Newsweek International articles from November 2002

Newsweek International archives from November 2002

Going Head to Head.
November 4, 2002... Readers of our Sept. 30 cover story on a possible U.S.-Iraq face-off were divided on the diplomatic and military tactics of both countries. While one letter-writer supported U.S.-enforced "regime change," another warned, "Bush shouldn't make...

Mexico's China Obsession.(economic relations)
November 4, 2002... Martha Tovar never really thought much about her Chinese visitors until she came to see them as industrial spies and job thieves. In May, Tovar was approached by David Yu, a California recruiter working on behalf of Chinese firms. Yu was...

Strong-Arm Democracy.(Turkish politics)
November 4, 2002... It's official. After four military coups since 1960, the Turkish Army doesn't interfere with civilian politics anymore. Just look at Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's most popular politician, banned last month by Turkey's Supreme Court from...

On Second Thought.(Baltic people and European Union)
November 4, 2002... Sandra Liedskalna, a fruit seller in Latvia's capital of Riga, is getting evil looks these days. As an early snow falls on the marketplace, Liedskalna is offering steep discounts on her imperfect yet fresh, honey-scented apples. Her arrival has...

Very Handy Handymen.(benriya)
November 4, 2002... Katsuyoshi Ukon still remembers the day five years ago when he received a call from an elderly Tokyo woman. Then as now, Ukon was a benriya, or handyman, who made his living doing odd jobs for clients. He ran errands, watched pets and made...

A New Game.(Forming coalitions in Pakistan's parliament.)
November 4, 2002... President Pervez Musharraf thought he had the election all sewn up. His powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, assured him that Pakistan's Oct. 10 race would produce what he wanted: a friendly Parliament filled with "new faces."...

Division in the Ranks.(Power struggle in Venezuela.)
November 4, 2002... At first blush, it looked like a blast from Latin America's authoritarian past. Once again, graying generals and admirals were demanding the immediate resignation of a democratically elected president. But the drama that unfolded in the...

'We Can Be Different'.(Interview with Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan President.)(Interview)
November 4, 2002... Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is facing a political rebellion at home, but he didn't let that stop him from making a whirlwind tour of Europe earlier this month. He addressed the U.N. Food and Agriculture Or- ganization in Rome, met French...

Foreseeing Disaster.(Predicting earthquakes.)
November 4, 2002... Geologists have long known about Japan's vulnerability to the rumbling earth. Back in 1978 the Japanese government enacted a law to ensure that the nation took steps to watch for impending earthquakes; by the end of 1994, it had spent more than...

Hooked on Hookahs.(pipe smoking in cafes; health hazard or cultural link?)
November 4, 2002... It's midnight in Paris, and the crowd is growing outside the Left Bank's Paradis de l'Orient cafe. "A half hour to get in?" complains one would-be patron. A cafe employee shrugs apologetically. Sounds of clapping and singing--and the smell of...

Beware, Bordeaux.(Award-winning wine from Malterdingen, Germany.)
November 4, 2002... Bernhard Huber's epiphany was buried in a bundle of dusty old papers. Digging through historical documents in the archive of his home village of Malterdingen, the German wine-making apprentice found a fragile parchment covered in ancient...

A Place for Pop.(Paulo Coelho is sworn into the Brazilian Academy of Letters.)
November 4, 2002... Paulo Coelho does not levitate anymore. The rock and roll, the drugs, the Magus shtick--that's all over, too. And don't even ask whether he can still make it rain. Not long ago, Coelho was a self-styled visionary, wandering the world--and the...

Solving For Creativity.(Mathematics and education in China)
November 4, 2002... Li Junfeng, a wide-faced, moppy-haired 23-year-old earning a doctorate in mathematics at one of China's top universities, has a problem. When he sits in his cramped dorm room talking with his fellow students about their dreams for the future,...

America's Pasta Pusher.(Batali, Mario)(Interview)
November 4, 2002... Mario Batali is the latest celebrity chef to capture Americans' hearts and stomachs. The Seattle native owns and operates three successful Italian restaurants in New York, hosts two television cooking shows and is the author of three cookbooks...

The Write Stuff.(Authors.)
November 4, 2002... "Have you heard?" chortled my friend the literary agent. "Apparently, 81 percent of Americans feel they should write a book." She wasn't kidding. Eighty-one percent of the citizenry of the land of the free and the home of the brave think they...

Perspectives.(Quotations.)(Brief Article)
November 4, 2002... "They thought it was all part of the play." Olga Veselova, an actor, who escaped through a dressing-room window from a Moscow theater where Chechen rebels took 700 people hostage "I have not yet used the four-letter word." A senior U.S....

Periscope.(Brief notes on events of the week.)
November 4, 2002... TERRORISM Qaeda on the Rebound Even as the United States steps up precautions against future terrorist attacks, fears are growing that would-be attackers are adapting tactics to circumvent heightened security measures. Confessions...

A Double Disaster?
November 11, 2002... Our Oct. 7 cover story on declining Arab economies drew praise from readers. "Congratulations!" wrote one; "long overdue," cheered another. But the prospect of a war with Iraq depressed more than Arab economists. One American expat was...

Looking for Answers.(Moscow hostage crisis)
November 11, 2002... The staff of the weekly Versiya had a scoop. They'd spent 10 days frantically reporting one of the biggest stories any of them could remember--the siege of the Moscow theater that ended in a dramatic assault by Russian Special Forces and the...

Godzilla Is Coming.(Japanese baseball star Hideki Matsui)
November 11, 2002... Watch out, America! Godzilla is coming! This time, though, not in some dumb Hollywood sequel, but in the form of a home-run-belting Japanese power hitter with a face like a big, unpeeled potato. Late last week Hideki Matsui, star outfielder of...

The Rare Woman.(female babies avoided in India)
November 11, 2002... Jasbir Sethi hardly seems a harbinger of India's woes. The grinning, dark-eyed 11-month-old boy crawls happily around his family's tasteful, upscale bungalow. But he's not your average Indian infant. His independently wealthy parents, Harpreet...

'I Have Changed'.(Luiz Inacio (Lula) da Silva)(Interview)
November 11, 2002... This week Luiz Inacio (Lula) da Silva, 57, was elected president of Brazil. Lula, who was born into extreme poverty and never got past elementary school, had lost three previous elections. This time he downplayed his left-wing credentials,...

Battle of the Nordic Giants.(mobile phone companies Ericsson, Nokia)
November 11, 2002... It remains one of the more intriguing "what ifs?" in the history of the cell phone. What if Ericsson had bought Nokia when it had the chance in 1991? One of the world's oldest telephone-equipment manufacturers, Ericsson was sitting pretty at...

A Hard Habit to Break.(cigarette smuggling into China)
November 11, 2002... The lovely crescent-shaped cove in southern Fujian province is almost deserted by day, save for a trio of swimmers frolicking in the waves and an old man hunched over a trove of seashells on the beach. Only when the surf retreats at low tide...

China's Deadly Cravings.(national smoking habit)
November 11, 2002... The curtains are drawn in the lung-cancer ward of Shanghai No. 6 People's Hospital. The 30 metal beds, installed when the ward opened last year, are all occupied now, mostly by older men in striped pajamas staring forlornly at the ceiling....

You Can Go Home Again.(Ignorance)(Book Review)
November 11, 2002... Emigre life contains certain constants. The nightmare that your plane is diverted and lands at an airport in your home country, where uniformed men are waiting with guns drawn. The nostalgic daydreams about a scenic landscape or a lovely path...

Artful Adultery.(Madame de Pompadour)
November 11, 2002... Did Madame de Pompadour lose the French Empire? In 1756, King Louis XV's notorious mistress helped spark the disastrous conflict that led to its demise by championing France's break with Protestant England and Prussia in favor of the Roman...

Paying for the Dreams.(election of Luiz Inacio da Silva in Brazil)
November 11, 2002... For Luiz Inacio (Lula) da Silva it became a kind of mantra. "Brazil has changed," the 57-year-old steelworker said on the campaign trail, courting voters who'd rejected him three times in the past. "And so have I." Last week 53 million...

Flight Of Fancy.(FanWing, fan-powered aircraft)
November 11, 2002... Even its creator doesn't give the FanWing high marks for elegance. The balsa-wood models of this would-be flying machine of the future that litter Patrick Peebles's farmhouse near Rome have the look of aeronautic freaks. Consider the basic...

The Dangers of Drift.(Kosovo)
November 11, 2002... The township of Suva Reka, in southern Kosovo, is a picturesque landscape of oak forests and vineyards, their leaves yellowing in the hazy sun of a Balkan autumn. Tile-roofed modern houses dot the hillsides and crowd the valleys, looking much...

Moscow Takes The Gloves Off.(Chechen terrorism)
November 11, 2002... The hostage crisis in Moscow has been called "Russia's 9-11." That's an exaggeration, but it clearly was a dreadful shock. Though unlikely to produce radical changes in Russian policies, it will have serious repercussions in areas ranging from...

Waging Peace To the End.(Shimon Peres)(Interview)
November 11, 2002... The day Israel's government collapsed last week, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres spent hours doing what he's best known for: trying to broker an agreement, this time between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Labor Party leader Binyamin Ben-Eliezer....

The Lonely Republican.
November 11, 2002... I got a call yesterday from a woman I see every couple of years. "Hi, Rob, it's Janice!" "Oh, hi, Janice." "I'm just calling because, well, I haven't seen you lately, and I was wondering, am I going to see you next week?" "Well, Janice, the...

Perspectives.
November 11, 2002... "There is no extremism in religion." Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah, during a meeting at his palace with members of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth "Diana's capacity to embarrass the royal family is beyond belief--even from the...

Periscope.(Ariel Sharon's coalition government collapses)(terrorist Abu Abbas)(volcanic eruptions, earthquake in Italy)(Walter Mondale seeks Senate seat)(LoveLife's AIDS awareness program in South Africa)(Microsoft's antitrust suit)(London exhibit looks at Vietnam conflict)(Interview)
November 11, 2002... ISRAEL Tel Aviv Takes a Sharp Turn to the Right For Shaul Mofaz, it was a moment to forget. The Israeli Army chief had been touring a military base on the West Bank with his boss, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, waiting to talk to him...

The Cool New Palm.(Palm Inc.'s Tungsten T)(Hardware Review)(Brief Article)
November 11, 2002... Tungsten, a lustrous grayish white metal, is commonly used in light- bulb filaments. Whether beleaguered hand-held pioneer Palm can brighten its prospects by co-opting the name for its new line of devices is another matter. The Palm...

It Stinks.(odorless garlic pills)(Brief Article)
November 11, 2002... Garlic is often touted as a superfood--it has a rep for lowering cholesterol and preventing colds. Problem is, garlic reeks. Odorless pills containing allicin--a compound in garlic that at high levels may clear the arteries--were supposed to...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
November 18, 2002... The quote "Diana's capacity to embarrass the royal family is beyond belief--even from the grave" (PERSPECTIVES, Nov. 11, 2002) was incorrectly attributed to Simon Perry of People magazine. NEWSWEEK regrets the error.

The Decline of Rome.
November 18, 2002... Our Oct. 14 story on Rome's problems incited Romans, their friends and countrymen to champion the Eternal City. Citing Dante, Rembrandt and the Beatles, they took issue with our list of the city's woes. Is Rome Really in a Rut? Your...

After The Quake.(Turkish election)
November 18, 2002... Dr. Abdullah Gul, Turkey's likely next prime minister, sits in his sleekly modern office as darkness descends. It's not dusk--his window is obscured by a giant five-story-high portrait of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the modernist, ultra-Western...

Splendid Isolation.(Tony Blair)
November 18, 2002... A man who looks very much like British Prime Minister Tony Blair stands at a podium, poised to speak. The opening line of his speech is flashed on a huge TelePrompTer-like screen suspended over the stage: MY FELLOW AMERICANS. Fellow...

Liberty in the Balance.(Southeast Asian civil rights)
November 18, 2002... Civil-rights activists in Malaysia don't get many chances to celebrate. Their campaign against the Internal Security Act, a 1960 law that allows indefinite detentions without charge or trial, has never had much success, even in the days when...

Political Freedom's Price.(Asian terrorism)
November 18, 2002... Southeast Asia, we have been told, is the second front in the United States' "war on terror." During the past month, with bombings in Bali and the Philippines, it's certainly felt like it. As the campaign against terror enters its second year,...

Please Send More Money.(Argentina)
November 18, 2002... Ricardo Colombi, governor of the sleepy Argentine province of Corrientes, can't be feeling very comfortable these days. More than half the 1 million people in Corrientes live below the poverty line ($135 a month for a family of three). The...

Soothing Talk From Turkey.(new leader)
November 18, 2002... Elections in staunchly secular Turkey last week delivered an overwhelming victory to the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party. But the party's chairman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, formerly a member of the radical Islamic Welfare party, has...

'Slavery Is Their Reality'.(Mauritania)
November 18, 2002... Abdel Nasser was given his first slave, a cherubic 5-year-old named Yebawwa, in 1969. According to a tradition among so-called white Moors in Mauritania, a boy asks for a coveted object at the moment of his circumcision. Many request a gun or a...

Healing Medicine.(Japanese physicians)
November 18, 2002... Keichi Kawafuchi always wanted to be a doctor. That is, until he became one. In his recent best-selling memoir "Don't Call Me Sensei," Kawafuchi writes about young doctors so green they still didn't know how to operate respirators, yet were...

Cycle of Hardship.(Israeli economy)
November 18, 2002... Moshe Basson counts himself among the lucky ones. Though his gourmet restaurant in downtown Jerusalem is nearly empty most nights and $150,000 in debt, Basson is still in business. The 52-year-old chef has owned Eucalyptus, once one of...

Moscow Gets Fashionable.
November 18, 2002... Inside Victoria Andreyanova's Moscow boutique, the decor as well as the best-selling clothes are spartan and understated. Amid soft lighting, a Sinead O'Connor disc spins on a chrome CD player. Andreyanova meets her clients in the boutique's...

Loving the Commie Look.(fashion design)
November 18, 2002... What do you design for people who are obsessed with everything new? Denis Simachev says the answer is simple: give them something familiar. The appeal of Soviet kitsch first caught on in Moscow a few years ago; billboards used Soviet propaganda...

Risky Business.(Colombian guerillas)
November 18, 2002... In a remote jungle clearing, several dozen Colombian guerrillas in camouflage fatigues gnaw on pieces of stewed rodent and sip a hot brew made from sugar cane. These men belong to the National Liberation Army (ELN); it's the smaller of...

Romancing the Mullah.(Maulana Fazlur Rahman)
November 18, 2002... If there is a winner so far from last month's parliamentary elections in Pakistan, it's Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the portly, bearded and turbaned cleric who champions Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammad Omar. He and his alliance of six right-wing...

The Syrian Surprise.(Iraq crisis)
November 18, 2002... If there was a real diplomatic surprise last week, it wasn't that 14 members of the United Nations Security Council voted for a tough resolution calling on Iraq to disarm, it was that the 15th member, Syria, got on the bandwagon. What's...

Season of Protest.
November 18, 2002... My son had been at college only two weeks when he announced he was going to get arrested. "Arrested?" I fairly screamed down the telephone. "Why? For what? There must have been some misunderstanding-- maybe I can help clear it up." "You...

Perspectives.
November 18, 2002... "Conflict is not inevitable, but disarmament is." British Prime Minister Tony Blair, on the U.N. resolution passed by the Security Council urging Iraq to let weapon inspectors back into the country "I'm very pleased to be hosting the...

Periscope.
November 18, 2002... EXCLUSIVE Powell Pulls Through As he walked his daughter Anne Marie down the aisle for her wedding on Nov. 2, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell had a double reason to rejoice. Even as the bridal party drove to the church in...

Warmth--and Style.
November 18, 2002... Ski bums have always grappled with the vexing question: how do you look cool while staying warm? These days there are plenty of options. Highly sophisticated synthetic fabrics, first used by mountain climbers and extreme adventurers, are now...

No-Fail Flowers.(Brief Article)
November 18, 2002... In his three years as artistic director of the Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris, the American-born florist Jeff Leatham, 31, has filled the lobby with a tropical rain forest, a cloud of rare Thai butterflies floating above fuchsia roses and...

Driving Smart.(Brief Article)
November 18, 2002... Now that fusion cuisine is a transatlantic phenomenon and French winemakers make California-style merlots, it's good to know that something still sets Europe apart: the Smart car. Fortunately, visitors can also sample the pleasures of the...

Life With Lula.(Letter to the Editor)
November 25, 2002... Readers of our Oct. 21 report on Brazil's Lula da Silva challenged our view of the erstwhile leftist on various counts. A cynic said, "Lula has nothing new to offer"; another reader warned, "his executive credentials are thin." A third disputed...

Germany's Jobless Racket.(training and make-work projects)
November 25, 2002... Simone Richter, 29, has been unemployed since 1997. After being downsized from a public-housing agency, she put herself through half a dozen government-sponsored training courses, from IT for Office Workers to Practical Administrative Skills....

China's Princelings Problem.(political corruption)
November 25, 2002... The time had finally come. China's new Politburo Standing Committee--in effect, the country's nine most powerful men--emerged from behind a carved wooden and lacquer screen to meet the nation. Every detail had been carefully scripted to give...

Talk Isn't Cheap.(World Trade Organization conferences)
November 25, 2002... Double Bay is one of Sydney's most charming and exclusive quarters. On the harbor's edge, circled by some of the city's finest homes, this shopping village is where you'll find high-end designer stores with large glass displays, rows of German...

A Political Football.(Islamic extremism)
November 25, 2002... The worshipers brought offerings of food and flowers to appease the souls of the dead. Then Balinese Hindu priests sprinkled holy water to purify the charred remains marking the site of the world's worst terrorist attack since 9-11. The size of...

Who's Hot--and Who's Not.(European Union membership)
November 25, 2002... A decade ago, when Czechoslovakia split in two, the Slovak capital of Bratislava didn't seem to have much to offer. Its dilapidated old town marked it as a provincial backwater. The ugly jumble of socialist "concrete modern" offices in the city...

Weak for Exports.(Japan's dependency on American markets)
November 25, 2002... It would be easy to mistake Miyata for a boomtown. Located on Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu, its major employer, a 10-year-old Toyota Motor Corp. assembly line, looks set to churn out 267,000 new vehicles this year--a tally equal...

How 9-11 Happened.(The Age of Sacred Terror)(Book Review)
November 25, 2002... The Trojan Princess Cassandra suffered one of the crueler fates in Greek mythology: she could predict the future, but no one would believe her. Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon know the feeling. As director and senior director, respectively,...

Beyond Human Sacrifice.(exhibition of Aztec treasures reveals sophisticated culture)
November 25, 2002... The potential blockbuster show of the season owes its existence to a group of Mexican electric-company workers. Back in 1978, while digging up some Mexico City streets, they unearthed the remains of the legendary Templo Mayor, the heart of the...

Treasures in the Sand.(beachcombing museum)
November 25, 2002... Tadashi Ishii's fascination with beachcombing began about 35 years ago near his home on the north side of Kyushu island. While collecting seashells with his 3-year-old daughter, Ishii, a junior-high history teacher and avid stamp collector,...

'Let the Courts Decide'.(Indonesian terrorists)
November 25, 2002... Hamzah Haz hasn't exactly been ally No. 1 in the U.S.-led war on terror. Since September 11 the Indonesian vice president, who heads the nation's largest Muslim political party, has emerged as the most powerful voice against cracking down on...

Not So Warm a Welcome.(U.N. delegate in Burma)
November 25, 2002... Ismail Razali pushed hard for a meeting with the head of Burma's military government. The U.N. secretary-general's special envoy hoped to restart talks between the regime and Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader released in May from house...

'There Is No Other Way'.(religious death sentence)
November 25, 2002... Last week a judge in the Iranian city of Hamadan sentenced reformist activist and university professor Hashem Aghajari to death for blasphemy. Aghajari was quoted saying, among other things, "Marx says, 'Religion is the opiate of masses,' but I...

Blowing Their Best Chance.(European Union membership)
November 25, 2002... Europeans often complain that America's strategy in the war on terror is one-dimensional. It's all military might with little effort to engage the Islamic world in a constructive way. They point out that unless we help Muslim countries prosper,...

You Bet Your Life.(bets as insurance)
November 25, 2002... My periodontist recently recommended a procedure that I feared would make my face swell up like a beached fish for weeks. He swore it wouldn't, because statistically it doesn't affect most people that way. But experience has taught me that my...

Perspectives.
November 25, 2002... "If he's alive, we'll certainly get him." U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks, on the apparent resurfacing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden "I am very happy that it exploded." Arrested Bali bombing suspect Amrozi, on the nightclub blast that killed...

Periscope.
November 25, 2002... Inspections Saddam's Next Steps When it comes to Iraq and U.N. Security Council resolutions, nothing is ever quite what it seems. Saddam Hussein pretended to be furious last week, but just before the deadline to accept the resolution...

A Never-Ending Vacation.
November 25, 2002... Ten years into his job as an insurance underwriter, Robert Baldwin had had enough. He was sick of his work, bored with his hometown of Leicester, England, and ready for something new. He decided that moving 100 miles southwest to London might...

A Quick HIV Test.(Brief Article)
November 25, 2002... Learning that you're HIV-positive may seem an awful fate, but not learning can be worse. People with undetected HIV not only miss out on early treatment but risk spreading the virus unwittingly. Reliable tests are easy to find, but because they...