Newsweek International articles from May 2003

Newsweek International archives from May 2003

Mail Call.(Letter to the Editor)
May 5, 2003... Readers responding to our March 31 SPECIAL REPORT on the start of hostilities in Iraq all took umbrage at the strike's official name, "shock and awe." While one letter writer faulted "the insensitivity of George W. Bush," another retorted, "...

When Worlds Collide.(New Europe)
May 5, 2003... Two dozen university-age Poles crowd into a conference room in Warsaw. They have come to discuss what it means to be European, and what they think about the United States. Poland is the heavyweight among the 10 countries set to join the...

Waiting At Europe's Door.(Poles to vote on entering the European Union)(Interview)
May 5, 2003... Aleksander Kwasniewski has played the political fireman this year. Poland's two-term president strongly supported America in the Iraq war, angering France and neighboring Germany, its biggest trading partner. Another flare-up could come on June...

The World Is Bipolar After All.(United States, Europe)
May 5, 2003... Moravcsik is director of the European Union program at Harvard University. What lessons can Europe draw from the war in Iraq? One is that U.S. hawks are right. There's only one superpower. The United States can go it alone, militarily....

'We've Got Nothing to Do'.(Cubans speak out)
May 5, 2003... Few Cubans speak publicly these days about the man they call "El Comandante," "El Jefe" or just plain "Fidel." Government spies are scattered throughout the island--and residents know that when the talk turns to President Fidel Castro, ears...

The Gold Knot.(Indian gold sales on the decline)
May 5, 2003... Indian brides-to-be hold heavy gold chokers against their slim throats and squeeze gold bangles onto their wrists at Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri, a three-story Delhi jeweler whose fountain and pink marble floors hint at India's passion for gold....

Moscow in the Money.(Russian oil giant Yukos to acquire Sibneft)
May 5, 2003... He needs no further introduction in Moscow, but Europe's richest man under 40 still likes to advertise. Green-hued billboards marking the 10-year anniversary of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's oil giant, Yukos, crop up every few hundred meters on...

Dresden on The Thames.
May 5, 2003... Just before the river Elbe, which sweeps from Prague to Hamburg through some of Germany's most picturesque towns, burst its banks last August, Martin Roth was awaken by a 5 a.m. text message alerting him that the river was rising dangerously....

A New Life for Degas's Young Dancer.(Ballet de l'Opera de Paris creates new ballet)(Brief Article)
May 5, 2003... In 1997 curators at Paris's Musee d'Orsay asked the Ballet de l'Opera de Paris to restore the fragile tulle skirt on Edgar Degas's most famous work: "La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans." That was when the ballet's in-house historian, Martine...

Get Back to Business.(role of corporations)
May 5, 2003... Schwab is president and founder of the World Economic Forum, a nonprofit Geneva-based foundation dedicated to entrepreneurship in the global public interest. Where does corporate responsibility begin and end? In the old days the answer was...

The Chinese Puzzle.(relationship between China and North Korea)
May 5, 2003... The most important VIP to visit Beijing last week arrived in a military uniform without fanfare or journalists in tow. Less than 48 hours before critical negotiations between the United States, North Korea and China got underway, the No. 2 man...

The Eliza Lynch Story.(The Shadows of Elisa Lynch)(The Empress of South America)(The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch)(Book Review)
May 5, 2003... It's an irresistible story, better suited to grand opera than to history. An unhinged autocrat wages war on a much larger country, reducing the male population of his own Latin American nation by 90 percent. He takes for his lover a voluptuous,...

Azar Nafisi.(Teaching western novels in Tehran)(Interview)
May 5, 2003... For two years in the 1990s, Azar Nafisi taught Western novels frowned on by the Iranian regime to a group of six women students in Tehran. From this experience, Nafisi, now a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C., drew the...

Have We Got a Bridge for You!(selling New York City)
May 5, 2003... New York City was founded on cash. While other cities arose where settlers happened to end up--or where some king decided to start a kingdom--New York came about in 1626 because a Dutch guy named Peter Minuit gave $24 worth of beads, axes,...

Perspectives.
May 5, 2003... "That isn't going to happen." U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on the possibility of an "Iranian-type government" in Iraq "The Europeans should not think that we are Europeans. Our culture and environment are different from theirs."...

Periscope.(current events)
May 5, 2003... NATO: New Marching Orders Despite all the frisson from the French and the anger from the Americans, it seems the so-called great divide between the two traditional allies could yet be bridged--starting with NATO. Even with the recent...

IT TELLS TIME, TOO!(SPOT Watch)(Brief Article)
May 5, 2003... The wrist PDA, due in June, will synchronize wirelessly with Palms. The SPOT (Smart Personal Objects Technology) watch, coming in October, will receive continual wireless reports that wearers preselect at a Microsoft Web site, such as portfolio...

Mouse in the House.(computer mice for children)(Brief Article)
May 5, 2003... Hey mickey, check out this mini mouse. Now that toddlers are using computers, they need kid-size mice (which are easier to manipulate, and help protect little hands from tendinitis). That's why Susan Giles founded kidzmouse.com, which offers...

Stopping a Killer.(pulmonary embolism)(Brief Article)
May 5, 2003... What is a pulmonary embolism? We hear about them occurring on airplanes--some airlines have started handing out exercise tips to prevent them on long-haul flights--and they're a potential side effect of birth-control pills and hormone therapy....

Growing up Green.(conservation books)(Brief Article)(Bibliography)
May 5, 2003... We're always promising to keep the planet clean for our kids. But will our offspring appreciate what we leave them? These conservation-themed books will help kids green up: National Geographic's gorgeous picture book A Cool Drink of Water, by...

Mail Call.(Letter to the Editor)
May 12, 2003... Reactions to our April 7 cover package on the Iraq war were exceptionally divergent. A reader wrote, "The whole issue's too liberal and anti-Bush." Another declared, "Your perspective was totally American." But a third cheered, "Thank you for...

Arafat's Endgame.
May 12, 2003... Nothing symbolizes the steady erosion of Yasir Arafat's power better than his crumbling headquarters in Ramallah, known as the Muqataa. Ravaged three times by Israeli tanks and bulldozers, the compound, which housed British officers in the last...

A Spymaster and Political Fixer.(Omar Suleiman)
May 12, 2003... Yasir Arafat has always liked dealing with spies or, better yet, spymasters, even when their governments were supposed to be his enemies. In the shadowy world of Middle Eastern politics, where formal statements and official contacts frequently...

Hello, Lenin!(Goodbye Lenin!)(Movie Review)
May 12, 2003... Ostalgia. it means nostalgia for the East, and 13 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, it's changing the way Germans view life in the former communist German Democratic Republic. Across the country, and especially the old East, tourist...

Let the Jury Decide.(Reform in post communist Russia's legal system)
May 12, 2003... Nikolai Dulepov claims self-defense. "He was strangling me," whispers the 23-year-old, on trial for double murder. That's why he stabbed his friend Yevgenny four times in the back one drunken night last summer, he says. Skinny, with a buzz cut...

A Dangerous Windfall.(East Timor)
May 12, 2003... When Indonesia and Australia agreed in 1989 to jointly exploit East Timor's offshore oil and gas fields, the countries' foreign ministers sealed the pact by sipping champagne in a private jet high above the Timor Sea. Ten years later, after...

Reform Now, or I'll Quit.(Gerhard Schroder and welfare state reform)
May 12, 2003... Berliners were rubbing their eyes in disbelief. Just ahead of the May 1 Labor Day holiday last week, billboards began popping up at bus stops and subway stations, proclaiming less welfare state means more jobs. Among Germans left and right,...

The Alarmist of Omaha.(Warren Buffett)
May 12, 2003... Do you know what feline pride means to a money manager? (Flexible equity-linked exchangeable security.) A Synthetic CDO? If the acronyms sound exotic, the truth is that these are garden-variety derivatives, a fast-growing form of investment now...

Waiting for Disaster.(dealing with SARS in the developing world)
May 12, 2003... The killer SARS virus traveled to Barangay Vacante from one of the world's most modern cities. Adela Catalon probably caught the virus in Toronto, where she worked at a nursing home, and brought it to the Philippines when she returned to care...

Hector the Director.(Biography)
May 12, 2003... Hector Babenco pads quickly into his studio waiting room wearing black All Star high-tops, his unbuttoned pink dress shirt billowing behind him like a sail. His voice is raspy, thanks to a bad case of sinusitis that has him popping antibiotics...

More an Actor Than a Leader.(Arafat's failure to lead)
May 12, 2003... Barak was Israel's prime minister from 1999 to 2001. When I met Yasir Arafat for the first time,in 1996, I was struck by the contrast between his revolutionary appearance--with his uniform and his gun--and his soft-spoken manner. That...

Unhealthy Politics.(China's leaders response to SARS)
May 12, 2003... Macfarquhar is the Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science at Harvard University. China's SARS epidemic has its Communist Party leaders on their heels. Not since the 1989 student uprising in Tiananmen Square has its...

The Perils of Paranoia.(SARS will not cause an economic disaster)
May 12, 2003... SARS has turned Michael O'Keefe's business upside down, but not for the reasons you might think. As a risk consultant at Kroll International, he normally plays the voice of caution. Not now. In Japan, which has yet to confirm a single case of...

Singing in the Cells.(Carandiru)(Movie Review)
May 12, 2003... Midway through "Carandiru," Hector Babenco's new feature film about Brazil's most hellish prison, inmates stand in soldierly rows around the jail yard. They are gathered for a football game, and soon the Brazilian national anthem crackles over...

Rewriting The Bible.(Power and Glory: Jacobean England and the Making of the King James Bible)(Book Review)
May 12, 2003... Nothing heightens the need for a little peace, love and understanding like an attempt on one's life. When Guy Fawkes conspired to blow up London's Parliament in 1605, it drove home to King James I just how divided his realm was. Since...

God and Language.(Coined by God: Words and Phrases that First Appear in the English Translations of the Bible)(Book Review)
May 12, 2003... It's easy to understand how popular English expressions like "salt of the earth" and "reap the whirlwind" derive from the Bible. But what about words like "adoption" and "cucumber"? In "Coined by God: Words and Phrases That First Appear in the...

Eliot Spitzer.(Interview)
May 12, 2003... Behind every great corporate scandal is a great reformer. New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has sought that mantle ever since the popping of the 1990s tech bubble rocked Wall Street, exposing deep conflicts of interest inside its...

A Nuclear North, All Over Again.(North Korea)
May 12, 2003... Berger was national-security adviser in the Clinton administration and is chairman of Stonebridge International, a global-strategy firm. GALLUCCI was assistant secretary of State in the Bush and Clinton administrations and is dean of the School...

The Geopolitics of Pratfalls.(United States - European relations)
May 12, 2003... Charlie Chaplin once explained that there are two ways to film the old "guy slips on a banana peel" joke: a funny way, and an unfunny way. The first, unfunny way goes like this: Cut to the guy walking, oblivious. Cut to the banana peel,...

Perspectives.
May 12, 2003... "The tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free." President George W. Bush, declaring the end of official combat before 5,000 Navy men and women aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln "We ought to look in a mirror and get proud, and stick out...

Periscope.(current events)
May 12, 2003... Trade: Happy Together Americans have taken sledgehammers to Peugeots. Germans have boycotted McDonald's. The Iraq war may be over, but the transatlantic rancor it inspired has yet to fade. Washington has hinted at commercial punishment...

Cool Ways to Cover Up.(jackets)
May 12, 2003... For the past two years, denim jackets have eclipsed all other spring coats. This season, that blue haze is finally lifting, making way for a blossoming landscape of colorful jackets and blazers. A sampling: Military Chic: With the guns of...

Bold is Back.(beachwear)(Brief Article)
May 12, 2003... Forget fretting over your body's imperfections: this season, beachwear is all about getting noticed. Contrasting colors, bold florals--even shiny beads--are pushing basic black into the shadows. At Neiman Marcus, OndadeMar's pink and white...

Staying in Tune.(music getaways)(Brief Article)
May 12, 2003... What better time than the summer to spend a weekend in a bucolic setting listening to classical music? A Tip Sheet mini-guide to weekend retreats: Moulin d'Ande, Normandie, France: Hop a train at the Gare Saint Lazare to this spectacular...

A Clean Getaway.(The New Honeymoon Planner)(Book Review)
May 12, 2003... You've run yourself ragged putting together the perfect wedding. Now planning a postnuptial getaway threatens to be another overwhelming chore. What to do? Sharon Naylor's "The New Honeymoon Planner" (Prima Publishing. $16.95) gives some tips...

Mail Call.
May 19, 2003... Readers of our April 14 issue mused on the Iraq war and focused on its failures. "Saddam managed to disappear," lamented one. "Where are those mythical weapons?" jeered another. The bitterest loss of all? "America's place in history: from...

A Cheap-Peso Boom.
May 19, 2003... Argentina has found an economic formula that works: export more, import less. The peso, once pegged to the dollar, is now worth about 30 U.S. cents. That's been a boon to the country's export industries. Sales of beef, honey and soybeans have...

The Man Nobody Knows.(Nestor Kirchner)
May 19, 2003... When a little-known provincial governor named Nestor Kirchner first declared himself a candidate for president of Argentina, his wife, Cristina, reacted with three words: "You are crazy!" She was not alone: the opinion surveys gave the...

Holding the Border.
May 19, 2003... Call them what you will. For decades GIs deployed along the demilitarized zone in South Korea were collectively known as a "tripwire" force--units whose main objective was to shed blood in the first moments of a North Korean attack, thereby...

Taking a Little Poetic License.(Atal Bihari Vajpayee)
May 19, 2003... Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is an eloquent speaker with a poetic sensibility. And earlier this month, it was with a poet's sense for the spontaneous that an emotionally charged Vajpayee told the Indian Parliament that he was...

Feeling the Heat.(Silvio Berlusconi)
May 19, 2003... Imagine this. The president of the European Union is hosting a historic summit. Exhorting fellow ministers to admit Russia to the European Union, he brandishes an emphatic fist in the air--where the lights of the world's assembled TV networks...

The Diving Dollar.
May 19, 2003... The dollar is weak in Europe, weak in Japan, weak against every currency save the Brazilian real, signaling perhaps the end of the strong dollar as we have known it, currency trader Dennis Gartman wrote in his insider newsletter last week,...

Going Nowhere Fast.(Darkness at Dawn)(Book Review)
May 19, 2003... David Satter is profoundly disillusioned with post-Soviet Russia. Actually, that's putting it mildly; his new book, "Darkness at Dawn" (352 pages. Yale University Press), paints about as abject a picture as I've seen of the corruption,...

The Team Money Built.(Spanish soccer team Real Madrid)
May 19, 2003... It just might be the sexiest courtship in the history of European football: day after day the sports pages from Edinburgh to Istanbul are filled with stories about the vast sums Real Madrid, the hottest brand in world football, is offering for...

Ouch! That Feels Better.(benefits of acupuncture)
May 19, 2003... Lei Dao is lying on his stomach with his trousers pulled down. His doctor, Hong Na, twists and turns one needle into his hip, then another into his backside. "It hurts," cries Lei--then gives a clench-jawed laugh at what he's gotten himself...

Bella Bellucci.(Italian actress Monica Bellucci)
May 19, 2003... In the last decade Monica Bellucci has emerged as one of Europe's most desired and respected leading ladies, earning roles in such potent films as Giuseppe Tornatore's "Malena" and Gaspar Noe's "Irreversible." In the rest of the world, the...

Just Call It Eurowood.(European production companies making American movies)
May 19, 2003... When Hollywood movie producers Mario Kassar and Andy Vajna decided to revive the "Terminator" series for a third megabudget installment, they chose to look outside the seven major Hollywood studios for backing. "Independent financing allows us...

What the United Nations Can Do.(humanitarian aid in Iraq)
May 19, 2003... Tharoor is Under Secretary-General of the United Nations. When Ramiro Lopes da Silva, the United Nations' humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, stepped out of his car in Baghdad at the end of a grueling 900-kilometer journey from Amman, he saw...

On the Trail of Il Duce.
May 19, 2003... I had come to Phoenix, among the Arizona saguaros and 6,000 miles from home, to look for one of my country's best-kept secrets. And here he is, watering the flowers outside his motor home, a tall and handsome man of 61, living on unemployment...

Perspectives.
May 19, 2003... "Everybody was sucked out." A Congolese military official, after the rear doors of a cargo plane carrying military personnel and their families opened during flight, killing dozens "I think George Bush is the most corrupt American president...

Periscope.
May 19, 2003... WMD: Looted and Lost? U.S. troops have yet to turn up conclusive evidence that Iraq was maintaining a nuclear, biological or chemical (NBC) arsenal. Two very suspicious trailer rigs turned up last week in Mosul. The Pentagon called them...

Are You Ready to Wi-Fi?(wireless technology grows up)
May 19, 2003... What a tangled mess we weave, when we practice to, uh... set up a computer network. Fear not, say the arbiters of technology. Wires, at least the ones that connect your computer to the Internet, may soon be as obsolete as dial-up modems. "Once...

America on Sale.
May 19, 2003... Looking to splash out on an American vacation? For European travelers, there may never be a better time. A big reason why: one year ago, 1 euro would only buy you 90 cents' worth of Americana. But now that same euro is trading around $1.15 (the...

Sitting Pretty.(web site seatguru.com shows maps of airline seats)(Brief Article)
May 19, 2003... With all the recent flight cancellations, you'd think people would be happy just to get on a darn airplane. But there's always somebody who's gotta have the extra legroom of the bulkhead, or can't possibly sit over the wing. If that somebody is...

A Final Spring.(Three Gorges dam in China )(Brief Article)
May 26, 2003... It was Sun Yat-Sen's idea. The father of modern China supposedly first proposed a massive dam near the series of canyons known as the Three Gorges in 1919. The mere thought of it inspired Mao to write poetry. And next month China will take...

Mail Call.(Letter to the Editor)
May 26, 2003... Mauro Suttora's April 21 piece on the U.N.'s ineptitude ignited a heated debate among readers. "A great article!" cheered one. "The U.N. has proven weak and useless," chimed another. But the U.N.'s defenders accused us of "tabloid journalism."...

Irrelevant France.
May 26, 2003... Marc Llong feels penitential. Waiting to board his flight to New York, the gray-haired French retiree leafs through Le Parisien, a working- class tabloid that's full of headlines about transatlantic tensions. "We were so bad," he says, shaking...

Crushing an Epidemic.
May 26, 2003... Every morning, residents of Beijing's Yonganli neighborhood gather in the concrete plazas scattered among their apartment buildings to begin the day with calisthenics. Recently, someone has been keeping a close eye on who shows up and who...

A Country That Works.(Tunisia )
May 26, 2003... The computer programmers drink mint tea with pine nuts. The offices are decorated with delicate tiles of azure blue and canary yellow. But aside from the Arabic details, you might mistake the Tunis Technology Park for any high-tech enclave in...

Mexico's New Wave.(modern art)(Critical Essay)
May 26, 2003... Back in the early 1990s, Mexico City artist Eduardo Abaroa was hardly an international name. He showed his abstract sculptures--made from everyday objects like metal, cotton swabs and mirrors--in borrowed houses and sold them to friends. His...

Schroder's Big Chill.(Brief Article)
May 26, 2003... "This is where he sat and lied to me," a furious George W. Bush recently told a visiting European head of state. "He" is German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, with whom Bush believed he had a deal-- private acquiescence on Iraq in return for...

The Queen, As She Was.(Critical Essay)
May 26, 2003... Successive generations have interpreted the story of England's greatest ruler, Queen Elizabeth I, in their own way. The Victorians were wild about Elizabethan chivalry and imperial ambition. The pre-World War II film "Fire Over England" echoed...

Kenny Gluck.(Interview)
May 26, 2003... The war in Iraq seriously damaged the country's clean-water supply and sewage-treatment systems, causing a wave of diarrheal diseases, including but not limited to cholera. Although the World Health Organization has confirmed only four cholera...

Hey! You a Tourist or Sumpin'?
May 26, 2003... Ray Rosato speaks a mile a minute and doesn't much care if anyone understands a word. As he sees it, inflicting his thick Noo Yawk accent on a clutch of bewildered tourists, blared through a tinny microphone as his double-decker bus trundles...

Perspectives.(Brief Article)
May 26, 2003... "We're moving." Fahd al-Blehed, whose brother Muhammad was one of 34 killed in the recent suicide bombings at a residential compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia "As a fake newsman myself, it's always encouraging to see the profession catching...

Periscope.(Iraqi dinar rises)
May 26, 2003... Iraq: Of Dinars and Dollars Something strange is happening on Kifah Street, home to the shuttered Baghdad stock market and hawkers of everything from cigarettes to fistfuls of dinars adorned with a young Saddam Hussein. The Saddam dinar is...

Summer Guide.(Product/Service Evaluation)(Buyers Guide)
May 26, 2003... Spend lazy days by the beach, evenings by the grill? OK, so this is real life. But everyone deserves a little extra fun in the sun this year. Tip Sheet tracked down this season's hottest stuff, from DVD camcorders to mountain bikes to...

The Road Less Traveled.(France toiurism policy)
May 26, 2003... Desperate times call for desperate measures. In France this summer, that means being downright friendly to tourists-- something that doesn't come naturally to every cafe waiter and concierge in Paris. So, in an effort to bolster tourism, the...

Going Nowhere.(travelling close to home)
May 26, 2003... French elementary-school teacher Adele Pesnot had been looking forward to visiting California for months. In December, she and her older sister, Alice, booked a trip for April to take in the sun and (movie) stars of Los Angeles and San Diego....

Climb Every Mountain.
May 26, 2003... Inside Packer's Cafe, located in the backpacking circuit town of Lijiang in China's southwestern Yunnan province, a group of thirtysomething Chinese are gearing up for a trek. Hair unkempt and clad in Gore-Tex pants, they chain-smoke amid piles...

National Parks Without Crowds.
May 26, 2003... Vacationers around the world have always cherished their national parks for fresh air, natural beauty and abundant wildlife. But during the heavy summer-travel months, popular destinations as far-flung as Yosemite in California, Germany's Black...

Only the Boldest.(travel to dangerous locations )(Brief Article)
May 26, 2003... Suzana Iorga has a secret vacation hideaway. It's called Syria. She and her husband, a French diplomat based in Cairo, fell in love with the country last summer on their first holiday trip there. Iorga, 30, raves about the spectacular Crac des...

Welcome to Pyongyang!
May 26, 2003... The sun is low and the sand is warm, bathed gold in the afternoon light. Turquoise waves curl into shore. Quaint weather-board cottages nestle among the dunes. And, if you close your eyes, you may even forget you are in one of the world's most...

Political Passages.(reality tours)
May 26, 2003... Last winter, 55-year-old Connie Houde passed up the beaches of Nice and the slopes of Gstaad to vacation in the remains of Kabul. Instead of sunning or skiing, Houde spent two chilly weeks traipsing around the Afghan capital, visiting a local...