Newsweek International articles from March 2006

Newsweek International archives from March 2006

Mail Call.(Letter to the Editor)
March 6, 2006... A Soldier of Israel Our Jan. 16 cover story on Ariel Sharon propelled readers to ponder his legacy. One praised his "warrior background"; another labeled him a "warmonger." As for the future of the Mideast, one cautioned against placing...

Education: A Learning Curve; What's behind India's success in the global knowledge economy? One key is a boom in private schools for all.(Cover Story)
March 6, 2006... Byline: Gurcharan Das (Gurcharan Das is the author of "India Unbound" and a former CEO of Procter & Gamble India.) I recently got a call from a board member of one of the world's largest consulting companies, who invited me to speak to...

Taking It Easy; Indian leaders are enjoying the boom times by putting off more painful reforms. The mistake could cost them.(Cover Story)
March 6, 2006... Byline: Ruchir Sharma (Sharma is the co-head of global emerging markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management.) The buzz in the financial circles a few months ago was that every man and his dog could raise money to invest in India. Now...

The Biggest Sleeper; Indonesia, Asia's overlooked giant, is stable at long last. But now the hard work begins.
March 6, 2006... Byline: George Wehrfritz and Joe Cochrane Sometimes even the starting line is hard to reach in Indonesia. Just ask President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. A few weeks ago fans converging on a speedway outside Jakarta for the city's inaugural...

Opinion: Silence Hate With Truth; Freedom of speech must apply equally to those with loathsome as those with virtuous views.
March 6, 2006... Byline: Deborah Lipstadt (Lipstadt, author of "History on Trial: My Day in Court With David Irving," teaches at Emory University.) Friends thought I would be celebrating last week after an Austrian court sentenced British writer David...

Italy's 'Povero Cristo'; Embattled yet still flamboyant, Silvio Berlusconi gleefully takes on his critics, real and imaginary.
March 6, 2006... Byline: Christopher Dickey, Jacopo Barigazzi and Barbie Nadeau Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, 69, is one of the Bush administration's most faithful--and flamboyant--friends in Europe. The self-made billionaire and media magnate...

The End of Tolerance; Farewell, multiculturalism. A cartoon backlash is pushing Europe to insist upon its values.
March 6, 2006... Byline: Stefan Theil (With Emily Flynn Vencat and Stryker Mcguire in London and Ginny Power in Paris) The world has long looked upon the Dutch as the very model of a modern, multicultural society. Open and liberal, the tiny seagoing nation...

Cutting to the Chase; Short stories prove surprisingly good fodder for films.
March 6, 2006... Byline: Tara Pepper At first glance, short stories and big-screen films appear to be polar opposites. Tiny, carefully crafted dramas that rely on honed language and subtle allusions aren't obvious fodder for feature-length film scripts....

Doing It Themselves; Women are buying more power tools than ever before. And they know how to use them.
March 6, 2006... Byline: Silvia Spring Donna Payet, a single mom of three living just outside Liverpool, didn't want to spend a lot of money fixing up her dining room. So rather than hire someone, she did it herself. "I watched some TV programs," she says....

Real Wheeling and Dealing in Brussels; Has the lobbying industry grown out of control?
March 6, 2006... Byline: William Underhill It was every lobbyist's dream. French President Jacques Chirac was persuaded to help, and so was Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell lent a hand, as did Chancellor Gerhard...

Interview: Order In The House; Indonesia's hard-charging president on reform, internal resistance, and countering the country's Muslim radicals.(Interview)
March 6, 2006... Byline: George Wehrfritz and Joe Cochrane Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono stormed into office nearly 18 months ago--and has not stopped running since. The former Army general took power at a time when the world's fourth...

America's New Ally, Jacques; After investing so heavily in anti-Americanism, leading nowhere, Chirac [is] cutting his losses.
March 6, 2006... Byline: Denis MacShane (MacShane is a Labour M.P. and was Tony Blair's minister for Europe from 2001 to 2005.) As George W. Bush looks out on an unfriendly world, where can he find new allies to support America's tarnished foreign policy?...

Perspectives.
March 6, 2006... Byline: QUOTATION SOURCES FROM TOP TO BOTTOM: AP, LA TIMES, AP, BBC (2), HERALD SUN "This is a moment of choosing for the Iraqi people." U.S. President George W. Bush, as sectarian violence surged in the country, prompting concerns of...

Periscope; Issue Dated March 6, 2006.
March 6, 2006... Byline: Marites Vitug and Joe Cochrane (Stephen Glain Jennifer Ordonez Jesse Ellison Ginanne Brownell Anne Underwood Richard Wolffe) Southeast Asia: Power Outage? In the Philippines, the 20th anniversary of the 1986 "people-power"...

Slip Sliding; In an Olympics filled with humbled front runners and spectacular falls, one skater brought grace to the Games.(Shizuki Arakawa )
March 6, 2006... Byline: Mark Starr She made the Japanese Olympic team in Nagano as a 16-year-old, but was left off the team four years later. She won the 2004 World Figure Skating Championships, ending Michelle Kwan's reign with a stunning array of...

Dawn of the Wireless Utopias; For $12 a month, a Taipei resident can tote a laptop computer to the park and watch cable television.
March 6, 2006... Byline: Jonathan Adams Taipei is dreaming big: it wants to be the world's first completely wireless metropolis. Other cities boast a patchwork of hotspots at hotels, coffee shops and colleges, and tiny towns in the United States and...

BlogWatch; A mainstream-media look at what's hot (and what's not) in the ever-widening world of weblogs.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2006... Sticklers for accuracy, rejoice: regrettheerror.com is devoted to media corrections. Thank goodness Blog Watch is infallible. American Snowborder Lindsey Jacobellis took a spill, allowing Tanja Frieden of Switzerland to grab the gold. The...

Mail Call; The Right Diet.(Letter to the Editor)
March 13, 2006... Readers praised our Jan. 23 articles on nutrition as "informative" and "interesting." One said that the answer to a healthy diet was not about dieting, but learning to "change how [we] think about food." How to Eat Healthy As a future...

Russia: A Phone Call to Putin; How do Kremlin authorities deal with whistle-blowers? silence them.(Vladimir Putin)
March 13, 2006... Byline: Anna Nemtsova For 48-year-old Mekhti Mukhayev and the men of Zumsoy, a hamlet high in the Chechen mountains, the Russian Army's "special operations" have become a depressingly familiar fact of life. In January last year the village...

Dubai Inc. A controversial ports deal has raised new questions about the booming Arab sheikdom. Inside one of the world's most modern, and yet mysterious, monarchies.
March 13, 2006... Byline: Christian Caryl (With Rana Foroohar and Emily Vencat Flynn in London) How does Dubai Inc. work? Back in early 1985, the prince of the then little-known Arab sheikdom was stewing after an airline canceled his flight at the last...

Budget Bonanza; A flotilla of low-cost airlines is redrawing the economic map of Europe.
March 13, 2006... Byline: William Underhill (With Katka Krosnar in Prague, Barbie Nadeau in Rome, Florence Villeminot in Paris and Kasia Gruszkowska in London) Charleroi figures on few tourist itineraries. The slag heaps on the skyline stand as monuments to...

Cubic Roots; How Asians transformed a European movement.
March 13, 2006... Byline: Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop Malaysian painter Syed Ahmad Jamal can still remember when he discovered cubism. It was in 1951 in a bookshop in London, where the then 22-year-old bought his first art book on the work of Georges Braque. "I...

Unhealthy Obsessions.(Cover Story)
March 13, 2006... Byline: DEYO is professor of medicine at the University of Washington and author, with Donald Patrick, of "Hope or Hype: The Obsession With Health Advances and the High Cost of False Promises." Estrogen makes you younger. That was the...

Too Big to Grow; Why Wall Street has soured on many of corporate America's most admired and feared companies.
March 13, 2006... Byline: Karen Lowry Miller The list of the American stock market's biggest losers reads like a roll call of its most famous corporate names. General Motors: down 63 percent in the last five years. General Electric: off 21 percent. Pfizer:...

'Che Guevara In Tweed'; As he'd be the first to say, Cardoso made Brazil a better country.(Fernando Henrique Cardoso )
March 13, 2006... Byline: Mac Margolis His hair is shot with gray now and age creases his forehead. But three years after stepping down from what might be Latin America's most punishing job, former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso is holding up...

Some Kind Of Love; No one said becoming a stepmother was easy.(Love and Other Impossible Pursuits)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
March 13, 2006... Byline: Susan H. Greenberg When we first meet Emilia Greenleaf, the narrator of Ayelet Waldman's novel, "Love and Other Impossible Pursuits," she is dashing across New York's Central Park, dodging baby strollers and averting her eyes from...

Learning to Leverage; The Middle East's cash cultures now embrace debt.
March 13, 2006... Byline: Stephen Glain Not so long ago in the Middle East, even a prince couldn't get a loan. From Turkey to Iran and throughout the Arab states in between, cash was king. Companies had little or no debt on their books and governments with...

MIT's Brave New World.
March 13, 2006... Byline: Patrick White Twenty-one years ago, Nicholas Negroponte had a vision of a brave new world of digital video, wireless computing and robotic toys. So he and his counterparts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab...

Why Toyota Is Beating GM; GM's price discount, about $1,500 per car, is now even worse than its cost disadvantage in the race against Toyota.
March 13, 2006... Byline: Allan Sloan Auto racing isn't about just the car and the driver. If you've got to haul around a ton of stuff and the other guy doesn't, it's hard to be competitive. For years now, we've heard General Motors complain that it's being...

Travel: Russian Riches.
March 13, 2006... Byline: Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova (Lauren Mack Hallee Berg) Moscow is a city riding high on oil money. Now the spending habits of high-rolling Muscovites have spawned some of Europe's coolest clubs and most lavish restaurants. The...

Perspectives.
March 13, 2006... Byline: QUOTATION SOURCES, TOP TO BOTTOM: BBC, NEW YORK TIMES, BBC, INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, AP, NEWSWEEK "No, we don't pray together." British Prime Minister Tony Blair, denying that he had prayed over the Iraq war with U.S....

Periscope.
March 13, 2006... Byline: Karen Lowry Miller (Joe Cochrane Michael Isikoff David Gates John Ness Quindlen Krovatin) Europe: Battle of the Borders European politicians rarely resurrect the ghosts of the Great War, but a move by France to block an Italian...

Speak It in Chinese, Hear It in English.
March 13, 2006... Byline: Benjamin Sutherland Alex Waibel doesn't understand Chinese, but he can read street signs when in Beijing. A team of engineers led by Waibel at Germany's Karlsruhe University has developed a heldheld device called the Sign...

Taking to the Air.(Transition flying car)(Brief Article)
March 13, 2006... Byline: Mary Carmichael Whatever you call the new Transition, says its inventor, Carl Dietrich, just don't call it a flying car--even if it's the closest thing to one that exists. The Transition runs on regular gas. But you can drive it to...

Mail Call; Older Workers Now?(Letter to the editor)
March 20, 2006... Readers of our Jan. 30 report on the need to employ older workers took issue with some of our conclusions. One complained of firms' "blackmailing old folks into early retirement." Another thought that wasn't a bad idea: "Taxpayers want to be...

Can the Sage Save China? Beijing is hoping a return to Confucian values will help quell growing dissent, and inspire new loyalty.
March 20, 2006... Byline: Benjamin Robertson and Melinda Liu (With bureau reports) China's official buzzword these days is "harmony." Whether the audience is Chinese or foreign, rich or poor, Beijing's leaders are spreading the message: can't we all just get...

Fixing the Potholes; Why one town threw Hamas out, even as others were voting them in.
March 20, 2006... Byline: Kevin Peraino Poor Muayyad Shraim. Ten months ago the 37-year-old physical education teacher was one of Hamas's rising stars. After the Islamist group swept local elections in the West Bank town of Qalqilya last May, he won a seat...

Castro's Comeback; Fidel has more fans in the region than he's had in years. But is the hype, like the resurgence of Latin America's left, more style than substance?
March 20, 2006... Byline: Joseph Contreras Anyone who doubts that symbolism matters to the Latin American left need only have looked last week to Venezuela, where fire-breathing President Hugo Chavez forced several critical changes to the country's flag...

Rising Barriers; French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is leading a new wave of protectionism--in Europe--but also, possibly, one of reform.(Cover story)
March 20, 2006... Byline: Eric Pape and Christopher Dickey (With Karen Lowry Miller in Brussels and William Underhill in London) Like his hero Charles de Gaulle, Dominique de Villepin sees himself as a man of action. When France's prime minister mulls tough...

A Protectionist Backfire; The U.S. trade deficit is closing in on $800 billion per year, or about $3 billion per business day.
March 20, 2006... Byline: Stephen Roach (Roach is the chief economist at Morgan Stanley.) America is turning protectionist at just the time when its need for foreign capital has never been greater. China-bashing is on the rise again, and a political...

The Lessons of History; In a new book, British M.P. Boris Johnson wonders: why can't the EU be more like the Roman Empire?
March 20, 2006... Byline: William Underhill Good news for Euro-skeptics: a spiritual forefather has been uncovered--an ax-wielding barbarian from the boondocks of first-century Germany, no less. Almost 2,000 years ago the tribal chieftain Arminius thrashed...

False Friends; Fidel's newfound supporters are doing ordinary Cubans no favors.
March 20, 2006... Byline: Raul Rivero (Rivero is a prize-winning journalist and poet who was jailed for political reasons with dozens of other Cuban dissidents in March 2003. He was released from prison on medical grounds in the fall of 2004 and now lives in...

A Smoke Screen; China needs better leadership, not another morality campaign.
March 20, 2006... Byline: Minxin Pei So China has at long last found something to fill its "values vacuum." Once the party hoped that communist ideology would bind the masses to its will. After the catastrophic Cultural Revolution thoroughly discredited...

A New Fashion Frontier; The arrival of fast fashion European giants is starting to shake up the American retail scene.
March 20, 2006... Byline: Rana Foroohar There are no fashion seasons at H&M's store on New York's Fifth Avenue. Trucks hauling brand-new items pull in almost every day. Ever since the Swedish purveyor of cheap chic first brought its mix of trendy fashions...

Why GM is Good for Us; Genetically modified foods may be greener than organic ones.
March 20, 2006... Byline: Lee Silver Farm-raised pigs are dirty, smelly animals that get no respect. They're also an environmental hazard. Their manure contains phosphorus, which, when it rains, runs off into lakes and estuaries, depleting oxygen, killing...

Gaming the Market; Videogame makers are struggling to cope with the once-every-five-years transition to new platforms.
March 20, 2006... Byline: N'Gai Croal (With Kay Itoi in Tokyo) Alex Ward shouldn't have a care in the world. After all, the lauded creative director of Criterion Studios is about to fly to Hawaii for some well-deserved R&R, having just completed a pair of...

A Risky Feud; A war of words with Pakistan's president only underscores how dangerously weakened Afghanistan has become.
March 20, 2006... Byline: Ron Moreau, Zahid Hussain and Sami Yousafzai Summit meetings are meant to improve relations. But two recent high-level confabs--one in February between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart, Pervez Musharraf,...

The Last Word: John Edwards--'Real Moral Leadership'.(Interview)
March 20, 2006... Byline: Malcolm Beith Republican opposition killed the proposed takeover of some American port facilities by a Dubai company, but congressional Democrats were the first to fan the flames of the controversy. Eager to capitalize on President...

Rome: A Whole New Beginning.(Brief article)
March 20, 2006... Byline: Barbie Nadeau Rome has been built, pillaged, burned and buried so many times that archaeological treasures are commonplace. However, last month new finds impressed even jaded Romans. Archaeologists uncovered the first treasures...

Interview: The Wrong Answer; Charlie McGreevy says Europe must dump the status quo, or doom future generations.(Cover story)
March 20, 2006... Byline: Rana Foroohar Protectionism is undermining Europe's future, says EU Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, and Brussels needs to stop it. Last week McCreevy ordered the French government to explain its role in the merger of...

Graphic Content; Since Vietnam, baby boomers have led a design revolution. Turning into rich retirees won't stop them now.
March 20, 2006... Byline: Peter Plagens From their arrival after World War II to their imminent retirements, baby boomers have been the most prosperous and protected generation in history. But since coming of age in an era of turmoil and rebellion--from...

Japan Is Back, So Beware.
March 20, 2006... Byline: Peter Tasker (TASKER is a founding partner of Arcus Investment, a money management firm in Tokyo.) It's been a long time coming--about 15 years, in fact. The Japanese central bank has just embarked on its first real monetary...

The Good Life; Issue Dated March 20, 2006.
March 20, 2006... Byline: Raina Kelley and Michelle Jana Chan (by Emily Flynn Vencat by Sana Butler by Lauren Mack by Tara Weingarten) Travel: The Play's the Thing By Raina Kelley and Michelle Jana Chan All the world may be a stage, but many of this...

Perspectives.
March 20, 2006... "We may face no greater challenge from a single country than Iran." U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking as the United Nations Security Council prepared to take up the issue of Iran's nuclear program "Finally, we have some...

Periscope.
March 20, 2006... Byline: Dan Ephron and Rod Nordland (Owen Matthews, Anna Nemtsova and Michal Kacewicz Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey Ron Moreau and Zahid Hussain John Sparks Robert Stein Nicki Gostin Robert Stein) Iran: Rhetoric and Reality "Harm and...

Promise in Pakistan; What's behind one of the world's most surprising economic success stories? In part, September 11.
March 27, 2006... Byline: Ron Moreau (With Zahid Hussain) In the late 1990s Lahore-based businessman Iqbal Ahmed was depressed. Pakistan was isolated internationally and in the grip of a deep recession, and his modest, liquefied-petroleum-gas operation...

Why Chile Really Matters; What's critical is not its new president's gender, but its quiet economic vibrancy.
March 27, 2006... Byline: Jorge G. Castaneda (Castaneda, a former foreign minister of Mexico, is now Global Distinguished Professor of Politics and Latin American Studies at New York University) In the reams of commentary about newly inaugurated Chilean...

Interview: Shaukat Aziz--Riding 'A Tidal Wave'; Pakistan's P.M. is bullish on his country, and why not? Per capita income has doubled in only two years.(Interview)
March 27, 2006... Byline: Zahid Hussain and Ron Moreau Shaukat Aziz, a suave and savvy 30-year veteran of international banking, has been the architect of Pakistan's remarkable economic recovery ever since he joined President Pervez Musharraf's government...

Swimming With Sharks; With more people buying goods on online auction sites, crooks are getting even more aggressive.
March 27, 2006... Byline: Benjamin Sutherland Last November, Chinese banker Jacky Chung searched the online auction Web site eBay for a model 5035 Patek Philippe watch. He found one offered by a woman in New York City. Her eBay account showed that she had...

Fear and Loathing in Siberia; this week's Sino-Russia summit highlights the rise of one superpower, and decline of another.
March 27, 2006... Byline: Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova Vladimir Putin, like Russia's double-headed imperial eagle, has two faces. Both have lately been very much in evidence. At a meeting of G8 energy ministers in Moscow last week, the Russian president...

Breaking Out of the Box; Tensions are rising on both sides of the border, again. Yet the only real solution is one that North American leaders aren't talking about.
March 27, 2006... Byline: Robert A. Pastor (PASTOR is the director of the Center for North American Studies at American University in Washington, D.C., and author of "Toward a North American Community: Lessons From the Old World for the New.") Five years...

The Perfect Score; Student cheating is reaching new levels,forcing an overhaul of standardized tests.(Cover story)
March 27, 2006... Byline: Emily Flynn Vencat (With Jason Overdorf in Delhi and Jonathan Adams in Taipei) Chris doesn't consider himself a cheater. Yet for the past four years, the 21-year-old senior at one of California's most prestigious universities...

The Big Asian Payback; Returning profits to shareholders is now seen as a sign of success in the once-growth-obsessed region.
March 27, 2006... Byline: Alexandra A. Seno Every once in a while, it makes sense to rediscover the wheel. Outside of Japan, the hot new offering from Asian companies has been a staple in U.S. and European markets for decades--it's the cash dividend on...

My Side of the Mountain; A gay-themed film becomes a surprise hit in Korea.
March 27, 2006... Byline: Mark Russell Like "Brokeback Mountain," South Korea's "The King and the Clown" is a mainstream movie featuring homosexual characters that urges viewers to put the story ahead of sexual politics. But unlike the highly publicized...

Al Waleed bin Talal--Saving the Saudi Market.(Interview)
March 27, 2006... Byline: Stephen Glain Saudi Arabian prince Al Waleed bin Talal, one of the world's richest men, is now also one of the kingdom's most popular citizens. Last Wednesday, the 49-year-old investor said he would plow some $2.7 billion into the...

Ruchir Sharma--Why Thaksin Is Tanking.(Thaksin Shinawatra )
March 27, 2006... Byline: Sharma is a co-head of global emerging markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. In a world where populist backlashes against economic reform are now familiar from Asia to America, Thailand is witnessing a strange detour...

The Good Life.(rental fashion)
March 27, 2006... Byline: Tara Pepper (Konnie Lemay Mike Elkin N'gai Croal Sana Butler) Fashion: Not Just For Tuxes Anymore Stars have always relied on borrowed frocks to give them the edge on the red carpet. Now a new breed of high-end rental showrooms...

Perspectives.
March 27, 2006... "May God damn you." Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, blasting U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq but refusing to commit them to fighting in a civil war "Our future is to be determined by the 23...

Periscope.(Balkan politics)
March 27, 2006... Byline: Michael Meyer (John Sparks Jason Overdorf Owen Matthews Nicki Gostin Nicki Gostin David Gates) The Balkans: After Slobo: The Turmoil Continues Slobodan Milosevic's funeral last week was but a prelude. The dominoes he sent...

Periscope.(Brief article)
March 27, 2006... Byline: Joanna Chen Fight for the Last Voter Everyone of the Knesset's 120 seats will be crucial in Israel's March 28 elections. No single party seems likely to come even close to winning a majority. Meanwhile, the battle for voters...

Coming Soon: The Superfast Internet.
March 27, 2006... Byline: B. J. Lee The gurus at Google and other power portals talk about new services for finding video clips and movies and downloading them from the Internet. But that promise assumes that users will have an extremely fast connection. At...

Scribe for Lazy Authors.(Unotchit LongPen)(Brief article)
March 27, 2006... Byline: Benjamin Sutherland Authors eager to sidestep tedious book-signing tours can now do it all online. Canadian manufacturer Unotchit has come up with the LongPen, a pen-clutching robot for bookstores that inscribes the author's...

Northern Exposure; Can a musical about the gulag help Korean relations?
March 27, 2006... Byline: Christian Caryl (With B. J. Lee in Seoul) A musical set in a concentration camp? Even Lim Jae Chung, the 33-year-old South Korean actor starring in the production, admits it's a tough sell. He plays a camp warden who rapes and...