Newsweek International articles from November 2003

Newsweek International archives from November 2003

A Global Health Crisis.(Letter to the Editor)
November 3, 2003... Readers of our Sept. 22 cover package on children's health shared their concerns: allergies and overprescribed drugs. For the millions of kids who die needlessly, a nurse blamed "the fatalistic acceptance of death." A Matter of Life and...

Is Europe Drinking Too Much?
November 3, 2003... Jemma Gunning's first drink seemed harmless enough. It was a Chocolate Mudpie, a delectable mix of Bailey's Irish and ice cream. A dozen cocktails followed, chased by "fish bowls" filled to the brim with vodka and fruit juice. That's when the...

A Baltic Striptease?(Latvia)
November 3, 2003... The elaborate courtship between the European Union and tiny Latvia concluded last month with a resounding "yes." Throughout, the bigger suitor kept pressing one irksome issue: corruption. "They were always saying, 'You need to deal with this...

The Mahathir Mystique.
November 3, 2003... The architectural hodgepodge that is Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's capital, is testament to the country's dazzling cultural diversity. In the city center, not far from the Islamic Sharia court, is the British-built former cricket club--nicknamed...

'The Threat is Real'.(Malaysia)
November 3, 2003... On paper, Abdullah Badawi has a dream job. Malaysia's next prime minister will inherit a prosperous, moderate Muslim country with a vibrant multiracial, multireligious society. But his predecessor has also left to Abdullah the problem of a...

Smokeless Europe.
November 3, 2003... President Jacques Chirac is pursuing his "war on tobacco" with the passion one might expect of a man who struggled to quit the deadly habit. Already France's 14 million smokers face big, boldface new warnings that smoking kills and, perhaps...

Brazil's Racial Revolution.
November 3, 2003... One day, some years ago, Brazilian Bishop Dom Jose Maria Pires sat down to lunch and a pile of unread mail. One letter, from black seminarians, caught his eye. It asked Pires to speak about the plight of blacks in the Roman Catholic Church....

A Drunk's Best Friend.(Antipokhmelin)
November 3, 2003... Everyone and his grandmother has a cure for a hangover. But whether it's a raw egg for breakfast, a feast of menudo (boiled tripe), a swig of pickle juice, a handful of aspirin or a hair of the dog that bit you, few remedies actually do the...

Bringing Down the Internet.
November 3, 2003... If you wanted to write a science-fiction thriller about the day the Internet crashed, you'd start with a computer geek. Armed with nothing but a laptop and a high-speed Internet connection, he releases a fast- spreading computer virus that in a...

The Art of Suffrage.
November 3, 2003... Wearing a floor-sweeping dress and a wrought-iron chain around her waist, a woman yokes herself to Britain's Houses of Parliament. The black-and-white image, captured by a photojournalist in 1908, has come to represent the campaign of British...

Mario Vargas Llosa.(Interview)
November 3, 2003... Widely regarded as one of the world's top novelists, Mario Vargas Llosa is also a self-proclaimed "radical liberal" who extols the virtues of the free-market economy. That view has fallen out of favor throughout much of Latin America--most...

Allez Hoop at the World's Court.(Paris)
November 3, 2003... Not far from the Eiffel Tower, past the grassy rectangles of the Champs de Mars and just before the Ecole Militaire, stands the "World's Court." It isn't in stellar shape. The hoop is too low on one end, allowing the tallest of generally...

Perspectives.
November 3, 2003... "I love free speech." U.S. President George W. Bush, during his address to the Australian Parliament, responding to a heckler who shouted "We are not a sheriff!" "She was part of an era I don't want to remember. Taiwan was not a democracy...

Periscope.
November 3, 2003... Intelligence: Divisions Inside Iran The foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany last week congratulated themselves for persuading Iran's ruling ayatollahs to "suspend" a suspected uranium-enrichment program and allow international...

Tip Sheet.
November 3, 2003... Travel: New Year, New Adventure By Malcolm Beith Each year, we vow to do something special for New Year's Eve. But by the time most of us get around to calling the travel agent, flights and hotel prices are through the roof, the...

A Friendship Sours.
November 17, 2003... Our Oct. 6 coverage of the Franco-American split divided readers as well. Wrote one, "I love America." Said another, "The perceived rift is with Bush." A third insisted, "It's all about politics and money." The Feud With France One...

Preying on Children.(child trafficking)
November 17, 2003... Over pasta in a Bloomsbury pizzeria, "Maria" could pass for any urbane 21-year-old Londoner. She's not. The Macedonia-born Maria was orphaned at 9, then sent to stay with a family whose 19-year-old son, "Nuri," began sleeping with her. He...

Power First, Economics Later.(Russia)
November 17, 2003... Actually, this country lends itself marvelously to all kinds of fraud. Russia is always governed by deceit. Is the author of those words describing (a) Tsarist Russia, (b) the Soviet Union or (c) Russia today? The correct answer, since the...

Nowhere to Go But Up.(North Korea)
November 17, 2003... South Korean journalist Gong Jong Shik found something unexpected on the highway outside Pyongyang recently: apples. During an October visit to the communist North, he stopped at a roadside fruit stand and, for 1, purchased five tasty...

Culture of Impunity.(military crimes)
November 17, 2003... For a few months at least, it seemed that Helen Mack's long quest for justice might finally succeed. In 1990, a Guatemalan Army sergeant brutally stabbed her sister Myrna to death in front of her Guatemala City apartment. In October 2002, a...

The Devil Is in the Details.(government)
November 17, 2003... Last weekend Cambodians had a lot to smile about. The country's 50th Independence Day and annual water festival followed a breakthrough in a three-month political deadlock marred by a series of brutal killings. Strongman ruler Hun Sen's...

The Path to a Tranquil Mind.(qigong)
November 17, 2003... Just off Beijing's main shopping street, Wangfujing, patients with every imaginable malady line up to see qigong doctors in the Hall of the Tranquil Mind clinic. Director Zhang Xiaotong first became a believer in the spiritual art after he was...

Learning to Give Thanks for Life.
November 17, 2003... French-born Dr. David Servan-Schreiber, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, recently wrote a best-selling book in France entitled "Guerir," or "The Instinct to Heal" (Rodale, February 2004). The...

Stirring Up a Hornet's Nest.(Tian Fengshan )
November 17, 2003... Tian Fengshan never seemed like ministerial material. The eldest son of a peasant family in Heilongjiang province, he spoke with a thick rural accent that still makes him the butt of jokes among locals. Yet Tian won steady promotions, becoming...

Meet the Titans of Taste.(design)
November 17, 2003... Paola Antonelli CURATOR, MUSEUM OF MODERN ART Her criterion is simple: "I try to decide," says Paola Antonelli, curator of architecture and design at New York's MoMA, "whether the space an object occupies on Earth is well used." If...

Boris A. Berezovsky.
November 17, 2003... If anyone had reason to sympathize with jailed Russian mogul Mikhail Khodorkovsky last week, it was Boris Abramovich Berezovsky. He was among the leading members of Boris Yeltsin's Kremlin "family," a group of businessmen and courtiers...

Tiptoeing Up to the Bar.(gay liberation)
November 17, 2003... The village I call Bluestone, in upstate New York, is so small, you could fit its entire full-time population into the first three rows of "Urban Cowboy, the Musical." At that intimate a scale, the actions of one or two people can create--or...

Perspectives.
November 17, 2003... "Stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty." U.S. President George W. Bush, in a speech where he called past U.S. policy of supporting nondemocratic Arab leaders a failure "If they want to export democracy through wars, we do...

Periscope.
November 17, 2003... Britain: God Save the President It seemed like a swell idea at the time. President George W. Bush's pageantry-filled Nov. 19 to Nov. 21 state visit to Britain was planned long before the war in Iraq--and the U.N. nastiness that preceded...

Tip Sheet.(Christmas gifts)(Directory)
November 17, 2003... Dashing Through the Mall It's the eternal holiday question: what are you going to get your spouse, your kids--that prized business associate? Each year, catalogs pile up on doorsteps like snowdrifts. Glad offerings from e-tailers arrive in...

Exploding Boundaries.(letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 24, 2003... Our Oct. 13 report on high-tech travel spurred both praise and thoughtfulness. "Excellent," cheered one; another rejected such expensive hobbies when "people dying of curable diseases can't afford care." New Frontiers for Fun Your...

Return of the KGB.(Column)
November 24, 2003... Three times in 1984, KGB provocateurs tried to entrap a young British exchange student at Russia's Voronezh State University. First they offered him the sexual services of a 12-year-old girl. No go. Knowing he was a military buff, they then...

Finding Peace of Mind.(mental health services in China)
November 24, 2003... When strangers visit, Shang Zhijun is on his best behavior. The 22- year-old Hebei peasant only seems a little pushy--talking too loudly, asking for cigarettes too often. "He doesn't admit he's mentally ill," says his adoptive mother, Zhao...

Lula's Balancing Act.(Brazilian President's busy year)
November 24, 2003... This time last year, Brazil was a nation in suspense. Luiz Inacio da Silva, a former capitalist-bashing steelworker, had just been elected president, and no one had a clue what to expect. Throughout the campaign, the leftist Workers Party (PT)...

Diplomacy by Vendetta.(global trade relations)
November 24, 2003... It's a long way from Baghdad to Cancun, but the connection is obvious. In April, with the United States flying high after its low-casualty invasion of Iraq, it would have been hard to imagine poor countries challenging American and European...

Losing Faith.(analysts blame Sony's CEO for low profit margins)
November 24, 2003... A Sony watcher recalls the moment he lost faith. It happened more than a year ago, at a Tokyo gathering for analysts and portfolio managers called to present the company's latest performance numbers. Atypically for such an occasion, Sony opened...

Chinese Lessons.(political and economic reform in China)(Column)
November 24, 2003... Earlier this month, President George W. Bush proclaimed America's intent to ignite a democratic revolution in Arab countries, using Iraq as the springboard. By last week it was increasingly apparent that Bush means to push ahead with democratic...

Monkey's Best Friend.(study of female baboons shows females socialize more)
November 24, 2003... Prudy is one of the most popular baboons in her group. When her fellow monkeys pass by, they raise their tails in deference. When her fur grows dusty there's always a volunteer to give it a good grooming. For eight years, she's even had that...

Prehistoric Farming.(origin of maize)
November 24, 2003... The maize that will soon be piled high on Thanksgiving tables throughout the United States is a thoroughly human invention. It started as teosinte, a wild grass with clusters of puny kernels. From each autumn harvest, ancient Mexicans put aside...

In Search of Really Small Tweezers.(working with atoms)
November 24, 2003... How do you put an atom to work? Unlike, say, a bowling ball, which has three holes for your fingers, atoms are hard to get a handle on. When scientists from Caltech set out to fashion a laser from a single atom, a big challenge was how to keep...

Mexico's New Wave.(Mexican movie makers)
November 24, 2003... Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu was at home in Mexico City three years ago when the phone rang. "Hi, this is Sean Penn," said the voice at the other end. "I said, 'Sure, and I'm Marlon Brando'," the Mexican film director recalls. But as he soon...

A Tale of Two Views.(DBC Pierre's book "Vernon God Little" wins Booker prize)
November 24, 2003... As if the war in Iraq hadn't done enough damage to transatlantic relations, another culturally contentious issue is now gaining volume. This con-troversy is taking place not at the United Nations but in bookstores--and among reviewers--across...

The Last Tycoon.(Lee Kun Hee, chairman of Samsung Group)
November 24, 2003... The companies that make up South Korea's sprawling Samsung Group did something unexpected in May: they suddenly embraced the five-day workweek. The move came shortly after the country's newly inaugurated president, Roh Moo Hyun, had called for...

Towers to the Heavens.(mysterious stone towers discovered in Tibet)
November 24, 2003... French explorer Michel Peissel was touring Tibet in 1982 when he first stumbled upon a series of tall, mysterious, star-shaped stone towers dotting the Himalayan valleys along the Chinese border. "I was blown away by them," he remembers. But...

Finding Humor in the Crudeness.(Vernon Little God)(Book Review)
November 24, 2003... Rude, immature, inappropriate--"Vernon God Little," DBC Pierre's Man Booker Prize-winning debut, seems to bring out the schoolmarm in critics. I mean, I'd call it all those things, and I like the book. But the fact is, you're not supposed to...

Dial W For War.
November 24, 2003... Recent headlines seem to indicate that Europe poses a threat to Microsoft's ravenous appetites. Pushing a fight abandoned in the United States, European Union trustbusters are reviewing Microsoft's move into the market for digital media, and...

'We Didn't Realize We Were At War'.
November 24, 2003... The trio of suicide bombers were determined to reach their target--the Italian military compound in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya. They were in two vehicles--a car loaded with explosives and a tanker truck apparently full of gaso-line....

Descent Into Chaos.(Georgians demand removal of President Edouard Shevardnadze)
November 24, 2003... For Georgians who remember the chaotic birth of their nation from the ruins of the Soviet Empire, recent events are painfully familiar. Allegations of rigged elections earlier this month have brought as many as 40,000 angry, impoverished...

Jose Maria Aznar.(Spanish prime minister's foreign policy)(Interview)
November 24, 2003... Widely credited with raising Spain's profile on the international scene, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's influence will likely continue to affect Spanish foreign policy long after he steps down next year. The 50-year-old politician has...

Letter From New Jersey: Filling Every Seat in the Minivan.(Letter to the Editor)
November 24, 2003... Not everyone was as overjoyed as my husband and I when we conceived our third child. My mother, for one, thought we were insane: "You already have a healthy girl and boy; why do you need another baby?" My New York City colleagues--living in...

Perspectives.(quotations from around the world)
November 24, 2003... "I saw people awash in blood." Zafer Tatu, owner of an Istanbul lamp shop, near the site of two synagogue bombings that killed at least 20 people "It is the central focus of my life." George Soros, on defeating U.S. President George W....

Periscope.(international stories)
November 24, 2003... TURKEY Savagery in Istanbul Who bombed the synagogues in Istanbul? Despite initial claims of responsibility from an obscure Turkish Islamic fundamentalist group known as the Islamic Great Eastern Raiders' Front, or IBDA-C, Turkish...

Tip Sheet.(Splendor in the trees; Music: surfing for tunes; Travel: a ho-ho-holiday)
November 24, 2003... TRAVEL Splendor In The Trees By Paul Tolme Racing through fresh powder at Colorado's Steamboat resort, snowboarder Julie Paller weaved through the forest, dodging trees left and right. The run was untouched, and all she could hear...