Newsweek International articles from January 2002

Newsweek International archives from January 2002

Mail Call.
January 14, 2002... Blair's Mission Your articles "Onward, Christian Soldier" and "Back to the Future" (Europe, Dec. 3) were most welcome. Too much attention has been focused on America since September 11, and we in the international community did not know of...

The Battle of the Experts.
January 14, 2002... New crises produce new experts. A high-profile trial means that we'll see defense attorneys and prosecutors airing their differences on CNN. An election logjam means we'll hear from political consultants and campaign reporters. The events of...

Unity After The Euro?
January 14, 2002... If you call Jacques Delors the father of the euro, he tries to be modest. "Well, one of them," he says. But he's the man. In the 1980s, as head of the European Commission, Delors wrestled the Continent's politicians and central bankers into...

Stop Crossing the Lines.(Indian, Pakistan, Kashmir)(Brief Article)
January 14, 2002... The world changed America on September 11, and America has been changing the world ever since. In Kashmir, the question is what changes Washington can and should impose on a dispute that has simmered for half a century. What might be...

Who Lit the Match?(Argentina)
January 14, 2002... The nattily dressed former cabinet minister was sipping tea with his wife and son in a posh Buenos Aires shopping mall when the insults began. "Thieves!" snarled a man seated at a nearby table. Former Justice minister Rodolfo Barra tried to...

When Up is Down.
January 14, 2002... Only last spring it was fashionable for Europeans to argue that when America sneezes, Europe no longer catches the flu. The nations of a uniting Europe are slowly "decoupling" from America, trading increasingly among themselves, carving their...

Troubled Waters.(Tonle Sap lake in Cambodia)
January 14, 2002... Each spring the waters of Tonle Sap lake rise and inundate the Cambodian village of Chhnok Trou, covering roads and fields and all but the tops of trees. The villagers don't mind. They build their houses on stilts. And besides, the flooding...

The Man in the Middle.(Hassan Abshir Farah)(Brief Article)(Interview)
January 14, 2002... Hassan Abshir Farah may have the hardest job in the world. Barely two months ago, the 56-year-old was named prime minister of Somalia's Transitional National Government. A former ambassador to Japan and Germany, Farah also served as mayor of...

A Disney Christmas.(Brief Article)
January 14, 2002... Growing up in Southern California, I've always had a love-hate relationship with Disneyland. In fact, for almost as long as I can remember, it's been more hate-hate. Especially in the summer, when relatives young and old would descend on us,...

Perspectives.
January 14, 2002... "A lot of angels... will be getting their wings." Countdown Entertainment president Jeffrey Straus, an organizer of New York's Times Square festivities, on honoring September 11 victims with somber bell ringing during the usually raucous New...

Don't Blame the IMF.(International Monetary Fund and the crisis in Argentina)(Brief Article)
January 14, 2002... Five presidents in two weeks. Can the latest, Eduardo Duhalde, save Argentina from further collapse? Duhalde launched his rescue effort last Friday by declaring a devaluation of the peso, tentatively setting up a dual exchange system that...

AL QAEDA, PHONE HOME.(telephone number in Yemen)(Brief Article)
January 14, 2002... What's in a number? A lot, say FBI investigators who have linked three of Osama bin Laden's deadliest attacks, including September 11, to a single telephone number in Yemen. The Feds first stumbled on the number shortly after the 1998 U.S....

Comparison Shopping in the Euro Zone.(Brief Article)
January 14, 2002... Finally, one can travel through Europe without the fuss of converting currencies and needing a calculator to work out price differences between countries. But the introduction of the euro brings a new problem: Europeans can now see those price...

Teamwork.(Asian nations, The United States, and Russia co-operate in disaster preparedness simulation)(Brief Article)
January 14, 2002... On Jan. 11, Typhoon "Dawn" will pummel the imaginary island of Parangdo. Rain and wind will destroy houses and roads, plunging the state into anarchy. Nearly 100,000 refugees will flee on boats and land on the South Korean coast. What to do?...

Have You Seen The Little Piggies?(pigs engineered to provide organs for humans)(Brief Article)
January 14, 2002... Biotech rivals bickered over a momentous milestone last week: the first cloned pigs genetically engineered to keep their organs from being rejected by human transplant recipients. Immerge BioTherapeutics Inc. had scheduled a Jan. 3 announcement...

Fair-Weather Friendship.(Brazil's weather)(Brief Article)
January 14, 2002... Before, you could just blame the weather, and the buck stopped there. No longer. Rio de Janeiro weather forecaster Luiz Carlos Austin predicted driving rains for New Year's Eve, just days after downpours killed more than 70 people in the area....

Games Without Frontiers.(Sujoy Roy, professional video game player)(Brief Article)(Interview)
January 14, 2002... Sujoy Roy had a promising career ahead of him as an investment banker with JP Morgan in New York. Until January 2000, when he quit for a life of... videogaming? The decision was a "no-brainer," says the 26-year- old Briton. Roy recently...

FIRST PERSON GLOBAL.(Afghani women cautious about abandoning the burqa)(Brief Article)
January 14, 2002... While driving through Kabul in November, I saw two women leaning against a stone wall, chatting with each other. They were both enveloped head to toe in light blue burqas, but that didn't seem to get in the way of their conversation, as they...

Surviving The Storm.(Kashmir militant groups)(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... Nazir Ahmad Khan's short life as a Kashmiri militant began one month ago in the ramshackle village of Sanoor-Kalipura. An 18-year-old handicrafts maker, Khan had previously shown little affinity for the Islamic guerrillas who often passed...

Starting From Scratch... Again.(rebuilding Afghanistan)(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... KOIZUMI is prime minister of Japan. I was only 3 when U.S. air raids obliterated Tokyo in 1945. Since I was so young, I don't remember the bombing or its aftermath. But I learned of the utter misery of that time from my parents. Where the...

Bad, Bad Boy.(Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi)
January 21, 2002... Open mouth, insert foot. that has long seemed Silvio Berlusconi's patented political style. The Italian prime minister has been pratfalling his way across the world's stage ever since he took office last May in one of the most controversial and...

Greek Revival.(renewed foreign policy)(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... For too long, the words "Greek" and "diplomacy" were an oxymoron. Greece's populist leaders had a knack for picking the wrong friends and annoying the country's allies in NATO and the European Union. The late prime minister Andreas Papandreou...

A Plot of Their Own.(Brazil's land reforms)
January 21, 2002... Thick as a truck at its base, the Brazil-nut tree rises 10 stories to an opulent crown, lord of the Amazon jungle. It takes the tree a century to grow to maturity; it takes a man with a chain saw an hour to cut it down. "It's a beautiful...

Beyond Land Rights.(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... "Land reform" aims to change the structure of rural property rights in order to increase the living standards of the agrarian poor, still a very substantial portion of the population in much of Latin America, South and East Asia and Africa. The...

The FARC's Fifth Column.(Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia moves into Peru)
January 21, 2002... Beneath the jungle canopy deep inside the Peruvian rain forest, rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) relaxed in a makeshift camp. Equipped with AKM assault rifles, land mines and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, the...

Bringing Sushi to Japan.(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... Inside the sleek Rainbow Roll Sushi restaurant, a bartender mixes cocktails while sushi chefs expertly concoct colorful rolls. A waitress leads young, hiply dressed customers to a long table lit from underneath. They pore over menus printed in...

King of the Zombies.(business debt in Japan)
January 21, 2002... Japanese tycoon Isao Nakauchi took away a harrowing memory from his time as a foot soldier in World War II. Near the end, as U.S. Marines stormed the Philippines in 1945, he recalls cowering in the jungle and struggling mightily to stay...

Japan as Argentina.(possible debt crisis)(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... It may seem outrageous to compare the gathering crisis in Japan to the chaos of Mexico in the '80s or Argentina today. Japan is so much more modern, wealthy and, one would think, stable. Yet serious analysts are starting to draw just such...

Adieu to the Era of Yves.(Yves Saint Laurent)(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... Thirty-five years ago Spanish film director Luis Bunuel hired French actress Catherine Deneuve to play the lead in his new picture, "Belle de Jour." The character was complicated: a frigid bourgeois wife who, unbeknown to her husband, works by...

Lessons of The Pagans.(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... Precisely because we are militarily superior to any group or nation, we should expect to be attacked at our weakest points, beyond the boundaries of international law." So writes Robert Kaplan in "Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a...

China's Statistics Are Fishier Than Its Oceans.(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... The hundred or so boats anchored in a fishing port of Penglai in China's Shandong province have seen better days. Their blue paint is chipped, their equipment rusty. A handful of fishermen brave the stiff January breeze to get the boats in...

Did Early Humans Think?(Blombos Cave, South Africa)(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... On childhood trips to his grandparents' farm on the western tip of South Africa, Christopher Henshilwood liked to wander the sand dunes and investigate the caves along the shore of the Indian Ocean. One of his favorite places was a tiny grotto...

Yellow Flag.(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... At first glance, the Enron debacle seems like an "only in America" kind of story. An old-style energy company transforms itself into a high- flying trading house, creating a new business model that is copied the world over. It's powered by a...

The Madonna of the Kitchen.(Jean-Georges Vongerichten)(Interview)
January 21, 2002... In 1973 a 16-year-old Alsatian named Jean-Georges Vongerichten joined the kitchen of a three-star restaurant called Auberge de l'Ill. The rest, as they say, is culinary history. After cooking under legendary chefs like Paul Bocuse and at...

Help! I Can't Cope.(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... THAROOR is the author, most recently, of the novel "Riot." A friend who had lived in New York during the 1970s was recently here for a brief visit. I asked him what, in this ever-changing city, he found to be most startlingly changed. He...

Perspectives.
January 21, 2002... "If we go to war, jolly good. If we don't, we still manage." India's Army chief, Gen. S. Padmanabhan, declaring his nation fully prepared for a large-scale conventional war with Pakistan "Obviously, we've been told this is a tough group of...

New Names for the Enemies List?(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... In the war on terror, President George W. Bush repeated last week, other nations are "with us or against us." But not everybody is heeding the warning. Belarus and Iran appear to have moved further into the "against" column. Washington has...

The Shoe's Tracks.(Richard Reid )(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... What's the connection between shoebomber Richard Reid and Al Qaeda? One possibility: suspected "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui. Investigators suspect Moussaoui may have introduced Reid to members of a terrorist cell in the Netherlands, who...

Very Unclear On Nuclear.(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... Lexicographers, take note. Despite a Yale degree, the "leader of the free world" still pronounces nuclear "nuke-yu-ler." Which poses a question: when President George W. Bush told Russian President Vladimir Putin that he would slash nuclear...

Osama bin Baggins?(likening the "The Fellowship Of The Ring" to the war on terrorism)(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... "The Fellowship Of The Ring," we hoped, would provide an escape from the reality of the war on terror. So why do journalists insist on drawing allusions between the fantastical tale and modern-day political realities? The Times of London's...

Going Strong.(A.T. Kearney/Foreign Policy Magazine Globalization Index, 2000)(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... Who has integrated best into the global economy? The A.T. Kearney/Foreign Policy Magazine Globalization Index report for 2000 amounts to a sort of quiz on interaction with the world, with points awarded for global engagement in technology,...

First Person Global.(protests in Buenos Aires)(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... When I lived in Buenos Aires, I used to go to a McDonald's located in the city center. Recently, I saw TV footage of that same McDonald's being vandalized in riots sparked by the country's IMF-approved austerity policies. It's a powerful...

Lords of The Lochs.(celebrities in Scotland)(Brief Article)
January 21, 2002... The Cayman Islands, the Cote d'Azur, Beverly Hills... Scotland? The past two years have seen the frosty northern nation rise to new ranks as a celebrity hot spot. Bonnie Prince William set the trend by attending St. Andrews University. Then...

Breaking the Deadlock.(diplomacy in Cyprus)
January 28, 2002... For three decades the infamous green line has divided Cyprus, a strange little slice of the cold war transplanted to the sleepy Mediterranean. Sentries slouch drowsily over their machine guns, amid sandbags and barbed wire. Greeks and Turks on...

Meet the Wizard.(Prince Charles' secretary Mark Bolland)(Brief Article)
January 28, 2002... Mark Bolland may be better known as the deputy private secretary to the Prince of Wales. But in fact he's the King of Spin. Even Tony Blair's handlers, famed for their ability to throw a media googly, may be no match. You could see those...

And For His Next Act ...(future of Yasir Arafat)
January 28, 2002... The corridor leading to his office vibrates with activity. Politicians and militants, activists and peace negotiators come and go, waiting for face time with Yasir Arafat. And the Palestinian leader has lots to spare these days. For more than a...

Still Fighting, Still Confident.(Yasir Arafat )(Brief Article)(Interview)
January 28, 2002... NEWSWEEK's Dan Ephron interviewed Yasir Arafat last week about his "irrelevance" and the way forward with Israel. Excerpts: EPHRON: The Israelis have sealed you off in this compound. How has that affected your ability to carry out...

Apocalypse, er, Not.(jungle warfare in Philippines)(Brief Article)
January 28, 2002... The symbolism is almost too obvious. U.S. Green Berets deploy in a steamy Southeast Asian jungle in order to help their local proxies hunt down hardy, elusive guerrillas. The scenario describes Vietnam three decades ago as easily as today's...

Nobody's Children.(street children in Nairobi)(Brief Article)
January 28, 2002... On any given night, at the corner of Market and Loita in downtown Nairobi, one or two dozen children curl up on the sidewalk. If no VIPs are visiting town, the police might let them stay. At dawn the shopkeepers come and they scamper to their...

This Time It's Personal.(Atal Behari Vajpayee )(Brief Article)
January 28, 2002... Atal Behari Vajpayee has good reason not to trust Pervez Musharraf. In May 1999, two months after the Indian prime minister had traveled to Lahore for a groundbreaking summit with his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan-based...

Grass-Roots Revolt.(business borrowers default in Japan)(Brief Article)
January 28, 2002... The audience leans forward to hear an answer to its woes. At the podium, author and retired banker Yoshiteru Iwai, a grandfatherly star on Japan's small-town lecture circuit, begins a spirited pep talk on how small-business owners can ease...

The Tale of the Mystery Corn in Mexico's Hills.
January 28, 2002... Olga Toro Maldonado was short on corn seed and slightly curious. In the spring of 1998, alongside the corn she had always raised on her hillside plot, she planted 60 kernels purchased from the government store. "The corn looked good," she...

Is Lord Jim That Bad?(World Bank president James Wolfensohn )(Brief Article)
January 28, 2002... Boom! boom! that's the sound of World Bank president James Wolfensohn under bombardment from all sides. With reconstruction just getting underway in Afghanistan, nearly every development expert in the world is questioning whether Wolfensohn's...

Brave New Foods.(Cornell university research on growing vaccine-bearing plants)
January 28, 2002... Watching plants grow was never Hugh Mason's idea of a good time. He was always more interested in organic molecules--DNA, proteins, viruses-- than in the organisms themselves. But these days he's spending a lot of time fretting over his...

Riding the 'Underwater'.(Venice mayor plans subway for city)(Brief Article)
January 28, 2002... Venice has long been in trouble. Its population is shrinking. Its historic buildings are crumbling. The whole city is sinking slowly into the sea. You could say the town is going down the tube, figuratively speaking. And soon that may be true...

Repairing a Broken Culture.(attempts to repair Taliban's destruction of Afghanistan artifacts and historic monuments)
January 28, 2002... In the basement of Afghanistan's culture ministry, a statue's broken foot and part of a skirt lie discarded in the corner. A lion's paw peeks out of a pile of rubble; a small rock turns out to be part of an elephant head. They are all that's...

The Treasures of Islam.(Brief Article)
January 28, 2002... Ever since the attacks of September 11, Islam is in. New York's Metropolitan Museum, never one to follow trends, presciently anticipated the interest this fall with two major international Islamic exhibits, both of which are about to go on the...

For Whom the Pots Clang.(protests against Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez)(Brief Article)
January 28, 2002... It wasn't the reaction that Hugo Chavez was used to. Only a year ago the Venezuelan president paraded through Caracas slums like Woodrow Wilson on the Champs-Elysees. His roaring triumphs in five elections left no doubt that "the people" were...

Foreigners Not Welcome.(Burhanuddin Rabbani)(Brief Article)(Interview)
January 28, 2002... At 60, Burhanuddin Rabbani is the grand warhorse of Afghan politics. Known simply as "Professor," he founded the Jamiat-e-Islami party in 1971. A Tajik, like an estimated quarter of Afghans, he was revered as a national hero for his role in...

Letter From America.(touring Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island where World Trade Center debris is being moved)(Brief Article)
January 28, 2002... The first thing I notice is the smell. It isn't just the caustic scent of burnt steel and jet fuel, familiar from the World Trade Center. It's something human, the odor of death. The next things I notice are the mountains of gray dirt,...

Mail Call.
January 28, 2002... NEWSWEEK writes of nation-building ("Rising From the Rubble," Special Report, Dec. 17). This is good. NEWSWEEK speculates on where the United States will go for terrorist hunting once it has finished off Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. This is...

Perspectives.
January 28, 2002... "Reassurance is good. Cash is better." Ahmad Fawzi, spokesman for the U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan, on long-term American support for the nation "Goma is literally burned to the ground. We really have a terrible human catastrophe...

Juggling 'Nuclear' Trade Bombs.(Brief Article)
January 28, 2002... Last year, U.S. trade Representative Robert Zoellick warned the European Union that if it imposed sanctions in the ongoing EU-U.S. tax dispute, it would be the equivalent of detonating a "nuclear bomb" on their relationship. So, when the World...

Puzzle Pieces.(Brief Article)
January 28, 2002... Investigators looking into Al Qaeda's global network now appear to be making breakthroughs. U.S. officials confirm that key leads have come from one Osama bin Laden aide in U.S. custody: Ibn Al-Shaykh al-Libi, who reportedly ran Al Qaeda's...

Shelled by The Sharia.(Brief Article)
January 28, 2002... It only takes one to tango. At least, according to one of Nigeria's strictest Sharia courts. In October 2000, 35-year-old Safiya Hussaini was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery after she gave birth to a daughter out of wedlock. The man...

Out of Ammo?(Brief Article)
January 28, 2002... In the past year, Alan Greenspan, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, has cut interest rates 11 times, from 6.5 percent to 1.75 percent--yet the latest numbers from 2001 are looking just about as bad as ever. Inflation is not the problem: the...

Fashion Victims of War.(Brief Article)
January 28, 2002... Ooh, that Hamid. he's such a dish. At Milan's menswear fashion show last week, the buzz was all Afghanistan--not guns but the buttery- smooth look of the war-torn country's new president, Hamid Karzai. The man does know how to...

Welcome Back, Mr. Pretzeldent.(George W. Bush )(Brief Article)
January 28, 2002... All it took was a pretzel. After he choked on one and fainted early last week, President George W. Bush gave the world its first chance to laugh at him since September 11. He even joined in the fun, handing out pretzels labeled with chew slowly...

The End of The World.(Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization)
January 28, 2002... Behold, the end of the world is nigh! Or at least, Pat Buchanan seems to think so. In his latest book, "Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization," the former U.S. presidential...

First Person Global.(Brief Article)
January 28, 2002... There is perhaps no better place in the world to have a baby than Italy--at least so it would seem. The icons of motherhood, the Madonna and child, hang on every street corner and piazza in the form of carved shrines laden with roses and...