Newsweek International articles from July 2004

Newsweek International archives from July 2004

Mail Call: Rumsfeld Under Fire.(Letter to the Editor)
July 5, 2004... Responding to our May 17 cover story, readers blamed Donald Rumsfeld for the Abu Ghraib abuses. "A clueless president and an irresponsible Defense secretary did not respect the law and gave orders that led to torture," wrote one. "America lost...

The Virgin Oilfields of Iraq; A large part of the country is still mainly unexplored. Of the more than 80 oilfields discovered, only 21 have been developed.
July 5, 2004... Byline: Leonardo Maugeri, Maugeri is group senior vice president for corporate strategies at Eni, the Italian oil and gas company. When it comes to oil, Iraq is--believe it or not--largely virgin territory. Though much of the talk about...

Europe Takes Charge; Sure, NATO is relevant. But the real transatlantic work is being done over at the European Union.
July 5, 2004... Byline: Andrew Moravcsik, Moravcsik teaches government and directs the European Union Center at Harvard University. Hundreds of thousands of American tourists flock to Ireland every year seeking ruined castles, green fields and friendly...

Between East and West; Turkey is perfectly poised to spearhead America's attempts to reform the Middle East. But Ankara has good reasons not to.
July 5, 2004... Byline: Owen Matthews, With Sami Kohen in Istanbul Turkey's place at center stage for this week's NATO summit is more than symbolic. Beyond Iraq, both the United States and Europe have one dominant policy mission--to break the logjam of...

Dueling Billboards; Roman relics are now brought to you by Vespa.
July 5, 2004... Byline: Barbie Nadeau Rome's Spanish steps have always been a seductive spot, but never quite like this. On the facade of the church sitting at the top, a billboard featuring huge glossy lips advertises Glam Shine lipstick--maker of such...

It's the Politics, Stupid; Hong Kongers are taking an interest in more than their economic future.
July 5, 2004... Byline: Melinda Liu and Alexandra A. Seno On a teeming street in the gritty Hong Kong neighborhood of Mong- kok, vendors peddle everything from driving lessons to cable-TV subscriptions to Citibank accounts ("and get a free cordless...

Good Times in Medellin; A city tainted by violence is experiencing a renaissance.
July 5, 2004... Byline: Malcolm Beith Luis Fernando Betancur Merino gazes out of his eighth-floor office window, overlooking the Colombian city of Medellin, and smiles at the bustling panorama. Betancur is Medellin's administrator for urban development;...

Latin America Lags Behind; Even if the region grows 4 percent this year, it's still heading for another 'lost decade.' Only this time, the inevitable popular revolt is targeting democracies.(Cover Story)
July 5, 2004... Byline: Scott Johnson, With Mac Margolis in Rio de Janeiro Early one Sunday morning last month, the residents of Jiutepec, Mexico, were rocked from their slumber by the ongoing siege against capitalist democracy in Latin America. Bombs...

The Yukos Endgame; Putin is looking for strategic control, starting with the effective renationalization of Russia's largest oil giant.
July 5, 2004... Byline: Frank Brown, With Nadezhda Titova What is Vladimir Putin's real game in the Yukos affair? As the tax charges against Russia's largest oil company and its jailed former CEO, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, wind through court, the government...

Dinner as Theater; Audiences rush to digest a spate of plays starring food.
July 5, 2004... Byline: Sarah Sennott, With Anna Arutiunova in Moscow and Kathryn Williams in New York Inside a large storage shack in Ghent, Belgium, ticketholders arriving to see "Rantsoen" are handed glasses of ginger beer as they pass through a...

The lay of the land; A rare show of Russian paintings from the Tolstoy era.("Russian Landscape in the Age of Tolstoy" at London's National Gallery )
July 5, 2004... Byline: Ginanne Brownell A spirited orange fox scampers up a lush hill, past healthy pines and scarred birch trees. At the summit, against the backdrop of a vast glimmering lake, sit three old men with long white beards, looking like they...

An Empire in Denial; America is strong, but lacks the will to rule the world.
July 5, 2004... Byline: Stryker McGuire Journalism, a wise editor once said, is the first rough draft of history. These days, with all media traveling at warp speed, historians are sometimes turning out their own first drafts. Niall Ferguson is one such...

The buzzing sound of summer.(Asian tiger mosquito aggressive in Rome)
July 5, 2004... Byline: Barbie Nadeau The telltale sound of summer in Rome used to be the clapping of plastic tables on the cobblestone streets as restaurants prepared to serve dinner under the stars. Now there's also the whine of buzzing mosquitoes....

A Failure of Intelligence; Anonymous.(Interview)
July 5, 2004... Byline: Mark Hosenball In Washington nowadays, taking potshots at the United States intelligence community is almost a daily event. The latest attack, however, comes not from the media or Congress but from one of its own. In a politically...

Perspectives.(quotations)
July 5, 2004... Byline: Sources from top to bottom: AP, New York Times (2),The Washington Post, Reuters, New York Times, BBC "The time has come for a showdown." Iraqi interim Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan, vowing to stand firm against attacks that...

Periscope.(briefs)
July 5, 2004... Byline: Christopher Dickey, B. J. Lee, Frank Brown, Allan Sloan, Sarah Sennott, Kathryn Williams, Peg Tyre and Karen Springen, Marc Peyser SAUDI ARABIA: Holier Than Thou Most recent Saudi efforts to crack down on homegrown terror have...

Snap Judgment: Books; Our critics steer you straight on the latest releases.(Transmission By Hari Kunzru)(State-Building By Francis Fukuyama)(Amber By Stephan Collishaw)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 5, 2004... Byline: Tara Pepper, Ginanne Brownell Transmission By Hari Kunzru Cubicle-bound computer geeks everywhere dream of destroying the corporations that co-opt their waking hours. But unlike Kunzru's Bollywood-obsessed Indian techie,...

Summer Camps: Hiking For Humanity.
July 5, 2004... Byline: Karin Bennett Deepika Jindal, from Hisar, India, was eager for her two children to have a meaningful summer experience. "Indian children lead sheltered lives," she says. "During their summer break, they either sit at home to finish...

Parades: Get Your Pink On.(aay-pride festivals)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... Byline: Kathryn Williams Gay-pride festivals are getting underway around the world, timed to celebrate the anniversary of New York's June 27 Stonewall Riots, a landmark moment in gay-rights history. A TIP SHEET guide: Guadalajara,...

Mail Call: Investigating Torture.(Letter to the Editor)
July 12, 2004... Abu Ghraib haunted readers who wrote in to congratulate us on our May 24 report on the torture scandal. "A brilliant investigation," said one. Another wondered, "How can President Bush ever regain credibility?" The Road to Abu Ghraib ...

A Bridge Builder; The election of Portuguese Prime Minister Duro Barroso as EC president may be a watershed for Europe.
July 12, 2004... Byline: Stryker McGuire (With Liat Radcliffe in London, Eric Pape in Paris, Stefan Theil in Berlin and Mike Elkin in Madrid) The countdown to the war in Iraq had begun. The Coalition that would wage it--led by the United States and...

Feeling the Heat Again; French Prime Minister Raffarin finally found an issue voters like, but he may have fumbled this opportunity like others.
July 12, 2004... Byline: Marie Valla and Eric Pape France's conservative government is under fire for lacking conviction for a reason. Its latest attempt at a dramatic gesture involves slapping a 3,000 Euro tax on SUVs and other gas guzzlers to cut back on...

Getting the Word Out; Hong Kong's political awakening is exposing mainland Chinese to more than good shopping.
July 12, 2004... Byline: Melinda Liu and Alexandra A. Seno Wang Zhonghua was almost giddy with excitement. As head of a private think tank in China that studies efforts at grass-roots democracy, he has traveled across the mainland monitoring local...

Bursting Bubbles; The end of cheap money threatens local property bubbles from Seattle to Sydney. The bursts will rattle cocktail parties, but (probably) not the global economy.(Cover Story)
July 12, 2004... Byline: Karen Lowry Miller (With Adam Piore in New York, Craig Simons in Beijing, Avraham Karshmer and Ginanne Brownell in London, Jen Lin-Liu in Shanghai and Mac Margolis in Rio) On a bitterly divided planet, there is still one subject...

Model Artist; Sculptor Ju Ming's huge, playful figures capture the everyday and blur the lines between East and West.
July 12, 2004... Byline: Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop Parachutists swoop down inside the immigration halls of Singapore's Changi airport. They look like part of an antiterrorism commando exercise, but they are actually made of bronze and stainless steel and...

The Devil Is in the Clouds; Will global warming end in catastrophe or anticlimax? The more scientists study climate, the less they know.
July 12, 2004... Byline: Fred Guterl (With Stefan Theil, Eric Pape and Marie Valla) Meteorologists routinely tell us what next week's weather is likely to be, and climate scientists discuss what might happen in 100 years. Christoph Schar, though, ventures...

The Cash Haven; Arab markets are booming, and financiers say the money is coming home from post-9-11 America.(Cover Story)
July 12, 2004... Byline: Christopher Dickey From outer space, the developers claim, you can see the palm trees growing. They are in fact man-made islands in the shapes of palms, under construction off the coast of Dubai. In all, some $30 billion is being...

The Stalin Look; Moscow developers are demolishing old architectural gems in favor of behemoths a certain dictator would have loved.(Cover Story)
July 12, 2004... Byline: Anna Arutiunova (With Frank Brown in Moscow) Moscow is the hottest real-estate market in Europe because new Russian oil money has nowhere else to go. Banks are shaky and the stock market resembles a casino, so money pours into...

Chirac's Turnaround? The country may not have replaced Iraq as an wedge issue, but its EU dream is still a point of contention.(Jacques Chirac)(Turkey)
July 12, 2004... Byline: Owen Matthews France may have gotten some of what it wanted with last week's handover of sovereignty in Iraq. But that doesn't mean that French President Jacques Chirac is through tweaking his U.S. counterpart, George W. Bush. The...

Calculus for Catastrophe; Gordon Woo.(Interview)
July 12, 2004... Byline: Stefan Theil In April the International Olympic Committee took the unprecedented step of buying $170 million worth of insurance to cover its operations in case the Athens Games are interrupted by terrorism or war. Such insurance...

Manipulating My Mother Tongue.
July 12, 2004... Byline: Malcolm Beith I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Or rather, I was born with a British accent in my mouth. Actually, to be honest, I wasn't born with the accent, I developed it while spending my formative years at a British...

Perspectives.
July 12, 2004... Byline: Sources, Top To Bottom: AP, CNN, BBC, AFP, Reuters, BBC "May God protect Iraq and its citizens." Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawer, as the United States transferred sovereignty to Iraq on June 28 "No, present. Current. It's...

Periscope.
July 12, 2004... Byline: Michael Hirsh and T. Trent Gegax, Zahid Hussain, Joseph Contreras, Michael Hastings, Hideko Takayama, Elise Soukup, Peter Suciu, Nicole Martinelli, Ginanne Brownell U.S. MILITARY Mounting Costs of War Publicly, the...

Tip Sheet.(healthy pregnancy; restaurants with a view; tickling)(Directory)
July 12, 2004... Byline: Karen Springen, William Underhill, Olivia Ma HEALTH New Rules For A Safe Pregnancy By Karen Springen The nine months between conception and delivery are filled with anticipation, and with confusing advice: cut out...

More Than Just a Game; Football comes to terms with the forces of globalization.(How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization)(Book Review)
July 12, 2004... Byline: Malcolm Beith Only Brazilian midfielder Kaka could boast of better timing. As Franklin Foer's new book, "How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization" (255 pages. HarperCollins ), hits stores, the world has...

Mail Call: Wartime Leadership.(Letter to the Editor)
July 19, 2004... Jon Meacham's May 31 history of D-Day won fulsome praise from readers. One sent "Congratulations!" Another called it "one of the best stories in a long time." A third summed up: "Insightful and enlightening." Learning From D-Day ...

Japan's Unknown Soldiers; The Japanese military has long lived in the shadow of its past. But confronted by a dangerous world, it's once again readying itself for war.
July 19, 2004... Byline: Evan Thomas and Hideko Takayama Etajima, The Officer Candidate School of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF), is a demanding military academy. Awakened by a bugle call at 6 a.m., midshipmen throw on uniforms and race...

Fighting for Votes; With Indonesia's presidential election set for a runoff, the race may be decided by who has the most friends.
July 19, 2004... Byline: Joe Cochrane On the eve of Indonesia's first direct presidential election last week, incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri was teary-eyed. The normally wooden-faced president choked up during a nationally televised appeal for a peaceful...

Worst Lady? President Vicente Fox is losing his grip on his party and his government, and his wife may be to blame.(Cover Story)
July 19, 2004... Byline: Scott Johnson (With Alan Cordova in Mexico City) Soft music and idle chatter fill the air in the small but classy restaurant in an upscale Mexico City neighborhood. Suddenly, the music stops and the room falls silent. A policeman...

Asia's Art Island; A Japanese tycoon opens a new museum to share his dazzling private collection. Just don't miss the boat.
July 19, 2004... Byline: Kay Itoi Soichiro Fukutake was strolling through a Claude Monet exhibition at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts when he arrived at a large, never-before-exhibited two-panel canvas of waterlilies. He was mesmerized. A little plaque on...

The Cost of AIDS in Asia.
July 19, 2004... Byline: Greg Behrman (Behrman is the author of "The Invisible People: How the U.S. Has Slept Through the Global AIDS Pandemic, the Greatest Humanitarian Catastrophe of Our Time.") Bangkok this week is host to 15,000 scientists, health-care...

Off the Deep End; French Finance Minister Sarkozy wants to take on the 35-hour workweek. Is he daring, or just crazy?
July 19, 2004... Byline: Marie Valla and Eric Pape How much can you change France? Or, more precisely, the French? Can you make them give up some of their state-funded privileges--which many see as government-given rights? Can you make them work longer...

Marching Toward Civility; Bitter enemies in Northern Ireland finally share a common goal: a government.
July 19, 2004... Byline: Stryker McGuire (With Liat Radcliffe in London and Barry White in Belfast) The summer "marching season" is one of those Northern Ireland tribal rituals that mystify outsiders. Throughout July the Orange Order, a Protestant...

The Cross-Country Killer; How well can the EU cooperate?
July 19, 2004... Byline: Marie Valla During the world wars, soldiers died by the thousands in the dense forests of the Ardennes along the boundary of France and Belgium. In the age of the European Union, with open borders and Brussels-based institutions,...

'A Struggle For Power'; Did a split in the ruling clique lead to the Darfur crisis?
July 19, 2004... Byline: Tom Masland The tarp huts broil in a sand-blasted desert, but there's nothing disorganized about the Iridimi refugee camp in Chad, 80 kilometers from the Sudan border. By the time U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived here on...

Profit and the Poor; Consumer-goods makers are realizing they have only one direction to go for growth: down-market.(Correction Notice)
July 19, 2004... ***** CORRECTION: In "Profit and the Poor," we cited an article from Foreign Policy magazine that said low-wage earners from the 18 largest developing nations take in $1.7 billion a year. The amount, in fact, is $1.7 trillion. NEWSWEEK...

Europe's High-Tech Heavy; Henning Kagermann.(Interview)
July 19, 2004... Byline: Stefan Theil SAP is no household name. but if you work for a multinational corporation, chances are you're already using SAP software to file expense reports, manage customer data or monitor product deliveries. The only...

Back to the Stone Age.(Binghamton, New York)
July 19, 2004... Byline: Maggie Cutler The Bing Hamptons. That's what I've taken to calling the upstate New York area where my husband and I spend weekends, my joke being the horrific contrast between the fashionable, exorbitant Long Island Hamptons and...

Perspectives.
July 19, 2004... Byline: Quotation sources from top to bottom: Daily Mirror, ABC News, Reuters, New York Times, BBC, Reuters (2), BBC "I have to accept we have not found them." British Prime Minister Tony Blair, admitting that Coalition forces had...

Periscope.(India)
July 19, 2004... Byline: Sudip Mazumdar, Dan Ephron, Barbie Nadeau, Karin Bennett, Rana Foroohar, Frank Brown, Mehammed Mack, Devon Thomas, Lisa Helem, Nicki Gostin INDIA A Passing Grade? Last week Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram unveiled...

Tip Sheet.
July 19, 2004... Byline: Sandy L. Edry, Michelle Jana Chan, Karin Bennett, Alexandra A. Seno, Anne Taulane Travel: Play Princess For a Week By Sandy L. Edry If you've always dreamed of living like royalty, now you can--at least while you're on...

Leaving His Mark; A hilarious new sitcom by a man with a real entourage.(Television Program Review)
July 19, 2004... Byline: Marc Peyser The true test of a movie star's power isn't how many women he can get. It's how many women he can get for his buddies. Vince (Adrian Grenier) is having a bad day. He got a lousy review for his latest film, and shot his...

The Best Countries in the World.(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Jeffrey D. Sachs (Sachs is the director of Columbia University's Earth Institute.) Every place on the planet has something of unique beauty and significance to contribute to the "good life" on earth. Africa's open savannas awaken...

Just the Facts; Best Country to be a technocrat--China is led by a group of engineers who love projects, not lofty ideas.(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Sarah Schafer Wu Jisong, a compact man with glasses and an easy smile, holds one of China's most difficult jobs. In a nation beset with droughts, Wu is in charge of making sure there is enough water not only for people to drink but...

Altruism And Opportunism; When it comes to mixing good deeds with good business, Holland leads the way.(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Emily Flynn There is an eternal struggle in the Dutch mind, say the Dutch themselves, between the merchant and the vicar--between doing good business and, with the money earned, good deeds. In the 16th century the Protestant...

Open Arms; A poor land welcomes the downtrodden.(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Zahid Hussain and Ron Moreau Mohammed Abbas and his brother, Mohammed Ibrahim, fled Kabul 19 years ago after Soviet forces occupied Afghanistan. They were among millions of Afghans who took refuge in neighboring Pakistan. In...

'So Much To Do'; Hanoi failed in its first attempt at market reform. Now, a younger leadership is succeeding.(Brief Article)(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Joe Cochrane Vietnam flunked its first effort at economic modernization, in the early 1990s. Foreign firms rushed in to sell goods to the country's large, young population, but were stymied by the poor infrastructure and...

Here and Now; Best country to be young--Turkey. Rural kids are flocking to Istanbul to 'live a modern life'.(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Owen Matthews It's nine o'clock on a warm Friday evening in downtown Istanbul, and Taksim Square is packed with young people strolling, chatting, waiting for dates to show up. Most wouldn't look out of place lounging on any...

Hear Them Roar; In a Catholic country, feminism is now trendy.(Brief Article)(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Ginanne Brownell Conservative and Roman Catholic, Poland hasn't been a bastion of women's rights. For years the country has ranked near the bottom among European nations in terms of attitudes toward women and legal protections....

Top Marks In Class; A society that values both its teachers and its students.(Finland boasts high educational achievements)(Brief Article)(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Liat Radcliffe Why are education specialists flocking to Finland? Partly, their interest has been piqued by how well Finnish students fared in a 2001 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report that compared...

Easing The Misery; A small army of therapists soothes a troubled nation.(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Carolyn Whelan Life got you down? In recent times, as an economic depression wiped out bank savings and millions of jobs, all too many Argentines would have said yes. That helps explain why the South American giant is said to have...

Science and Savvy; Sweden: A culture of innovation breeds biotech start-ups.
July 26, 2004... Byline: Stryker McGguire As an immunologist, Hans Wigzell speaks the language of antibody synthesis and transplantation immunity. So what's he doing in his professorially cluttered Stockholm office talking about precommercial interfaces...

Estonia: Hack Heaven; Eastern Europe's whiz kids make good.(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: William Underhill Serial entrepreneur Niklas Zennstrom might serve as a model for Sweden's flourishing IT industry. This is the man who gave the world KaZaA, the file-swapping software that shook the global record industry....

Russia: Clean Money; The Kyoto Protocol is a boon to Russia.(Brief Article)(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Frank Brown The Kyoto Protocol, the ambitious attempt to slow down global warming, got a lifesaving boost in May from Russian President Vladimir Putin. He pledged to "speed up" Russia's ratification of the protocol, which means it...

The Right Mix; Best country to get rich: United States. Texas is the optimistic new model for an immigrant-led economy.
July 26, 2004... Byline: Michael Hastings The etymology of the phrase "strike it rich" is pure Americana. Miners searching for gold along the vast Western frontiers first yelled those words in 1869. In the 20th century the expression accurately captured...

Eyes On The Prize; Fund managers are gaga over the huge, tech-savvy market.(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Sudip Mazumdar Kiran mazumdar-Shaw, CEO of the Indian biotech firm Biocon, starts her day with a quiet prayer. On an April morning this year, her appeals for grace and good fortune were apparently answered: Biocon's initial public...

Peace Of Mind; How to create a truly egalitarian society.(Denmark's social policy ensures stability)(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Emily Flynn Among developed nations, Denmark is the most egalitarian place in the world. No country cares more about keeping its people on roughly the same socioeconomic plane. The Danes devote almost a third of their country's GDP...

Germany: On Fertile Ground; Government support and inexpensive workspace make Berlin a creative haven.
July 26, 2004... Byline: Stefan Theil When a group of young artists took over the bombed-out remains of a 19th-century shopping arcade on Berlin's Oranienburger Strasse in the early 1990s, the city government intervened to stop the wrecking ball. In a...

Canada: The Literary Life; Authors revel in global acclaim and public funding.(Brief Article)(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Liat Radcliffe In the 1950s Mordecai Richler had to leave Canada and go to Britain to make a name for himself. Today that's not necessary: Canada's literary scene is flourishing. Yann Martel's "Life of Pi," about a shipwrecked...

South Africa: Street Style; Cool clothes with a conscience are winning new fans.(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Henk Rossouw The architects of apartheid must be rolling in their graves: in May, the Voortrekker Monument, once the hallowed symbol of white supremacy, was lit up by camera flashes as models, black and white, strutted down a...

France: A Sound Stage; An open-minded infrastructure offers new acts a chance to be discovered.(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Tara Pepper Frustrated by censorship in her native Algeria, feisty singer-songwriter Souad Massi jumped at the chance to play in a concert organized by a dissident friend in Paris. Though she'd been taught to view the French as...

Behind the Smile; Can poor people be more self-satisfied than the rich? New clues to an old mystery.
July 26, 2004... Byline: Richard Ernsberger Jr. (With Emily Flynn in London and Jaime Cunningham in New York) The conclusion was, to say the least, surprising: a World Value Survey of people in 65 nations, conducted recently by an international group of...

Talent Show; The country is becoming a magnet for a new class of immigrants--the young, smart ones.(Brief Article)(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Rana Foroohar Britain has always been a good place for migrants--everyone from Romans to Saxons to South Asian immigrants have set up shop here and thrived. Today, as the threat of terror makes Americans more wary of foreigners,...

Japan: Sunny Side Up; The search for new energy powers an industry.(Cover Story)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Kay Itoi As he rides the train, Takashi Tomita always looks out the window. He wants to see how many solar panels he can find on the rooftops whizzing by. With less than 1 percent of Japanese households using them, very few come...

Mail Call: The Wi-Fi Revolution.(Letter to the Editor)
July 26, 2004... Many readers of our June 7/June 14 issue on wireless innovation were critical of the new technology. "An excellent job of looking into the trends to come!" wrote one, even as another noted, "Portable devices have made people ruder in...

Breaking Point? Silvio Berlusconi keeps his government together, but he has worn out his welcome.
July 26, 2004... Byline: Stryker McGuire (With Liat Radcliffe in London and Edward Pentin in Rome) It was another brass-knuckles day for Silvio Berlusconi. His coalition was on the verge of collapse. He was deep in argument with one of his balky political...

The End of Welfare? A quiet social revolution is underway in Germany.
July 26, 2004... Byline: Stefan Theil Beneath its perpetual sense of malaise, a quiet revolution is sneaking up on Germany. Two weeks ago the upper house of Parliament passed the final phase of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Agenda 2010, the landmark...

Down But Not Yet Out; Koizumi was bruised by the opposition party's strong showing at the recent polls. But he is seeking to regain support by touting Japan's revival--and there's plenty to talk about.
July 26, 2004... Byline: George Wehrfritz (With Hideko Takayama in Tokyo) For the gray-suited men who control Japan Inc., UFJ Holdings was a disaster waiting to happen. The weakest of the country's four megabanks carries billions in bad debt on its books,...

A Multicultural Web; Spider-Man dons a dhoti and battles a Hindu demon.
July 26, 2004... Byline: Jason Overdorf Even superheroes aren't safe from job outsourcing anymore. Next month Marvel Comics will launch "Spider-Man India," the first ethnic adaptation of the popular comic-book series. Peter Parker of New York City becomes...

Milosevic on the Stand; A war-crimes trial that's riveting even without a verdict.
July 26, 2004... Byline: Ginanne Brownell If Slobodan Milosevic's health improves, he is supposed to take the stand later this summer to present his defense to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. The former...

Tony Knows Best; The prime minister has a distaste for open, frank disagreement and likes his decisions well-cooked in advance of meetings.
July 26, 2004... Byline: Robin Cook (Cook was British foreign secretary from 1997 to 2001. He was leader of the House of Commons until March 2003, when he resigned over government policy in Iraq.) No one is better qualified to review the British...

The Bordeaux of China; A vintner bets that local palates will mature with his wines.
July 26, 2004... Byline: Jonathan Ansfield When Gernot Langes-Swarovski set foot on a wind-battered strip of coast 250 kilometers east of Beijing five years ago, he saw more than dust and rock. He envisioned lush vineyards, oak casks and bottles of fine...

Bernard Hinault; The Rage to Live and Win.(Interview)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Marie Valla Will Lance Armstrong succeed where cycling stars Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain all failed and win a sixth Tour de France this year? Hinault, who was known as the Badger, missed his...

A Matter of Public Trust.(suspicion of politicians and their motives has reached new levels)
July 26, 2004... Byline: Tony Judt (Judt is the director of the Remarque Institute at New York University.) Democracy is the most delicate of political systems. Kings had divine right. Tyrants use force. But the authority of democratically elected leaders...