Newsweek International articles from October 2003

Newsweek International archives from October 2003

California Dreaming.(Letter to the Editor)
October 6, 2003... Readers split opinions on our Aug. 18 story about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Some hailed him as a "role model for millions," and encouraged his run for governor of California. Others are already voting no. Movie Star Mania California is...

Two Visions.(France and the United States)
October 6, 2003... JUDT is the director of the Remarque Institute at New York Univeristy "America has gone mad!" When Jean-Paul Sartre came to this conclusion, at the height of McCarthyism in December 1952, his views were widely shared, and not just in...

A Beguiling Country, Still.(France)
October 6, 2003... I fell in love with France on a cold morning in 1973. Jet-lagged and restless, I had just landed in Paris with my family. We'd arrived too early to check into our hotel so, cranky and out of sorts, we roamed the streets, then parked ourselves...

Jumping Into the Fray.(Nobuteru Ishihara)
October 6, 2003... Ritual was meant to command the day. Japan's newly appointed Land, Infrastructure and Transport minister, 46-year-old Nobuteru Ishihara, stood in his office last Thursday afternoon as some 60 public- corporation chiefs entered, one after...

Theater of the Absurd.(South Korea)
October 6, 2003... South Korean politics can be a theater of the absurd. Just last week 37 loyalists bolted the ruling Millennium Democratic Party. They had been considered staunch supporters of President Roh Moo Hyun, and analysts interpreted their defection as...

The Burbs Weigh In.
October 6, 2003... Karen Gatt has lived the new suburban nightmare. Four years ago she and her husband moved from Melbourne to raise their family in a house on the Burnside Housing Estate, a half-hour drive from the city. Their new home was surrounded by grassy...

More Than Gore.(Middle Ages exhibiton "Gothic: Art for England, 1400-1547")
October 6, 2003... When the gangster Marsellus Wallace memorably threatened to "get medieval" in the darkly comic film "Pulp Fiction," he definitely didn't mean it in a positive way. He was conjuring up the savage England of Shakespeare, where feudal lords...

Vins d'Angleterre?
October 6, 2003... Spring fell gently over much of Northern Europe this year. There were mild rains but no snap frosts or ruinous hailstorms to threaten the vineyards in bud. Summer followed with a glorious run of toasty days and balmy nights, coaxing the grapes...

Mystery Man.(Jean Cocteau)
October 6, 2003... "The worst tragedy for a poet," Jean Cocteau wrote in 1926, "is to be admired through being misunderstood." Yet that is what has happened to Cocteau. Indeed, he may be the most famous 20th-century artist whose works remain unknown. A respected...

Entering the Sumo Ring.(Sadakazu Tanigaki)(Interview)
October 6, 2003... Of all the fresh faces in Japan's new cabinet, Sadakazu Tanigaki's is the most likely to sport a black eye or two sometime soon. As head of the powerful Ministry of Finance, he's fighting to shore up Japan's shrinking tax base, fund a massive...

Naked in November.(Women's Institute calendar in Rylstone, England)
October 6, 2003... No one in the sleepy Engish village of Rylstone was surprised when the local chapter of the Women's Institute put out its annual calendar in 1999. After all, this fusty group produced a fund-raising calendar every year, typically with bucolic...

The End of The Affair.(A Question of Honor: The Kosciuszko Squadron, Forgotten Heroes of World War II)(Book Review)
October 6, 2003... Flying obsolete planes against a massive Luftwaffe assault, Polish pilots didn't have a chance during the German blitzkrieg in 1939. And those who escaped to France and, after it quickly collapsed, to Britain were initially frustrated in their...

Going Up?(space elevator)(Brief Article)(Interview)
October 6, 2003... The idea of a "space elevator" to ferry people and cargo to Earth orbit and beyond, far more cheaply and safely than rockets, has been bandied about for decades. Bradley Edwards, research director of the Institute for Scientific Research in...

Give All Iraqis a Share.
October 6, 2003... Smith, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics, is professor of economics and law at George Mason University and Rasmuson visiting chair at the University of Alaska, Anchorage No country has ever given its citizens full rights to share...

Caught in the Clutch of a Nightmare.(In the Land of Magic Soldiers)(Book Review)
October 6, 2003... Paradoxically, the best time to report on a big story often begins when the action is over, after the press pack moves on. New York-based author Daniel Bergner pointedly demonstrates this in "In the Land of Magic Soldiers" (224 pages. Farrar,...

Is France Right?(on Iraq)
October 6, 2003... What's wrong with the Iraqis? The United States and Britain freed them from Saddam Hussein and, sure, the vast majority says that's great. A Gallup poll, released last week, found that 62 percent think liberty is worth the hardship. But they...

A Scholar and Exile.(Edward Said)(Obituary)
October 6, 2003... Edward Said's death last week could scarcely have come at a more poignant time. It's not that it wasn't expected: the 67-year-old Arab intellectual had battled leukemia for more than a decade. But it's a cruel cut that he died at such a dismal...

An Experimental Mind.(Vernon Smith)
October 6, 2003... On the Hewlett-Packard campus in the heart of Silicon Valley, scientists in the Decision Technology lab are using experimental economics to predict the future of the company. In one experiment they create minimarkets, with real cash rewards,...

South Africa's Growing Pains.(Damon Galgut)(Interview)
October 6, 2003... When Yann Martel's literary dark horse, "Life of Pi," won the Booker Prize last year, it seemed to herald the beginning of a new trend. Long dominated by well-established authors, the prestigious contest is increasingly recognizing newer...

A Dangerous Decree.(dog laws)
October 6, 2003... Admittedly, I've never been a big fan of dogs. But a recent wave of pit-bull attacks in Italy has so frightened me that I've become uncomfortable about living in Rome. The attacks are chilling: a 43- year-old woman loses her leg while jogging;...

Perspectives.
October 6, 2003... "Every young democracy needs the help of friends." U.S. President George W. Bush, in his appeal for help in rebuilding Iraq during his speech last week to the U.N. General Assembly "The Iraq contract process looks like Dodge City before the...

Periscope.
October 6, 2003... Russia: One Man, One Vote Chechnya's Oct. 5 elections are closing in fast. So why is there none of the usual pre-election madness? Perhaps it's because everyone already knows the winner--current Chechen administrator Akhmad Kadyrov. With...

Going Way Out On A Limb.(Directory)
October 6, 2003... Solitude and seclusion are no longer easy to find, even in the wilderness. In Europe and the United States, camping has taken off in the last few years, causing overcrowding at some of the world's most popular destinations. A recent study by...

Must Reads.(1,000 Places to See Before You Die)(Book Review)
October 6, 2003... At last, a book that tells you what's beautiful, what's inspiring, what's fun and what's just unforgettable everywhere on earth. Patricia Schultz's "1,000 Places to See Before You Die" (974 pages. Workman) is straightforward, user-friendly and...

Animal Planet.(wildlife viewing)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Now is prime time for wildlife viewing, as critters head to warmer climes, fatten up for winter and look for mates. Tip Sheet recommends some of the best autumn destinations in the Northern Hemisphere: travel to Germany's Muritz National Park...

Lights Out in America.(Letter to the Editor)
October 13, 2003... Readers of our Aug. 25 story on America's blackout praised New Yorkers' deft handling of yet another crisis. Wrote one, "People were calm and considerate." Others criticized Americans' overuse of electricity. Caught in the Dark Along...

Moscow Rising.
October 13, 2003... Pity the prospective investor in Russia. He tries to reserve a business-class seat for a last-minute flight to Moscow, but forget it. Sold out. So are the hotels when he arrives. Alas, it's banishment to the shabby outskirts of town. As a...

French Kiss.
October 13, 2003... Global CEOs vote with their budgets, and their verdict on the United States appears to be a damning one. Last month the United Nations released numbers showing that worldwide foreign direct investment fell 21 percent last year. Money headed for...

Not Just Another Pretty Face.(sex trade in China)
October 13, 2003... When Xun, a petite, ponytailed, 23-year-old from Sichuan province, became the first member of her family to get into college, she knew attending the prestigious university in China's southern city of Wuhan could lift her family out of...

The Portals Into China.
October 13, 2003... Internet stocks are already retro chic, none more than those with a MADE IN CHINA label. The big three Chinese Internet portals, Sina, Sohu and Netease, went public on New York's NASDAQ exchange at the worst possible time, right after the...

Waiting for Justice.(May Itmeizi)
October 13, 2003... May Itmeizi is still waiting for justice. The 20-year-old Palestinian woman watched three of her relatives die two years ago in a drive-by shooting attack near the West Bank town of Hebron. She says Jewish settlers were responsible for the...

Poetry and Politics.(W. B. Yeats: A Life)(Book Review)
October 13, 2003... The enduring echoes of Ireland's past, a daunting tangle of totems and taboos, make it a minefield for historians. Few know that better than R. F. Foster, a professor of Irish history at Oxford, who has forged a career exploding Ireland's...

From Abbeyknockmoy to Zozimus.(Encyclopedia of Ireland)(Book Review)
October 13, 2003... It might seem like a step back to the Dark Ages to compile a traditional, lavishly illustrated encylopedia at a time when the Internet has become a highly efficient free reference tool. But Ireland's biggest publisher, Gill & Macmillan, is...

Celso Amorim.(Interview)
October 13, 2003... Angry words are still flying over who wrecked the World Trade Organization meeting in Mexico last month. The debacle in Cancun had many fathers, but much of the fury has fallen on Brazil, which marshaled a dissenting bloc of 22 developing...

Stories From the Bar Stool.
October 13, 2003... On weekends, my husband and I often stop by the local bar in a one-bar Pennsylvania town that I'll call Endwood. There's no other watering hole within 16 kilometers of the Endwood Inn, so if you're thirsty you go there. To the broke or the...

Perspectives.
October 13, 2003... "It's wrong, it's shady, it's cheap." U.S. presidential candidate Wesley Clark, reacting to the leak of a CIA agent's name by an unknown person in the Bush administration "We went in and started to take the wounded out. In truth there was...

Periscope.
October 13, 2003... Arafat: Far Off the Roadmap Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, is a time of deep reflection and symbolism about the challenges that life presents. In the midst of another cycle of violence in Israel, that symbolism rarely felt...

Tip Sheet.
October 13, 2003... Sports: Got A Ticket to Drive By Tara Wiengarten You could hop in the family Volvo, tour the countryside and call it a driving vacation. Or you could jump into a sports car and whip around hairpin turns like Michael Schumacher....

The Pain of Autism.(Letter to the Editor)
October 20, 2003... Our Sept. 8 cover story on autism prompted heartfelt responses from parents and professionals who faulted us for whitewashing the disorder. "My son can't communicate or play," wrote one."He'll be dependent forever." How Our Brains Work ...

Opposites Attract.(Italian politics)(Romano Prodi and Silvio Berlusconi)
October 20, 2003... They call him "La Mortadella," after the pink, bland sausage from his hometown of Bologna. As prime minister, Romano Prodi preferred commuter trains to limos and famously ran his 1996 election campaign out of a secondhand schoolbus that he...

Like Father, Like Son?(Ilham Aliyev)
October 20, 2003... From a western great gamer's point of view, this week's presidential election in Azerbaijan looks set to yield a happy result. The leading candidate is pro-American, a former boss of Azerbaijan's national oil company, and a friend to oil majors...

The Politics of Anger.
October 20, 2003... King is professor of government at the University of Essex. Whatever happens now, the past few weeks in California have drawn attention to an ever-present tension in modern democratic politics, one that seldom dares speak its name. That is...

A Comeback?(Argentina)
October 20, 2003... From his third-floor offices in downtown Buenos Aires, Alejandro Elsztain has a splendid view of the Pink House, the ornate 19th-century palace housing the offices of President Nestor Kirchner. And for the most part, the general manager of one...

Great Leap to Space.(China)
October 20, 2003... When China first started up a manned space program 11 years ago, the authorities were so keen on keeping a low profile that they didn't even bother to give it a name. Instead, they gave the program a number-- Project 921--and kept a tight lid...

Outsiders In.(British businesswomen)
October 20, 2003... If a spate of recent headlines is any indication, there's never been a better time to be a British businesswoman. In the past few months Barbara Cassani, the former CEO of Go Airlines, was appointed to head London's bid for the 2012 Olympics...

Whale Killer.(sonar)
October 20, 2003... Visitors to beach resorts on Spain's Canary Islands were greeted to an ugly sight last September: 14 beaked whales washed ashore and lay dying on the sands. It wasn't the first time this had happened. Since 1991, environmentalists have been...

A Universe of Riddles.
October 20, 2003... Sean Paling clumps down the tunnel in hefty work boots, his path lit only by his miner's lamp. The temperature is a sweaty 37 degrees Celsius; the underground air has a thick, recycled quality to it. This is the bottom of Britain's deepest...

Forget All-Nighters.(value of sleep)
October 20, 2003... Like many students, Kimberly Fenn has pulled more than a few all- nighters, cramming facts into her head for the next day's exam, fighting exhaustion and gravity to keep her eyelids from closing. Her parents always told her she'd be better off...

Where Colorful Birds Sing.(Book Review)
October 20, 2003... The moment Saira Shah and her camera crew glimpsed the small mud house in northern Afghanistan, they knew something awful had happened there. "We all felt it," she writes in her new memoir, "The Storyteller's Daughter" (272 pages. Knopf). "It...

The Unseen China.(Book Review)
October 20, 2003... What kinds of images of war-torn countries should influential news organizations show? The question currently looms large, as arguments rage over which satellite-fed images from the Middle East should be aired on television. And it grants an...

Tropical Feast.(Paul Gauguin)
October 20, 2003... On the south seas island paradise of Tahiti in 1897, French artist Paul Gauguin prepared for death. Suffering from a badly broken leg and boils that were probably caused by syphilis, Gauguin threw himself into painting what he called his...

Reflections of a 'Quicksilver' Mind.(Neal Stephenson)(Interview)
October 20, 2003... Science fiction, says Neal Stephenson, is "fiction in which ideas play an important part." Ideas abound in his 927-page "Quicksilver," the first of the three-volume "Baroque Cycle," set entirely between 1656 and 1714. At the center of this...

Earthling in the Middle.(Hug Them Close: Blair, Clinton, Bush and the 'Special Relationship)(Book Review)
October 20, 2003... Washington expresses its frustration with France and Germany, as British Prime Minister Tony Blair warns about a serious threat from Saddam Hussein and WMD. 2003? No, 1999. The diplomatic disagreements that have made headlines over the past...

Indonesia's Literary Ladies.
October 20, 2003... At the dimly lit Sudirman International Cafe, the literati have gathered to drink beer, smoke cigarettes and listen to a young woman talk about sex. The scene wouldn't be notable in most cities, but this is Jakarta, capital of the world's most...

Luciano Pavarotti.(Brief Article)(Interview)
October 20, 2003... After his concert CDs with the likes of Sting and the Spice Girls, it's surprising that it took Luciano Pavarotti so long to release his first solo album of Italian pop songs. But now Pavarotti gives us "Ti Adoro." We almost said he rapped with...

The Copycat of Last Resort.(animal cloning)
October 20, 2003... Everybody knows that cats don't really have nine lives. But in Dr. Betsy Dresser's New Orleans laboratory that may soon change. Dresser and her staff have managed to clone an endangered African wildcat named "Jazz" using techniques never before...

Shirin Ebadi.(Interview)
October 20, 2003... Until last week, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, 56, was a little-known figure outside her homeland. But inside Iran, Ebadi has made a name for herself as a tireless defender of the weak, and a symbol of peaceful resistance. A judge...

Sex and the Single Singaporean.
October 20, 2003... It's official. Singaporeans are not getting much. Shame of shame, the latest annual global sex survey by condom-maker Durex revealed that, once again, we're at the bottom of the league, managing to get in the sack a paltry 96 times a year,...

Babylon's Broken Dreams.(Iraqi Jews)
October 20, 2003... Memories as old as Babylon, hopes and fears as new as the headlines out of Baghdad, all blend together in the living history of Iraq's Jews. Eileen Khalastchy, 70, remembers falling asleep on the roof of her house near the Tigris River as a...

Perspectives.
October 20, 2003... "Real power rests with God, not with wretched America." Sheik Abdel Hadi al-Daraji, addressing a crowd of up to 10,000 Iraqi Shiites in Sadr City, during the funerals of two Shiites allegedly killed by U.S. soldiers "The spermatozoon...

Periscope.
October 20, 2003... South Korea Seoul Searching on Iraq Washington's efforts to enlist troops from other nations to help out in Iraq continues to hit snags. While the Turks have agreed in principle to send 10,000 soldiers, the deployment has run into...

Tip Sheet.(breast cancer treatment)
October 20, 2003... Health Breast Cancer's 'New Era' By David Noonan Breast-cancer patients deserve good news, and they got a nice helping of it last week when a large, international clinical trial was halted early because the drug being tested was...

Letters.(American universities; rebuilding in Iraq; biotechnology)(Letter to the Editor)
October 27, 2003... Our Sept. 15 report on the primacy of U.S. colleges resonated with readers. "Top colleges are superb," conceded one. "What about others?" Asked another, "Do the poor have a chance?" Grade inflation, racial profiling and student-visa cutbacks...

In Outer Space We Trust.(China's space program)
October 27, 2003... Before space-shuttle launches were suspended early this year, even the most routine missions would attract diehard fans, who gathered along Route 1 in Titusville, Florida, in the wee hours to peer over the water at Cape Canaveral. Last week...

A President Gets the Boot.(Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada of Bolivia resigns from office)
October 27, 2003... Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada was an inviting target. The wealthy owner of Bolivia's largest private mining company grew up in the United States and embraced globalization with unmitigated gusto. When the 73-year-old tycoon was first elected...

The Beauty Builders.(Japan aims to restore areas damaged by unchecked construction)
October 27, 2003... On a recent fall morning, dozens of elderly locals used tongs to pluck garbage from the banks of the Kotoni-Hassamu River in western Sapporo. It is a seasonal ritual and typical of the Japanese approach to nature, which is to keep it...

Squeezing a Lemon Again.(American entrepreneur hopes to revive Yugo factory near Belgrade)
October 27, 2003... The affordable-car guru who brought the drab, boxy Yugo to the United States in the 1980s was laughed out of the country. Now Malcolm Bricklin is back in Serbia, trying to revive the Yugo factory outside Belgrade and dreaming of a new assault...

The End of Minimalism.(new trends in fashion and interior design richer, more colorful)
October 27, 2003... Remember the less-is-more esthetic? Until quite recently, all things hip--suits and chairs, homes and hotels--were defined by purity and sleek restraint. No longer. Just check out Sketch, the London restaurant where Algerian owner Mourad Mazouz...

Bush Behind the Smiles.(President Bush's Asian tour)(Column)
October 27, 2003... Jeffrey Garten, dean of the Yale School of Management, was under secretary of Commerce for International Trade in the first Clinton administration. On his 10-day trip to Asia this week, President George W. Bush is likely to get a polite...

Just Gay Enough.(the "metrosexual" is the new guy on the block)(Column)
October 27, 2003... "I know what a duvet is, for god's sake." He muttered this in shame. Summoning up his courage--at least six beers' worth--he gushed out what was really bothering him. "We're a generation of men raised by women!" Hear the cry of the...