Newsweek International articles from June 2001

Newsweek International archives from June 2001

Mail Call.
June 4, 2001... The Clashes in Quebec City Fareed Zakaria's April 30 column on the anti-globalization protesters in Quebec City stirred many emotions--mostly from those who disagreed with his assertion that the protesters were "antidemocratic." The group...

Japan's Young Slackers.(youths prefer part-time employment)(Statistical Data Included)
June 4, 2001... Tadashi Kato works hard for his money. Well, sort of. On fair-weather afternoons he peddles knockoff Nike T shirts (smuggled into Japan from Bangladesh) along Tokyo's swankiest shopping drag, Omotesando, netting about $100 on a good day. By...

Time to Crack the Books.(more Japanese students opting to earn graduate degrees)(Brief Article)
June 4, 2001... Mao Kurahashi wasn't sure whether she should get a job or stay in school. As an art-history major at Keio University, one of Japan's most prestigious private universities, Kurahashi, 23, was intrigued by historical ruins like those at Angkor...

Crashing Clones.(countries attempt to copy Nasdaq, National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations System)
June 4, 2001... In the beginning there was only Nasdaq, the American mother of all high-flying tech markets. As the New York exchange took off, others would try to follow. Starting in 1996 with Easdaq in Belgium and Kosdaq in South Korea, a mania for cloning...

Playing by Dutch Rules.(social liberalism of the Netherlands)
June 4, 2001... Ron Gerring missed the '60s the first time around, but he figures he's found a scene almost as good in Amsterdam today. "I see Holland as having only two rules," says the itinerant singer and songwriter from Toronto: "don't hurt anybody, and...

Shades of the'60s.(cultural aspects)
June 4, 2001... In many ways the cultural revolution we call the 1960s began in the Netherlands. There, on the streets of Amsterdam, an obscure and playful anarchist group called the Provos staged a number of "happenings" in the early years of the decade to...

My Life as a Teenage Mule.(youths recruited to traffic drugs)(Statistical Data Included)
June 4, 2001... One day last November a friend with a cousin in Mexico asked Juan if he would like to make $500. All he had to do was drive a Camaro across the border into the United States. A U.S. citizen born and raised in El Paso, Texas, Juan told the...

A War Against Intellectuals.(Egyptian dissenters under fire from government and militant Islamists)(Brief Article)
June 4, 2001... Searching for the Arabic word for "dissidence" a few years back, Egyptian writer Nawal el-Saadawi was stumped. In the end, she discarded al-ihtijaj (protest) and al-muarada (opposition), settling on al-nidal, struggle. The translation seems...

A Cardinal Call for Change.(call for reform of the Roman Curia)(Brief Article)
June 4, 2001... The papacy is the last of Europe's Renaissance courts, a system that makes courtiers of the cardinals and straight talk a rare experience. And so, when Pope John Paul II summoned his cardinals to Rome last week for a three-day consistory, many...

How It Will Play in Tokyo.(what Japan teaches students about its role in World War II)(Brief Article)
June 4, 2001... From the very start, the makers of "Pearl Harbor" were worried about offending Japanese viewers. A line in the script describing-- accurately--how the Japanese executed a couple of downed American pilots as war criminals was cut. And the "Pearl...

Japan's Next Generation.(videogame designers: Shinji Mikami, Tomonobu Itagaki, Tetsuya Mizuguchi)(Brief Article)(Interview)
June 4, 2001... The best Japanese videogame designers are not household names. Unless, that is, you're an avid player, in which case Tomonobu Itagaki, Shinji Mikami and Tetsuya Mizuguchi will rank with the likes of rock stars and movie icons. Itagaki, who...

Tradition Down the Drain.(fewer public baths in Japan)(Brief Article)
June 4, 2001... It's showtime at Showa Yokujo, a public bathhouse in central Tokyo. Wearing a brightly colored costume, Sumihiro Tajima shuffles and flips cards as part of his magic show. There is no stage; he performs in the bathhouse changing room among...

The Perils of Abundance.(rationing of electricity consumption in Brazil)(Brief Article)
June 4, 2001... The run on candles has begun, as Brazilians prepare for strict rationing rarely seen in peacetime. The government message is blunt: slash electricity consumption by 20 percent--or else face severe fines and worse. First-time offenders will have...

Even in the U.S.A.(Brief Article)
June 4, 2001... The first of my ancestors who came to North America, in the 17th century, were Dutch. They settled in a colony called New Amsterdam. Then the English took over. New Amsterdam became New York and New Jersey, and my ancestors had to put aside...

Zagat Goes Global.(restaurant guides)(Brief Article)
June 4, 2001... Little Timmy Zagat was an ordinary jewish boy in New York. His mother was no great cook. He had never heard of haute cuisine. Then he met Nina. "A revelation! She could cook! I married her!" Together, they have eaten out happily ever after--and...

Underground in Utah.(Tom Green)(Brief Article)
June 4, 2001... Americans can be shrill in their morality and selective about their history. They tend also to be blind to that fact, as I was reminded recently by the trial of Tom Green, a ex-Mormon allegedly married to five women at once. Green, the five...

Cyberscope.(Internet usage)(Brief Article)
June 4, 2001... With British elections coming next week, Web surfers have plenty of opportunity to sample the spectacle. They can get hard news from www.voxpolitics.com, or stage Space Invaders-style battles between the forces of Labour's Tony Blair and...

Perspectives.(includes multiple articles)(Brief Article)
June 4, 2001... "And to the C students, I say, you, too, can be president of the United States." President George W. Bush, a C student himself, receiving an honorary degree from Yale, his alma mater "It's more than a decade since I was in the front line of...

Perisccope.
June 4, 2001... P.C. WATCH What Happened to 'Blair's Babes'? Tony Blair brought "babes" to his last election--the 101 women M.P.s elected to Parliament in Labour's landslide victory. But this year they just haven't been as prominent. "Whatever...

Time to Deliver.(British election)
June 11, 2001... The lights go down, saxophones shriek and James Brown screams: "Wo! I feel good!" So begins "Feelgood," Alistair Beaton's lacerating stage satire of British politics circa 2001. It's about a prime minister-- D.L., he's called--obsessed with...

Botswana's Hope.(fighting aids)(Brief Article)
June 11, 2001... A sign at the entrance of a freshly painted bungalow near the center of Gaborone says MAKE A NEW START TODAY. And people are getting the message. Every morning there's a line at the door: a prick of the finger, a quick visit with a counselor...

A Blessing For China.
June 11, 2001... China and the Roman Catholic Church: seldom if ever has history produced a more irreconcilable clash of culture and politics. Roman Catholics have been part of China's political life since the early 1600s, when Jesuit Matteo Ricci entranced...

Keeping The Faith.(the cathedral in Cizhong, China)(Brief Article)
June 11, 2001... In the isolated mountain village of Cizhong, perched above the banks of the Mekong River in Yunnan province, a breathtakingly elegant European- style cathedral rises above the countryside, the legacy of Catholic priests who arrived in the...

The Euro Panic.(implementation of the Eurodollar)
June 11, 2001... The machines failed. In city centers long queues formed like Depression-era bread lines, the people hungering now for cash from dispensers that no longer worked. In the countryside, cars backed up for miles as automatic tollbooths failed to...

Putin's Gas-Patch Putsch.(Brief Article)
June 11, 2001... For years Russia's economic reformers dreamed about it. Prime ministers attempted it at their peril. Western investors pleaded for it in vain and last week Vladimir Putin finally pulled it off with remarkable ease. With a deftly orchestrated...

Maternity Chic.(Brief Article)
June 11, 2001... You're nine months pregnant, en route to a black-tie affair, and the only thing that fits is a tent. What's a woman to do? Well, if you're actress Annette Bening, model Cindy Crawford or American television journalist Katie Couric, you simply...

Remembering Jackie.(interview with Hubert de Givenchy)(Brief Article)(Interview)
June 11, 2001... Jacqueline Kennedy was introduced to French couturier Hubert de Givenchy in the late 1950s by her sister, Lee Radziwill, a Givenchy client. Soon enough, Kennedy herself was a Givenchy devotee, and together the pair came up with her signature...

The Other AIDS Crisis.(India)(Statistical Data Included)
June 11, 2001... 3,860,000: THE NUMBER OF MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN INDIA CARRYING THE AIDS VIRUS AT THE ENDOF 2000, ACCORDING TO THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION'S LATEST FIGURES. IN SOUTH AFRICA, 4.2 MILLION PEOPLE WERE INFECTED, AND IN BOTSWANA, 190,000....

Fashion and Design Trends.(Brief Article)
June 11, 2001... Whoever knew computer hardware could look so good? With the advent of Palm's ultra-thin handheld organizers has come a bevy of fashionable covers, from Hermes's gold matte alligator skin ($1,525) to the classic Burberry check ($195). According...

Tough-Talking Tanaka.(Brief Article)
June 11, 2001... When she came into office in April, everyone knew that Makiko Tanaka would not be your average foreign minister. The 57-year-old politician from Niigata prefecture had gained a reputation as an obachan, a term for middle-aged Japanese women who...

The Next Threat to Peace.(Indonesia)
June 11, 2001... Thousands of frenzied followers of Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid massed outside Parliament in Jakarta last week. They vowed to attack the building and fight to the death to defend the embattled president. But the angry protesters made...

The Mystery of the Weak Euro.(Brief Article)
June 11, 2001... The euro is a mystery for economists. As soon as it was introduced on Jan. 1, 1999, the euro swung downward and it has remained stagnant ever since, raising concerns about its prospects for success. Perhaps we should not worry too much: after...

Fun and Games in Lima.(Peruvian politics)(Brief Article)
June 11, 2001... A Peruvian journalist once described last Sunday's runoff election between Alan Garcia and Alejandro Toledo as "a choice between the gas chamber and the electric chair." However overstated the metaphor, the pronouncement by talk-show host Jaime...

A New Atlantic Charter.(Brief Article)(Interview)
June 11, 2001... Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke recently of pulling U.S. troops out of the Balkans. Secretary of State Colin Powell, touring Africa, told reporters that the Bush administration is looking for opportunities to "back off" some of...

Banking On Mexico's Future.(Citigroup )(Brief Article)
June 11, 2001... Two weeks ago, while Washington was debating a nonexistent missile shield and worrying about the never-ending violence in the Middle East, something important happened in the here and now that slipped our attention. Citigroup, the mammoth...

Letter From America.(Brief Article)(Column)
June 11, 2001... Tell me," a successful French chef asked me yesterday, "Is it true that Americans eat at least one meal a day in their cars?" I am in Paris this month, taking a respite from my crazy Los Angeles life, but here we are talking about America....

International Cyberscope.(Office XP)(Evaluation)
June 11, 2001... UPGRADES A New Look for the Office When it comes to personal computers, change always comes at a price. That's why it's so difficult deciding whether or not to upgrade your PC's software. A case in point: an upgrade of Microsoft...

Bloodbath in the Palace.(Nepal)(Brief Article)
June 11, 2001... The massacre was the stuff of tabloid headlines: SON SLAUGHTERS FAMILY IN SPAT OVER GIRLFRIEND. Except in this case, it was nearly impossible to exaggerate the grisly crime. The setting was the fabled city of Katmandu, and the killer was Crown...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
June 11, 2001... Holding Mother Russia Together Our May 7 story on Vladimir Putin prompted mixed reviews about the Russian leader. "Putin's ideals could be dangerous if it means sacrificing individual freedom," said one reader. "Putin is at least holding...

Perspectives.(quotations)(Brief Article)
June 11, 2001... "God will judge them--only God." James Oyugi, one of the victims of the 1998 bombing of the American Embassy in Nairobi, reacting to the guilty verdicts handed out by a jury in the federal district court in Manhattan to four men accused of the...

Dumb, Dumb, Dumb.(Alcatel, Lucent Technologies Inc.)(Brief Article)
June 11, 2001... Why did the big deal between Alcatel and Lucent go bust? Maybe because both companies have been so messed up for so long they've forgotten how to do things right. It was billed as a romantic tale of corporate chivalry. As the French telcom...

With Friends Like These...(Human Rights Watch reports on violence in Macedonia)(Brief Article)
June 11, 2001... At the NATO summit in Budapest, Hungary, last week, Secretary-General Lord Robertson condemned the "thugs" fighting in the hills of northern Macedonia. He meant the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army. But he could have been talking of...

A Good Licking.(UK pubs use candy and children's songs to prevent brawling)(Brief Article)
June 11, 2001... Can lollipops prevent pub brawls? Police in Leicester, England, hope so. The town last month embarked on a radical effort to keep wound-up, drunken partygoers from violently assaulting each other at closing time. As the 2 a.m. deadline nears,...

'A' Is for...(Ivy Leagues schools inflate student grades)(Brief Article)
June 11, 2001... Anything goes? For more than a decade, Ivy League colleges have been handing out superior grades for less than stellar performances. That's partly America's cult of self-esteem, where criticism is deemed harmful to a student's fragile ego. But...

Religion and The Brain.
June 18, 2001... Since our May 14 cover story on God and the brain "raised questions that concern every living being," as one letter writer put it, we heard from numerous readers who shared their own widely divergent views on the subject with us....

The Second Coming.(Argentinian economic minister Domingo Cavallo works to bring country out of recession)
June 18, 2001... It was a tour de force worthy of the wizard who tamed Argentina's four- digit inflation 10 years ago. Domingo Cavallo flew home at the end of a three-day sweep through New York, London and Madrid two weeks ago with good news for his anxious...

Claiming Another Win.(Domingo Cavallo speaks to Newsweek)(Brief Article)(Interview)
June 18, 2001... The day before he left Argentina for a whirlwind tour to sell international investors on Argentina's $29.5 billion debt swap, Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo spoke with NEWSWEEK's Joseph Contreras. Excerpts: CONTRERAS: The vice chairman...

Brazil's Turn To Hurt?(Brazilian economic conditions concern Argentina)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2001... South America's two giants, Brazil and Argentina, have long been intense competitors. They have sparred in every field, from football to finance, and spent much of the past century vying for the cash and attention of the rest of the world. In...

A Tale Of Two Decades.(Argentina struggles with recession)(Brief Article)(Column)
June 18, 2001... It was the worst of times, it was the weirdest of times. In my first year as Buenos Aires bureau chief for NEWSWEEK, Argentina entered a dizzying spiral of hyperinflation. The cost of living began to rise in the second half of 1988 and...

Going From Bad to Worse.(conflict with Albanians in Macedonia, National Liberation Army)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2001... Forty-two-year-old Hamdi Klenja knew it was bad when hundreds of men poured into Tsar Samuel Street in the southern Macedonian town of Bitola last Wednesday. The day before, Albanian guerrillas had ambushed and killed five Macedonian soldiers....

The Tomb Raiders.(grave robbery in West Bank)
June 18, 2001... Ahmed works the cave on his hands and knees, scooping up soil and then letting the sand sift through his fingers until he's left with a palm full of ancient relics. It's a meager assortment--broken pottery, chipped glass and the hollow clank of...

Nepal's Maoist Threat.
June 18, 2001... The CIA did it, with help from Indian spies and other outsiders. That was the message spread last week by Nepal's Maoist insurgents to explain the massacre of the country's royal family on June 1. Eyewitnesses told a different story: that the...

A Military Comeback.(Brief Article)
June 18, 2001... Indonesian Army Gen. Endriartono Sutarto seems at his best in tight spots. In 1998, just before the fall of President Suharto, Lt. Gen. Prabowo Subianto, the former dictator's powerful son-in-law, demanded that Sutarto swear an oath of loyalty...

Is The Business Cycle Dying?(Brief Article)
June 18, 2001... Something strange happened as recession threatened the American heartland. From their perch high in the gleaming glass towers of the Renaissance Center overlooking the decay of downtown Detroit, Michigan, the top executives of General Motors...

Rain-Forest Opera.(classical music in Brazil)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2001... It's a long way from Minsk to Manaus, but Igor Jouk is glad to have made the trip. Since the 36-year-old violinist came to this Brazilian river town from Belarus four years ago, he has built a career for himself in an exotic new land. Sure, the...

Blase at the Biennale.(Venice Biennale)
June 18, 2001... The connecting flight from London to Venice is practically an art-world charter. It's filled with curators, dealers and a few art critics, and boasts a notable spike in all-black attire. Everyone on board is going to the Venice Biennale, the...

If Judas Told His Story ...(Review)
June 18, 2001... If Napoleon had won the battle of Waterloo, the French emperor would have made peace with Britain, ensuring that France dominated the Continent, Russia stayed out and the Germans remained meek and loyal Napoleonic subjects. Or so suggested...

How Real Is The Placebo Effect?(Brief Article)
June 18, 2001... The medical establishment has long held that a substance can have a medicinal effect simply because a patient believes it will. The conventional wisdom about this placebo effect, which harks back to a paper published in 1955, has been that it...

The Future of Computers.
June 18, 2001... Someday, perhaps before the decade is out, you may be able to read this story on a sheet of Internet paper as thin as the one you are now holding. After your eye has scrolled down the page, the text will change to display the next page. It...

Righting One Wrong Tower.(leaning tower of Pisa)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2001... For much of the last decade, Italy's leaning tower of Pisa was a huge construction site. Crews piled 900 tons of lead bricks around the tower's base. More recently, they drilled holes beneath the tower, inserted pipes and sucked out 70 tons of...

Bottom Feeder.(Li Ka-Shing invests in Priceline.com)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2001... Hong Kong supertycoon Li Ka-Shing has made many daring moves in a fabled career. Last week he did it again, reaching into the rubble of a decimated dot-com landscape and plucking out a $110 million stake in Priceline, the online sales giant....

Death in Second Grade.(Mamoru Takuma murders eight Japanese school children)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2001... There are no metal detectors in Japan's elementary schools. No security guards at the gates. In towns like Ikeda, 20 kilometers outside of Osaka, schools are open, trusting places where community members are welcome. School massacres, the...

In Search of a Throne.(exiled Iranian Prince Reza Pahlavi)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2001... Prince Reza Pahlavi was 19 when islamic clerics overthrew his late father, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. He has lived quietly in exile, working within the Iranian diaspora. But lately he has stepped back onto the public stage. Iran...

Letter From America.(state of real esate in New York city)(Brief Article)(Column)(Statistical Data Included)
June 18, 2001... New York's tabloids are agog over Gotham's latest grisly murder. Three thugs burst into a man's apartment, beat him brainless with a baseball bat, strangled him, dumped him into a bathtub, drained his blood by slitting his wrists, then sawed...

From the Desert.(Aplicacoes Eletronicas Industria )(Brief Article)
June 18, 2001... The tiny Brazilian firm Aplicacoes Eletronicas Industria made a splash six years ago by beating out European giants for a contract to design a computerized messaging system for Rio de Janeiro's rail system. Now it supplies hardware and software...

Looking Back at An Epidemic.(online photo exhibit on 20 years of AIDS)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2001... Ten years ago magazine editor David Friend had an idea: a photographic retrospective of the AIDS epidemic. He put together some initial pages for Life magazine, where he was director of photography at the time, but it never ran. The project was...

Perspectives.
June 18, 2001... "The common European perception of Bush is of a shallow, arrogant, gun- loving, abortion-hating, Christian fundamentalist Texan buffoon." A senior administration official, on George W. Bush's upcoming trip abroad--where he will attempt to win...

Keeping Everybody Happy.(Institute for Public Policy Research, Tony Blair's Labour Party criticized for leaning towards right politically)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2001... Great fun, getting re-elected and all. The trouble is, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party has flopped so far to the right that, to follow through on its promises, it risks losing support of the left. No, Blair will not bring...

The Mouse That Roared.(Liechtenstein sues Germany in the International Court of Justice for treasures confiscated in World War II)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2001... Art works by 17th-century masters. Castles. Country estates and 430,000 acres of prime real estate. These are among the treasures confiscated by German forces occupying Czechoslovakia during World War II. Berlin wants to return them to their...

'Hitler' a Hero?(Chenjerai Hunzvi honored by Robert Mugabe)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2001... Amid protests from opposition groups, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe declared his recently deceased henchman Chenjerai (Hitler) Hunzvi a national hero last week. He was one of three top political figures linked to Mugabe to die in the past...

Open Mouth, Insert Foot.(Prince Philip quoted)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2001... Prince Philip, Duke Of Edinburgh, who just turned 80, has made nearly 600 state visits to 140 countries on behalf of Britain--and managed to insult nearly everyone along the way. Not even his own family has escaped his self-proclaimed...

With This Ring I Thee... Divorce.(popularity of new ceremonies)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2001... Marriages need not end in death or tears. Many American couples are now bowing out in celebration, holding divorce ceremonies as grand as their long-forgotten nuptials: reprisals of the original tunes, video tributes of their years...

Ancient Porn Returns to Your Palm.(Product Announcement)
June 18, 2001... Here's a whole new reason for having sweaty palms. Make way for PalmaSutra 2, an updated version of last year's Kama Sutra software (think more sleaze, less Vedic philosophy) for the Palm. The 2.0 edition comes in six different languages and...

The Real Bogeyman.(survey on what frightens children)(Brief Article)
June 25, 2001... What frightens American kids the most? The creators of "Sesame Street" recently surveyed hundreds of children (6 to 11 years old) across the country to find out. They asked the youngsters to illustrate their biggest fear and explain why....

Mail Call.
June 25, 2001... Our May 21 article on Tony Blair's war with the British media evoked mostly condemnation of what one reader called "Fleet Street's gutter press." The influence of corporate media barons especially came under fire. "North American business...

Bush's Foreign Affair.(Brief Article)
June 25, 2001... Bianca Jagger, the celebrity activist, isn't exactly a fan of George W. But she loved the U.S. president's first European tour, looking on with pleasure from among thousands of shouting, marching protesters. They jeered him, reviled him, even...

Exorcising AIDS.(in Kenya)(Brief Article)
June 25, 2001... At Saint Luke's Church, it is Rhoda Otieno's turn to be "prayed over." She sinks to her knees and with both hands raises a crucifix to the sky. Two men and a woman surround her. One of them holds a wooden sword, another a fly swatter; the third...

The Incredible Shrinking President.(South African president Thabo Mbeki)(Brief Article)
June 25, 2001... Once famous for his serial seduction of western diplomats, white businessmen, Zulu chieftains and khaki-clad racists, Thabo Mbeki's tenure as South African president has been marred by a string of public-relations gaffes. His comments on AIDS,...

Qualcomm's Long March.
June 25, 2001... Irwin Jacobs is obsessed with China, but he won't talk about it. Jacobs, 67, is a mild-mannered engineer and MIT professor by background. But he's also the chairman of Qualcomm, one of America's high-tech standard-bearers--literally. The San...

Invisible Barriers.(consumer attitudes in South Korea)
June 25, 2001... In posh Kangnam, at the bustling heart of Seoul, a lonely Ford dealer makes an odd pitch to shoppers who barely glance at his shop. Inside the nearly deserted showroom, a display of flowers and pink ribbons presents a green Lincoln LS as the...

A 'Misguided' Country.(Review)
June 25, 2001... Remember the days when Japan seemed all-powerful? If your memory is a bit hazy, it's hardly surprising. Just like many Germans for whom the Berlin wall has quickly receded into history and taken on a fairy-tale quality, the Japanese must feel...

The Art Of Summer.(London exhibitions)
June 25, 2001... Two centuries ago any serious European art tour's main destination was Rome: home to a couple of millennia of golden-stoned architecture, a lion's share of the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance and fresh and beautiful paintings by artists...

Reinventing Baroque.(Kunsthalle gallery opens in Austria)(Brief Article)
June 25, 2001... Baroque art typically brings to mind rosy-thighed cherubs, zaftig goddesses and gilt. Not anymore--in Vienna. In the Austrian capital's recently reopened Kunsthalle, an exhibit space for contemporary art, seven modern artists daringly test the...

Picnics With Puccini.(European arts festivals)
June 25, 2001... Next to the hum of crickets and the drip of air conditioners, the world's most summery sound is that of gentle melodies wafting over a lawn strewn with picnickers. Humankind looks up from its laptops and remembers the pleasures of fresh air,...