. Just ask Robert Sisilo, the Solomon Islands' permanent representative to the World Trade Organization. If a sweeping trade package under discussion...

... Neither Is the State; A Dissenting View: Efforts to drive development and smooth out income disparities by fiat have proved to be far less efficient than the market. What's needed is more reform, not less.(Cover Story)
December 26, 2005... Byline: Rana Foroohar Yes, spreading wealth more evenly around the developing world would be a good thing. The question is whether those governments could do more for the poor by staying well out of things. Consider India's new...

Europe Will Get It Right; The question is how can Europe's social-democratic state be made sustainable?
December 26, 2005... Byline: Andrew Moravcsik (Moravcsik directs the European Union program at Princeton University.) Just over a year ago, author Jeremy Rifkin predicted that Europe would soon overtake the United States as a model for the world. The so-called...

John Bolton; A Different Diplomat.(Interview)
December 26, 2005... Byline: Michael Hastings For Thanksgiving, John Bolton went to the Macy's parade with his family. Over the holidays, the former under secretary of State for arms control plans on "doing nothing" at his home. These are not the usual images...

Movies: The 'Code' Breakers; The most popular--and controversial--novel of our time hits the big screen in May. An exclusive report on the team behind the second coming of 'The Da Vinci Code.'.(Cover Story)
December 26, 2005... Byline: Devin Gordon Like so many luxuries in this life, getting permission to shoot a movie inside the Louvre is easier if you know the right people. For three months in late 2004, the Oscar-winning filmmakers behind "The Da Vinci Code,"...

Players to Watch in 2006; A pacesetter, Wal-Mart has expanded health insurance, asked for a raise in the minimum wage and committed to using less energy.
December 26, 2005... Byline: Jeffrey E. Garten (Garten is the Juan Trippe Professor at the Yale School of Management. He can be contacted at jeffrey.garten@yale.edu.) Global corporations, as we all know, are important for the return on investment they provide,...

Battle for America; Mark Warner and George Allen: Two pols from Virginia look to 2008.(Cover Story)
December 26, 2005... Byline: Howard Fineman As young men in law school in the 1970s, neither Mark Warner nor George Allen set the legal world on fire. At Harvard, "I was the only guy I knew who didn't get a law-firm offer after summer internships," says...