Newsweek International articles from February 2004

Newsweek International archives from February 2004

Imelda Marcos; Inside the Mind of Imelda.(Interview)(Biography)
February 2, 2004... Byline: Alexandra A. Seno In February 1986, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos were deposed as president and First Lady of the Philippines in a popular revolution. Two years after he died in 1989, his widow returned to live in the Philippines....

Periscope.
February 2, 2004... Byline: Joshua Hammer, Alexandra A. Seno, Joseph Contreras, Rana Foroohar and Friso Endt, Jonathan Adams, Emily Flynn,Vibhuti Patel, Devin Gordon, Ginanne Brownell ISRAEL Will He Take the Fifth? Will Israeli Prime Minister Ariel...

Our Digital Future?(Letter to the Editor)
February 2, 2004... Readers of our Dec. 8 cover package on the future of the computer faulted Bill Gates for "missing the boat" on new technology, then "desperately playing catch-up." Said one, "When something new appears in our digital future, Microsoft will not...

Spanish Lessons; Jose Maria Aznar engineered Spain's economic miracle. Can it last? You bet.(Cover Story)
February 2, 2004... Byline: Stryker McGuire, With Liat Radcliffe in London Forty years ago, Spain looked a lot like Mexico, only worse. The average worker earned just $443 a year, less than the average Mexican. In the countryside of Andalucia and Extremadura,...

The Barcelona Model; It's the coolest city in Europe. Its secret? Sheer imagination.(Cover Story)
February 2, 2004... Byline: Melissa Rossi Barcelona's gothic quarter is a tangle of narrow stone streets winding around the old cathedral. Morning begins with a loud clanging of metal as the gasman rumbles along, pushing a cart of dusty orange cans and...

The First Signs of Life; Will economic reforms in the Hermit Kingdom save Kim Jong Il's regime--or hasten the fall?
February 2, 2004... Byline: George Wehrfritz, With B. J. Lee in Seoul and Hideko Takayama in Tokyo The Japanese investor had once considered the incessant propaganda blaring on his factory floor a cost of doing business inside communist North Korea. Yet when...

Beyond 'Drugs and Thugs'; A new report says the Andes could destabilize the hemisphere.
February 2, 2004... Byline: Jimmy Langman and Joseph Contreras A newly appointed U.S. diplomat to an Andean country was asked recently how he viewed his assignment. His response: "Ah, you know, it's all about drugs and thugs." That, says a new report issued...

Science: Brave New Babies; Parents now have the power to choose the sex of their children. But as technology answers prayers, it's raising some troubling questions.(Cover Story)
February 2, 2004... Byline: Claudia Kalb, Barbie Nadeau and Sarah Schafer, With Sudip Mazumdar, Joanna Chen, B. J. Lee, Michael Hastings and Karen Springen Sharla Miller always wanted a baby girl, but the odds seemed stacked against her. Her husband, Shane, is...

Not Just for Children; Adults can't get enough of Tolkien, Rowling and now Philip Pullman. Are we immature--or is 'kids' stuff' simply better entertainment?
February 2, 2004... Byline: Tara Pepper Onstage at London's National Theatre, flying witches and howling harpies--not to mention two brave and stalwart children--journey among parallel worlds that include a warm beach, the snowy Arctic and the rooftops of...

Through a Camera Lens Darkly; Helmut Newton said his photography was not an art. But, oh, how we beg to differ.(Obituary)
February 2, 2004... Byline: Dana Thomas Helmut Newton, the provocative German photographer who introduced kink to mainstream fashion, died following a car crash in Hollywood on Friday at 83. Long plagued with cardiac problems--he shot several blunt...

The Promise of Exodus; Critics charge a U.S.-based group is 'manufacturing' Ethiopian Jews to bolster Israel's Orthodox population.(North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry)
February 2, 2004... Byline: Joshua Hammer Ashagray Zeleke is on the front lines of a war over Israel's future. The local representative of the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry (NACOEJ), Zeleke administers a compound in Addis Ababa where thousands...

My Pony's Name Is Chief.(American abroad reflects on French penchant for grading and evaluation)(Column)
February 2, 2004... Byline: David Ray The day after the 2003 Gault-Millau guide demoted Bernard Loiseau's Cote d'Or restaurant in Burgundy from 19 to 17 points, the famous chef shot himself, leaving behind three children, a wife, several restaurants, a...

Perspectives.(quotations from George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Howard Dean, and weapons inspector David Kay)(Brief Article)
February 2, 2004... "Yeeaagh!" Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, rallying supporters in Iowa, in what has been dubbed his "I have a scream" speech "They may have a vision for the country, and that's fine, but all I see them doing up there in...

Travel: In It For The Long Haul.(Singapore Airlines introduces non-stop flights between Singapore and Los Angeles, California)(Industry Overview)
February 2, 2004... Byline: Malcolm Beith and Sonia Kolesnikov-Jesop On Feb. 3, Singapore Airlines (SIA) will make history, flying a new 181-seat, ultralong-range Airbus for more than 16 hours between Singapore and Los Angeles--without a single stop. The...

Health Stories of '03.(Letter to the Editor)
February 9, 2004... Our Dec. 15 coverage of the year's top 10 health stories gratified readers. Noted one, "the preoccupation with WMDs is misplaced: far more lives are lost to known medical conditions." But "why was hunger neglected?" asked another. "It claims...

The End of Jihad; Ahead of talks with India, Pakistan seems to have cut off support for Kashmiri militants. Is the war over?
February 9, 2004... Byline: Zahid Hussain and Ron Moreau, With Sudip Mazumdar in New Delhi The bitterness was palpable among the more than one dozen hardened jihadi fighters. Veterans of the 14-year guerrilla struggle against Indian control of Kashmir, they...

Britain: The Blair Problem; He weathered a rough week. But talk has turned to who will replace him.(Cover Story)
February 9, 2004... Byline: Stryker McGuire, With William Underhill and Gary Meenaghan Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former communications czar, once griped to NEWSWEEK that, if you believed British newspaper headlines, "Tony's 'worst week ever' comes along...

A Diplomatic Offensive; A year ago Turkey was an outcast. Today it's a player.
February 9, 2004... Byline: Owen Matthews, With Sami Kohen in Istanbul What a difference a year makes. Less than 12 months ago, Turkey was slipping to the sidelines of world politics. Its strategic partnership with Washington was in ruins after the Turkish...

No More Mr. Nice Guy? Abdullah is putting his own stamp on party politics.
February 9, 2004... Byline: Lorien Holland Last October, reflecting on his 22 years in office, Malaysia's then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad credited much of his success to his blunt manner, declaring, "When people are nice and polite they never get...

The Dollar Adrift; Europe's increasingly desperate call for currency 'stability' will define the debate in Boca Raton.
February 9, 2004... Byline: Jeffrey E. Garten, Garten, dean of the Yale School of Management, held economic posts in the Nixon, Ford, Carter and Clinton administrations. The seaside playground atmosphere of Boca Raton, Florida, will provide an ironic backdrop...

Clipping It's Wings; Scientists hope a new technique will help them develop a vaccine against the bird flu virus before it leaps to humans.(Cover Story)
February 9, 2004... Byline: Fred Guterl, With Michael Hastings, Jonathan Adams, Alexandra A. Seno, Scott Worden and Sarah Schafer The life of a poultry farmer in the sleepy Cambodian village of Phuong Peay is not exactly eventful, but the job does have its...

Health: Bad Bug Does Good; A benign bacteria that kills human pathogens could become the first in a new line of weapons--living antibiotics.(Cover Story)
February 9, 2004... Byline: Temma Ehrenfeld Viruses like H5N1 don't respond to antibiotics, which makes them especially hard to fight. But plain old bacteria can be scary, too. The bacterium Bdellovibrio sounds like something out of a Stephen King novel. It...

Tip Sheet.
February 9, 2004... Byline: KAREN SPRINGEN, Michelle Jana, Paul Tolme, Sandy L. Edry, Alexandra A. Seno HEALTH HOPE SPROUTS ETERNAL BY KAREN SPRINGEN Ken Washenik, 44, uses every available weapon in his battle against baldness. More than 15...

'Sanctions Worked'; The world's atomic watchdog, vindicated in Iraq, confronts the new nuclear landscape.(Mohamed ElBaradei, International Atomic Energy Agency)(Interview)
February 9, 2004... Byline: Lally Weymouth The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been shouldered aside by the Bush administration in Iraq and Libya and kicked out of North Korea by Kim Jong Il. Yet now even Washington admits that Saddam didn't...

Irshad Manji; Muslim, Yes. Muzzled? No.("The Trouble With Islam: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith")(Interview)
February 9, 2004... Byline: Malcolm Beith At the age of 14, Irshad Manji finally pushed her madrassa teacher to the brink when she demanded that he provide evidence of the "so-called Jewish conspiracy" against Islam. He ordered her to shut up or get out. So...

Perspectives.(quotations)
February 9, 2004... "They have been hidden." Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a longtime critic of Saddam Hussein, on having "every belief" that weapons of mass destruction will still be found "When it's cooked, it's 1 million percent safe." ...

Periscope.(international news)
February 9, 2004... Byline: Dan Ephron, Allan Sloan, Jen Jin-Liu and Melinda Liu, Clint Witchalls, Adam Bryant, Tara Pepper, Lorraine Ali, Jeff Giles Middle East The Rise of Nasrallah Israel sometimes has a way of emboldening its enemies and...

Where the Pretty Boys Are.
February 9, 2004... Byline: Kay Itoi My friend Ako, visiting for the holidays, noticed immediately. The scenery in Tokyo has improved considerably over the past year. Particularly in the service industry. At designer shops, cafes, restaurants and even...

Mail Call; Trapped in a Hole.(Letter to the Editor)
February 16, 2004... Readers of our Dec. 22 coverage of Saddam Hussein's capture were mostly enthusiastic in their reactions--ranging from "relief" to "happiness." Yet one faulted our "degrading captions," and another asked, " 'How We Got Saddam'? Were you also...

Guarding a Vital Asset; Are Iraqis ready to protect their valuable, vulnerable oil?
February 16, 2004... Byline: Joe Cochrane It might be a stretch to call Ali and Muhammad the guardians of Iraq's future. Pulling guard duty recently in the rain-soaked northern town of Kirkuk, home of one of the world's largest oilfields, the two men sport...

Chain of Command; The Military: Musharraf dodged a bullet, but could be heading for a showdown with his Army.
February 16, 2004... Byline: Ron Moreau and Zahid Hussain Only last week president Pervez Musharraf and the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, seemed to be on a dangerous collision course. The country's right-wing Islamist political parties...

Power Play; Nearing a crucial election, a new group of pragmatic conservatives has emerged.
February 16, 2004... Byline: Babak Dehghanpisheh This week marks the 25th anniversary of the Iranian revolution, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini orchestrated the fall of the monarchy and ushered in an Islamic regime. On the surface, Tehran is awash in...

This Time It's Not Different.
February 16, 2004... Byline: Kenneth Rogoff, Rogoff is professor of economics and director of the Center for International Development at Harvard University. From the way money is now pouring into middle-income countries, like Brazil, China and Turkey, people...

State of Denial; The bird flu has long stalked China's mainland, and its human toll is only beginning to come to light.
February 16, 2004... Byline: Melinda Liu and Alexandra A. Seno, With Sarah Schafer in Shanghai Late last year, when many experts were bracing for a resurgence of the SARS virus, Klaus Stohr's thoughts were elsewhere. The head of the World Health Organization's...

Admitting The Past; New books and films take on the Spanish Civil War.
February 16, 2004... Byline: Liat Radcliffe The silence has been broken. After decades of avoiding the subject of the Spanish Civil War, young Spaniards are at last confronting their nation's past through a spate of new books and films. In the late 1930s,...

Portraits in Motion; From Suez to Tiananmen, Rene Burri was there.(Rene Burri: Photographs)(Critical Essay)
February 16, 2004... Byline: Dana Thomas As a child growing up in Zurich in the 1940s, Rene Burri dreamed of becoming a documentary-film maker. But there were no film schools in Switzerland back then, so he enrolled at the School of Arts & Crafts to study...

The Supply Side: Before It's Too Late; The author of 'The Coming Oil Crisis' defends his doomsday warnings, and issues an urgent call to face the facts.
February 16, 2004... Byline: C. J. Campbell, Campbell is Chairman of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, a network of European scientists Leonardo Maugeri belongs to the camp of classical "flat-earth" economists who believe that markets and...

Enlightened Discovery; A new British Museum gallery provokes old questions.
February 16, 2004... Byline: Tara Pepper An elegant bust of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, presides over the entrance to the British Museum's new permanent exhibit on the Enlightenment, offering a bold riposte to the unresolved question: Was this an age...

Jungle Economics; Environmentalists thought they could save the rain forest and make money at the same time. They were wrong.
February 16, 2004... Byline: Mac Margolis This time last decade, the world was worried sleepless over the fate of the Amazon rain forest. Beatriz Saldanha decided to do something about it. So she shut down her beachwear business in Rio de Janeiro and grabbed a...

Fabric of Society; Banning headscarves is right. But it's only a start in bringing France's Muslims into the social mainstream.
February 16, 2004... Byline: Gilles Kepel, Kepel is chair of Middle East Studies at Institut de Sciences Politiques in Paris and author of "Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam." Good news. Islamist radicals and U.S. neocons have joined ranks--finally--and...

The Shell Game; The case of Shell's missing oil suggests neither Enron-style book-cooking, nor evidence that the oil age is heading for a sudden, cataclysmic end.(Industry Overview)
February 16, 2004... Byline: Leonardo Maugeri, Maugeri is group senior vice president for corporate strategies and planning for the Italian energy company Eni From its dawn after World War I, the petroleum age has been haunted by warnings that the world's oil...

The Modern Gladstone; A fresh look at Blair's activist compunction.(Tony Blair)(Book Review)
February 16, 2004... Byline: Andrew Nagorski There's a huge irony in the uproar over the no-show horror weaponry in Iraq. As Financial Times columnist Philip Stephens points out in "Tony Blair: The Making of a World Leader" (265 pages. Viking ), the British...

Getting Inside the Bush White House.(Brief Article)
February 16, 2004... Byline: ADAM PIORE Few U.S. administrations have earned as strong a reputation for secrecy as that of President George W. Bush. It must have been all the more painful, then, when former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind released his...

Another Face For Osama; Siddiq Barmak.(Interview)
February 16, 2004... Byline: Jennifer Barrett Afghanistan is best known to most folks as the former home of both the Taliban regime and the world's most-wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden. So it's not surprising that the first feature-length film produced there...

Is That Brooklynese--Or Bengali?
February 16, 2004... Byline: Shashi Tharoor Living in Manhattan, I long ago gave up my aspiration to own a car. Even if I could afford one, I could never park it in a city where garage space costs as much as a house in some American communities. So I take...

Perspectives.(quotations)(Brief Article)
February 16, 2004... Byline: Quotation sources from top to bottom, left to right: Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek, BBC, State Department, Chicago Tribune, Jerusalem Post "I don't know." U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, when asked if he would...

Periscope.(various news)(Interview)
February 16, 2004... Byline: Malcolm Beith and William Underhill, Frank Brown and Helem Womack, Mary Carmichael, Lindsey Gerdes, Tara Pepper, Nicki Gostin EU: Revolving Doors Despite promises to open their doors to migrants back in 2000, the European...

Tip Sheet.(brief items)(Bibliography)
February 16, 2004... Byline: Liat Radcliffe, David Roos, Ginanne Brownell Travel: Catch Them While You Can By Liat Radcliffe Last month, China's state news agency reported that two thirds of the Great Wall had been destroyed by tourists, commercial...

Mail Call: A Continuing Concern.(Letter to the Editor)
February 23, 2004... Readers of our year-end issue continued to focus on Iraq stories above all else. "Where are the WMD?" mocked one. Others vented their concerns about Saddam, Osama, Libya and stability in the Middle East. Questioning the Iraq War It is...

JFK Goes Continental; Democratic presidential contender John F. Kerry may be even more popular across the Atlantic than he is at home.(America)(Cover Story)
February 23, 2004... Byline: Stryker McGuire, With Eric Pape in Paris, Emily Flynn in London, Katka Krosnar in Prague and Barbie Nadeau in Rome Some of John Kerry's most ardent fans are not only not Democrats--they're not American. EUROPE WOULD VOTE FOR KERRY,...

A German Harvard? Universities are plagued by bureaucracy and a false sense of egalitarianism. New reforms may not help.(education)
February 23, 2004... Byline: Stefan Theil Just over 60 years ago, Germany's universities were world beaters. Berlin, Heidelberg and Gottingen churned out Nobel Prize winners when Harvard, Princeton and Stanford were sleepy country clubs that could only dream...

Southern Discomfort; Bangkok's hunt for militants has local Muslims livid.(Thailand)
February 23, 2004... Byline: Joe Cochrane Last week Sayant Khongton locked up his small grocery store for the last time. An unknown man on a motorcycle gunned down Khongton, who was also a local police officer, as he walked out the front door of his shop in...

Gone in 30 Seconds; Changing technology and viewing habits are replacing the old TV spot with longer (and shorter) ad forms.(worldwide)
February 23, 2004... Byline: Sarah Sennott Once the most powerful tool for marketers, the 30-second TV commercial is under siege. In the heart of TV land, the United States, prime-time ratings are down and viewers are increasingly inattentive when they do...

A Case of Space Fever; Why should wheeled robots on Mars have all the fun?(Charles Elachi, National Aeronautics Space Administration, Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
February 23, 2004... Byline: Adam Piore and Eric Pape, With Sudip Mazumdar in New Delhi and Mike Kepp in Rio de Janeiro You'd be hard-pressed to find much similarity between Charles Elachi's carpeted office in modern-day Pasadena, California, and the...

Khatami's Last Stand; The reformist president, facing a major political defeat, is now more a figurehead than a catalyst for change.(Mohammed Khatami)
February 23, 2004... Byline: Babak Dehghanpisheh Tens of thousands of people gathered around the Azadi monument in central Tehran last week to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the revolution. A hush fell over the crowd when President Mohammed Khatami,...

The Reinvention of Nehru; A new biography hails the Indian leader's virtues.("Nehru: The Invention of India")(Book Review)
February 23, 2004... Byline: Nisid Hajari Unlike his daughter, Indira Gandhi, who was not beyond using the coincidence of her name to identify herself as the embodiment of her nation, Jawaharlal Nehru never claimed to be India. Though he devoted himself to the...

The Two Koreas; Can Roh close the gap between capital and countryside?(Roh Moo Myun)
February 23, 2004... Byline: B. J. Lee As South Korea's first bullet train sped away from Seoul on a test run last week, the smog and crowds quickly gave way to open fields, rice paddies and the deserted streets of small farm towns. Moving at 300 kilometers an...

Praying for a Miracle; Castro opens a new church in Cuba. What does it mean?(Fidel Castro)
February 23, 2004... Byline: Joseph Contreras On weekday mornings the House of the Grandparents in Havana's Santo Suarez neighborhood is a beehive of activity. Dozens of gray-haired Cubans arrive early to attend mass at the adjacent Roman Catholic parish...

Justice, American Style; France is looking for ways to crack down on crime.
February 23, 2004... Byline: Eric Pape and Adam Piore It was hardly an intimidating crowd. Instead of jeans and T shirts, the demonstrators wore black legal robes with crisp white bibs. Most were Parisian lawyers, and many carried briefcases as they marched...

Brazil's Growing Power; The country is planting its once arid frontier and fast becoming an agribusiness titan.(South America)(Cover Story)
February 23, 2004... Byline: Mac Margolis It's not yet noon in Mato Grosso state, but already the tropical sun presses through the clouds like a steam iron. This is Brazil's far west, a flat, featureless expanse at the bottom lip of the Amazon basin. The...

How the Camera Sometimes Lies.("Photographing the Holocaust")(Book Review)
February 23, 2004... Byline: Ginanne Brownell In one photo, a group of men and a boy stand naked before a ditch as soldiers point rifles at them. "Sniatyn--tormenting Jews before execution. II.V. 1943," reads the caption in Polish. But the caption is almost...

One Word: Plastics; The next big thing in electronics may be talking magazine ads, smart spray paint and foldable displays.(Cambridge University)
February 23, 2004... Byline: Rana Foroohar For someone who may turn out to be the father of ubiquitous computing, Sir Richard Friend is a hard guy to track down. Phone calls made to his two laboratories at Britain's Cambridge University, where he is a...

The Light at the End of the Computer.(innovations)
February 23, 2004... Byline: Temma Ehrenfeld Faster is always better, at least in computers, which is a big reason why engineers try each year to etch ever-tinier circuits into silicon chips. The shorter the distance the electricity needs to travel, the...

Looking For A Vision; Both America and Europe are searching for common ground again--and they may have found it in what some are calling the 'Greater Middle East'.(foreign relations)
February 23, 2004... Byline: William Drozdiak, Drozdiak is director of the Transatlantic Center at the German Marshall Fund in Brussels. Is the transatlantic relationship dead? Amid the rubble of the Iraq war, it often seemed so. Yet that near-fatal fracture...

Thauria Hamur; A Martyr, or a Murderer?(Israel)(Interview)
February 23, 2004... Byline: Joanna Chen Thauria Hamur, a 26-year-old Palestinian woman living in the West Bank, was recruited by Fatah's military wing to carry out a suicide bombing in the heart of Jerusalem. Shortly before her mission in May 2002, Hamur was...

New York's 'Left Bank'.(Brooklyn)(Column)
February 23, 2004... Byline: Gersh Kuntzman, Kuntzman is Brooklyn bureau chief for the New York Post. Manhattan is dead. Long live Brooklyn! Any doubts about the ascendancy of New York's long-suffering younger sister have just been dispelled on--of all...

Perspectives.(Iraq)(Brief Article)
February 23, 2004... Byline: Quotation sources from top to bottom: "Meet The Press," Ananova, New York Times, Telegraph, "Imus In The Morning," Sify News, AP "I'm a war president." U.S. President George W. Bush, saying in an interview that he made decisions...

Periscope.(Israel)(Interview)
February 23, 2004... Byline: Dan Ephron, Mark Hosenball and Ginanne Brownell, Owen Matthews and Sami Kohen, Claudia Kalb and Jonathan Adams, Joseph Contreras and Malcolm Beith, Karen Springen, Ginanne Brownell, Kay Itoi, Karen Breslau Israel: Pulling Out,...

And a Meat Loaf to Go; American families want to eat together, they just don't want to cook. No wonder the kitchen is always so clean.(Column)
February 23, 2004... Byline: Jerry Adler, With Julie Scelfo in New York, Karen Springen in Chicago, Joan Raymond in Cleveland, Tara Weingarten in Los Angeles, Jason McLure in Boston and Karen Breslau in San Francisco By the hundreds, the cook-books roll off the...