Newsweek International articles from June 2005

Newsweek International archives from June 2005

Mail Call: Furor and Fallout.(Letter to the Editor)
June 6, 2005... Your May 9 report regarding the desecration of the Qur'an was incredibly irresponsible and disgraceful ("A Scandal Spreads"). Prior to publishing an article with statements which, as everyone knows, will be taken out of context in any case and...

What's Going Right; Headed for early elections, Germans bemoan an economy that's sick to the core. But is it?
June 6, 2005... Byline: Stefan Theil What do Chinese breweries, Brazilian water bottlers and Italian dairy cooperatives have in common? Krones AG. The German company controls a quarter of the world's market for state-of-the-art bottling equipment. It...

Double Identity; Is the man likely to become the country's next president a radical leftist or a market darling?
June 6, 2005... Byline: Joseph Contreras No one will ever accuse Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of false modesty. The mayor of Mexico City calls himself a "ray of hope," and he has earned a loyal following among his 9 million constituents by inaugurating...

Is It Das Madchen's Day? Andrea Merkel is no Iron Lady. But the former physicist is calculating, and betting that Germany is ready for a change.
June 6, 2005... Byline: Stefan Theil Angela Merkel's foes like to paint the Christian Democrats' leader as a neoliberal extremist who'll sacrifice Germany's welfare state to the free market. But even her supporters concede she is no fire-breather. The...

Beware of Falling Ice; Asia's glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, creating a host of environmental problems from flooding to disease.
June 6, 2005... Byline: Craig Simons The Chinese ask river gods for protection against floods. Each year tens of millions of Indian Hindus make pilgrimages to the Ganges to seek spiritual cleansing. In impoverished villages from Nepal to Bangladesh,...

High Notes; In a bid to win new fans, opera companies are turning to 20th-century fiction for inspiration--and, indeed, relevance.
June 6, 2005... Byline: Tara Pepper When Lorin Maazel, the charismatic director of the New York Philharmonic, was mulling the possibility of writing his first opera, he went back to great 20th-century literature in search of a subject. "I reread [George's...

Off Balance; Can Japan lead Asia while at political odds with Beijing?
June 6, 2005... Byline: Christian Caryl (With Hideko Takayama in Tokyo) Japan and China just can't seem to kiss and make up. When Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Wu Yi arrived in Tokyo on May 17, the visit was billed as part of a new move toward...

More Than Just Another Bubble; Saudi Arabia's market capitalization is now $450 billion, larger than China's or India's.
June 6, 2005... Byline: Ruchir Sharma (Sharma is co-head of global emerging markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management.) Just like the Frenchman who said the Eiffel Tower reminded him of sex because so did everything else, most financial analysts in...

Ismail Merchant, 1936-2005.
June 6, 2005... Byline: Vibhuti Patel Ismail Merchant was proud of the fact that "Merchant-Ivory" had become a double-barreled brand name: it evoked the low-budget, high-quality period dramas that his 44-year partnership with American director James Ivory...

The Edge of Diplomacy; Trade spats are starting to roil relations with America.
June 6, 2005... Byline: Stephen Glain and Eve Conant (With Sarah Schafer in Beijing) A currency battle. Accusations of commercial piracy. An emerging strategic rivalry. The United States and China were fairly cordial to each other in George W. Bush's...

Frugal Is So Over; The West pins the world's scary imbalances on 'missing' Asian consumers, who aren't to blame.
June 6, 2005... Byline: George Wehrfritz (With B.J. Lee in Seoul, Hideko Takayama in Tokyo, Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop in Singapore, Joe Cochrane in Bangkok and Jonathan Adams in Taipei) In the pie-chart world of macroeconomics, it is once again fashionable...

A House of My Own.
June 6, 2005... Byline: Hideko Takayama A comfortable express train whisks you to Chichibu, only 80 kilometers from Tokyo, in 77 minutes. But visiting this mountain-ringed valley is like going back 50 years. The line doubles back at the town of Hanno, so...

Perspectives.(Brief Article)
June 6, 2005... Byline: Quotation sources: Voice Of America, AP, The Washington Post, scotsman.com, Los Angeles Times, AFP "It is about your future, the future of France and the future of Europe." French President Jacques Chirac, urging voters to...

Periscope.(possible injury of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi; housing forecasts and trends)
June 6, 2005... Byline: Mark Hosenball, Scott Johnson, Babak Dehghanpisheh, John Sparks, Malcolm Beith, Allan Sloan With Rana Foroohar in London, Fareed Zakaria, Nicki Gostin, Christina Gillham, Andrew Romano TERROR: How Hurt Is Zarqawi? U.S....

Tip Sheet.(Product/Service Evaluation)
June 6, 2005... Byline: Sandy Lawrence Edry, Michelle Jana Chan, Anna Kuchment Adventure: Hi-Tech Treasure Hunts By Sandy Lawrence Edry Walking along Edinburgh's Royal Mile, Peter and Angela Howard didn't look like ordinary tourists. For one...

Changing Channels; The idea of sitting in front of a box in your living room is becoming obsolete. For the TV industry, technology is creating vast opportunities--and risks.(Industry Overview)(Cover Story)
June 6, 2005... Byline: Rana Foroohar (With Michael Hastings in New York Graphics by John Sparks) The death of television has been predicted almost since its birth . Back in 1946, Hollywood producer Darryl F. Zanuck famously announced that TV wouldn't...

The Gizmondo: A Jack of All Gadgets; A small British company is challenging the kings of gaming.(Product/Service Evaluation)(Cover Story)
June 6, 2005... Byline: William Underhill Thinking sideways seems to be one of Carl Freer's specialties. The 35-year-old entrepreneur originally set out to develop a small device that parents could use to keep track of their children. After some initial...

The New Video Libraries; Once TV shows would disappear into thin air. No longer. New search engines are pushing us toward a world where all programs are stored on the Net, all the time.(Blinkx)(Product/Service Evaluation)(Cover Story)
June 6, 2005... Byline: Joy Wang and Michael Hastings Suranga Chandratillake spent the last two years developing software to make sure fans won't ever miss another episode of "The Apprentice." Or any other television show, for that matter. As the founder...

The Airwaves Go Digital; Europeans have a leg up on the rest of the world in interactive TV. Now they're getting top-shelf technology.(Industry Overview)(Cover Story)
June 6, 2005... Byline: Karen Lowry Miller Whether you use it to catch the news, distract the kids or channel-surf from the depths of a couch, that television in the corner hasn't changed much since the leap from black-and-white to color. Computers zap...

One Billion Couch Potatoes; Chinese by the millions are channel surfing their way into the future. How reforms and the onslaught of new technologies are enhancing their ride.(Cover Story)
June 6, 2005... Byline: George Wehrfritz and Duncan Hewitt (With Jonathan Ansfield in Beijing) Chairman Mao's portrait still decorates many households in Yaoli, a former communist guerilla base in China's Jiangxi province. But what mesmerizes the people...

The Princess Who Woke the Dinosaur; Wang Lifen is trying to bring China's stodgy state-run TV broadcaster into the new age of competition.(Industry Overview)(Cover Story)
June 6, 2005... Byline: Sarah Schafer Wang Lifen is a star producer for China's national state-run television station, CCTV, but her biggest lesson in broadcasting came during a recent visit to CNN's headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Wang, who's currently...

Television Reloaded; The transformation is underway. Soon you'll be able to watch anything you want, anywhere--whether on a huge high-definition screen or on your phone.(Industry Overview)(Cover Story)
June 6, 2005... Byline: Steven Levy (With Brad Stone and Jennifer Ordonez) Forty-four years ago, when Newton Minow famously described television as a vast wasteland, he might have hit the bull's-eye on the wasteland part. But he didn't know from vast. TV...

Gadgets: Getting the Small Picture; Here's one more thing to do with your cell phone: watch TV.(Takeout TV)(Industry Overview)(Cover Story)
June 6, 2005... Byline: B. J. Lee Kim Soo Gey's life changed on May 1. That was the day he bought himself a cell phone that can receive television broadcasts. The 21-year-old civil servant now watches his favorite music videos and baseball games while...

Internet TV: Telly Heaven; Forget the couch. Now television is best viewed lying on your futon, with a laptop on your stomach.(Cover Story)
June 6, 2005... Byline: Kay Itoi Akiko Takasu loves TV dramas. Every morning the violin teacher and mother of three teenagers in Saitama, north of Tokyo, quickly finishes her morning chores--cleaning up the house, doing laundry and dishes. Then she tunes...

Out of The Box; LG Electronics is killer in TV chips, but not TVs.(Brief Article)(Company Profile)(Cover Story)
June 6, 2005... Byline: B.J. Lee It was a rare encounter between magnificent antiquity, modern art and corporate promotion. Korean firm LG Electronics had graphic artists apply state-of-the-art video effects to some of the Louvre's most famous paintings....

End of the Big Binge; As LCD screens head towards 100 inches, they face a price barrier. It may be time for some new technology.(Industry Overview)(Cover Story)
June 6, 2005... Byline: Michael Hastings and B. J. Lee There are basically two kinds of people who buy big-screen TVs: the bachelor and the married guy. In this view, according to David Katzmaier, a TV reviewer and senior editor at CNET.com, the married...

The Next Game Wars; There's more at stake than the spoils of the $25 billion videogame industry. Sony and Microsoft are about to face off over who gets to own the digital living room.(Electronic Entertainment Expo)(Industry Overview)(Cover Story)
June 6, 2005... Byline: N'Gai Croal With videogames, as with real life, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. That's especially true at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the world's biggest videogame conference. And based on what...

The End of Television; It took a week or so of joyfully playing with my TiVo before I realized that I was fast-forwarding myself into personal bankruptcy.(Cover Story)
June 6, 2005... Byline: Rob Long People in Hollywood tend to give extravagant gifts, so I wasn't surprised, a few years ago, when a smartly dressed messenger delivered a heavy, gold-wrapped package to my door. It was from the president of a studio, and he...

Advertising: Getting Out the Message; Is the 30-second commercial finally becoming obsolete?(Industry Overview)(Cover Story)
June 6, 2005... Byline: Brad Stone (With Rana Foroohar) One of the most talked-about commercials this year never appeared on regular television. It was available for voluntary viewing on, of all places, hotel pay-per-view networks. The 10-minute video...

Mail Call: A Tale of Three Cities.
June 20, 2005... Readers of our April 25 package on cities carped at our depiction of their hometowns. London, said one, is "only teetering on the brink of success." Claimed another, "more than 400,000 people have been violently rendered homeless in Mumbai."...

Man With a Mission; Once again, it's Tony Blair's moment. A Europe in crisis needs a leader. Can he deliver?
June 20, 2005... Byline: Stryker McGuire (With Stefan Theil in Berlin, Eric Pape in Paris, William Underhill in London, Joanna Kowalska in Warsaw and Katka Krosnar in Prague) Just when Tony Blair was about to ride into the sunset, France and the...

A Last Chance For Europe; Forget the breast-beating. All the EU needs is a dream.
June 20, 2005... Byline: Claude Smadja (Smadja is president of Smadja & Associates, Strategic Advisory.) Could we stop the crocodile tears? The French non and the Dutch nee are the best news Europe's had in years. They give the EU a last chance to...

Oligarch on the Rocks; It's hard time in the gulag for Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
June 20, 2005... Byline: Kevin O'Flynn A year or so ago, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was worth some $15 billion as head of Yukos, one of the world's biggest oil companies. The Russian oligarch still has close to $2 billion, according to Forbes magazine. That...

Is Three a Crowd? At odds with Washington over how to handle North Korea, South Korea is drawing ever closer to China.
June 20, 2005... Byline: Christian Caryl (With B. J. Lee) President George W. Bush and his South Korean counterpart, Roh Moo Hyun, exchanged diplomatic pleasantries at their summit in Washington last Friday. Bush noted that both countries "share the same...

Sun and Shady People; Is Spain's Costa del Sol the new criminal center of Europe?
June 20, 2005... Byline: William Underhill (With Mike Elkin in Madrid) When armed Spanish police raided a cocaine-laden trawler on the high seas late last month, just one member of the smuggling gang was onboard. But police knew exactly where to look for...

Reaping the Whirlwind; Another president falls in Bolivia, raising fresh fears about a crisis of governability in Latin America.
June 20, 2005... Byline: Mac Margolis (With Jimmy Langman in La Paz, Carla Bass in Quito and Mary Powers in Lima) In their bowler hats and colorful bustle skirts, they looked more like the clientele of a farmer's market than hardened insurgents. Yet there...

Arabia Retools; The phrase 'Arab entrepreneur' was almost an oxymoron at the height of state control over the region's economies, but no more. Meet four men and women at the forefront of a nascent move toward free-market reform and enterprise.(Cover Story)
June 20, 2005... Byline: Carla Power (With Nada El Sawy in Dubai, Gameela Ismail in Cairo and Joe Macaron, Rebecca Sinderbrand in New York) FADI GHANDOUR The '90s are commonly dismissed as "the lost decade" for Arab economies, an age of missed chances...

The Drama of the Court; Exploring the public's enduring fascination with trials.(Book Review)
June 20, 2005... Byline: Tara Pepper From ancient Greek plays like Aeschylus' tragic "Oresteia"--literature's first courtroom drama--to modern successors such as "Twelve Angry Men," the dispensing of justice has always provided a stage for high principles...

Blockbusters: Following the Crowds; Just because it's popular, doesn't mean it isn't serious. And the wait to get in certainly is.
June 20, 2005... Byline: Peter Plagens Looking for something less quirky (but still serious)? Get in line for these surefire hit shows: Neo-Impressionism, From Seurat to Paul Klee, Musee d'Orsay, Paris, to July 10: If there's anything that can pack in...

Summer Art Gets Serious; Forget shock art and light impressionist fluff. This season's shows are for those who prefer their art with a side of gravity.
June 20, 2005... Byline: Peter Plagens Truthfully, haven't you seen enough art-joke exhibitions? You know, the kind where some young tyro tries to take aback the audience by tearing holes in the walls, pouring goo on the floor or showing slapstick videos...

Photography: A Mother's Close Up; At the Venice Biennale, Miyako Ishiuchi represents Japan with her memorable pictures of modern life.
June 20, 2005... Byline: Kay Itoi Photographer Miyako Ishiuchi has a confession to make. She doesn't like taking pictures. "Shooting at somebody at close range makes me nervous," she says. It's a strange statement coming from Ishiuchi, 58: after all, she...

All the War's A Stage; The season's best dramas center on power and conflict in our new world.
June 20, 2005... Byline: Carla Power Summer is traditionally a time for light theatrical fare, from alfresco Shakespearean comedies to high-kicking choruses. Those in search of the feel-good factor can take comfort in new smash musicals like Billy Elliot...

Digging for Treasure; If the prospect of looking at artifacts doesn't excite you, try looking for them instead.
June 20, 2005... Byline: Ginanne Brownell (With Mary Acoymo in London) Beachcombers hoping for a quiet stroll down the seaweed-strewn shores of Brownsea Island in the English Channel were in for a surprise earlier this month; in addition to the sounds of...

Wu Jianmin; The New King On the Block.(Interview)
June 20, 2005... Byline: Fareed Zakaria Given the rate at which China's economic and military might continue to grow, it's no surprise its role on the global political stage is expanding, too. While North Korea hinted last week that it might return to...

'Everyone Makes Mistakes'.
June 20, 2005... Byline: Lawrence Goodman I have the dubious distinction of living in the most corrupt state in America. I am talking about Rhode Island, which despite its noble past as one of the original 13 Colonies is pretty much a banana republic. "The...

Fresh Ideas; In this hypercompetitive economy, when bosses are being critiqued more than ever before, the old rules for managing just don't cut it. What counts now is innovative thinking.(Cover Story)
June 20, 2005... Byline: Daniel McGinn (With Karen Lowry Miller in Brussels and Rana Foroohar in London Graphic by John Sparks) There was a time when a business leader was someone straight from Central Casting. They were the suit-clad CEOs of the old-style...

10 Big Thinkers for Big Business; They work in vastly different fields, but the leaders profiled in the following pages are much alike--they have new takes on old business models, a knack for seeing around corners and an appetite for big risk. A case study of New Thinkers.(Cover Story)
June 20, 2005... Byline: Rana Foroohar, Christian Caryl and Kay Itoi, Joseph Contreras, Sean Smith, Karen Breslau, Karen Lowry Miller, B. J. Lee, Martha Brant, Keith Naughton THOMAS MIDDELHOFF It's not a glamorous comeback. After all, the last time...

Perspectives.(Brief Article)
June 20, 2005... Byline: Sources from top: Washington Times, The Telegraph, AFP, Times Community Newspapers In Centreville, Virginia, New York Daily News, BBC, USA Today "This is a step forward." Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda,...

Periscope.
June 20, 2005... Byline: Mark Hosenball, Ron Moreau, John Sparks, Bao Ong and Sarah Schafer, Jonathan Adams, Ramin Setoodeh, Elise Soukup, Nicki Gostin IRAQ Back to Their Labs? Now that the search for WMD is officially over, Iraqi authorities are...

Snap Judgment: Books.(Acts of Faith; The Friend Who Got Away; Them)(Book Review)
June 20, 2005... Byline: Jack Livings, Lisa Miller, Cathleen McGuigan Acts of Faith By Philip Caputo In this modern-day morality tale set in Sudan, a band of Western aid workers pay the price for their altruism when they forgo airlifts of food and...

The Tip Sheet.(health: When dimples go bad)
June 20, 2005... Byline: Anna Kuchment, Karen Springen, Kyle Monson, Sana Butler, Ramin Setoodeh, Sandy Lawrence Edry HEALTH: WHEN DIMPLES GO BAD BY ANNA KUCHMENT Until last month, Lindsay Christiansen, 26, hadn't worn a bathing suit in three...

Mail Call: A Blessed Pontiff?(Letter to the Editor)
June 27, 2005... Readers of our May 2 cover story on the new pope aired their views on Benedict XVI. A Jesuit, recalling Cardinal Ratzinger as "the hatchet man of John Paul II," reminded us: "The influence of the church lies not in the strength of its ideas but...

Fiddling While the Union Burns; Message from Brussels? EU leaders still don't get it.
June 27, 2005... Byline: Karen Lowry Miller Will the European Union agree on a new budget? Will Tony Blair give up Britain's precious EU rebate, or Jacques Chirac cut back France's agriculture subsidies? Is the vaunted European constitution dead? At...

A Jolt to the System; An installation artist pokes sharp fun at Japan.
June 27, 2005... Byline: Kay Itoi What comes to mind when you think of Japan? Sushi, sumo wrestlers, high-school girls in short skirts, tattooed gangsters? Stereotypes, to be sure. But the installation artist Tabaimo (a.k.a. Ayako Tabata) relies on such...

The Ghost Of Mr. Tojo; Opposition is growing to Koizumi's Yasukuni visits.
June 27, 2005... Byline: Christian Caryl (With Hideko Takayama) Yuko Tojo, sitting at a table in a Tokyo cafe, unpacks a small box and removes a set of family mementos: two pencil stubs, an improvised paper cigarette holder, a few locks of hair in an...

The Almighty Dollar is Back; Now there is likely to be a totally different currency model--a world dominated by the dollar in ways not seen since the early 1950s.
June 27, 2005... Byline: Jeffrey E. Garten (Garten is dean of the Yale School of Management.) Until a few weeks ago, the dollar bull was a rare animal. Most currency watchers thought the dollar was in long-term decline, due to rising U.S. trade and budget...

Pressure on the Press; Beijing is cracking down on the media, but censors are finding it's no longer so easy to control news.
June 27, 2005... Byline: Jonathan Ansfield (With Sarah Schaefer in Beijing) They had one amateur video, six peasants' corpses and more than 10 eyewitnesses to the siege a day before. But on June 12, after Beijing News journalists were first at the scene...

Arabian Might; The Upside Of High Oil Prices? A golden era of wealth, and possibly real economic reform, in the Middle East.
June 27, 2005... Byline: Carla Power (With Nada El Sawy in Dubai) One might think that when Libya struck oil in the '50s, its monarch would have been thrilled. "I wish it could have been water," said King Idris. "Oil makes men idle, whereas water makes...

Moving Beyond Oil; Even in these flush times, the real story in Saudi Arabia has to do with a booming private sector.
June 27, 2005... Byline: Stephen Glain Saudi Arabia is still widely seen as the classic oil state, with all the dysfunction that label implies. So it may come as a surprise that today it flourishes mostly outside the oil patch. In 2005, non-oil activity...

Not Just Vegas; For all its glitz, Dubai really wants to be Singapore.(Mohammed Al Maktoum)
June 27, 2005... Byline: Nada El Sawy and Carla Power Dubai is now the world's leader for outrageous development, from a $5 billion theme park the size of Monaco to The World, a man-made archipelago selling private islands for as much as $50 million. There...

Pyramid of Hope; Once the model for Arab socialism, Egypt now has the region's most optimistic capitalists.
June 27, 2005... Byline: Stephen Glain Taher Gargour says he knew Egypt was changing when bureaucrats bent over backward to allow the public sale of his family's ceramics company. Not only did they amend laws so Lecico Egypt SAE could list in Cairo and...

Land of Tycoons; Many Iraqi businessmen are running their empires from self exile in Jordan.
June 27, 2005... Byline: Stephen Glain Amman is booming. Property prices in Jordan's capital city are soaring, new luxury cars fill the streets, hotels are booked solid and the stock market is surging. Welcome to Iraq's private sector. Driven from...

Exposing The Evil; A new biography ranks Mao alongside Hitler.
June 27, 2005... Byline: William Underhill Jung Chang sits in her elegant London drawing room and talks demurely of torture. It's a subject she knows well. In the course of China's Cultural Revolution, her mother was forced to kneel on broken glass and was...

Marshaling His Forces.(former Lebanese exile Gen. Michel Aoun )(Interview)
June 27, 2005... Byline: Kevin Peraino When Gen. Michel Aoun returned to Lebanon from 15 years in exile last month, few expected he would make much of a political impact. But the 70-year-old Maronite Christian politician surprised his critics last week,...

Letter From France; A Summer of Excess.
June 27, 2005... ***** CORRECTION: The byline on our June 27 "Letter From France" was incorrect. The piece was written by David Ray. NEWSWEEK regrets the error. ***** Byline: Michael Meyer (Clarification: David Ray) CLARIFICATION APPENDED ...

Perspectives.(Brief Article)
June 27, 2005... Byline: Quotation sources: BBC, AP, Special Broadcasting System, AP, New York Times, BBC, AFP "There has been bizarre interference. Money has changed hands." Iranian presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, calling for an investigation...

Periscope.(meshed briefs)
June 27, 2005... Byline: Rana Foroohar, Mac Margolis, B. J. Lee, Daren Briscoe, Mary Carmichael, Dan Ephron, Aaron Clark, Jenny Barchfield, Andrew Romano BUSINESS Ups and Downs Often, when a particular currency goes up, the stock market in that...

Tip Sheet.(summer literary festivals, things to do in Cuba, vodka, picnic baskets, Mercedes CLS500)
June 27, 2005... Byline: Tara Pepper, Mac Margolis, Michelle Jana Chan, Raina Kelley, Tara Weingarten Festivals: Basking In Great Books By Tara Pepper Spending lazy country-house afternoons discussing the latest books isn't just for the landed...