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INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS: HIGHLIGHTS AND EXCLUSIVES OCT. 29, 2007 ISSUE
COVER: The Most Dangerous Nation In the World Isn’t Iraq. It’s Pakistan. (Pacific and Latin America editions). South Asia Bureau Chief Ron Moreau and Senior Editor Michael Hirsh report on how the unstable nuclear state has become a safe haven for Taliban and Qaeda jihadists. In the years since the United States ran the Taliban’s leaders from Afghanistan, there have been a growing number of signs of resurgence and evidence that they have crossed the border into Pakistan where many now live and operate comfortably throughout the country. The most recent example of how bold jihadists have become occurred on October 18, when one or more suicide bombers set off twin explosions that killed at least 134 bystanders and police, and injured 450 others during a procession marking former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/57485
COVER: Lost Leader. (Atlantic edition). Berlin Correspondent Stefan Theil reports that Chancellor Angela Merkel once promised to rescue Germany from its torpor. But the country has had a change of heart about her reforms—and so has she. In 2005 she campaigned for the chancellorship on a platform of radical economic change, promising wide-ranging deregulation and tax reform. The first two years of her tenure produced real steps forward. Now she seems curiously aloof as she watches her coalition associates pick apart her agenda. The most fascinating question is where Merkel herself stands on all this. Her one attempt to push a major reform, deregulation of public health insurance, ended in failure. Also in the cover package, experts weigh in on what accounts for the strange lurch left.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/57435
‘Following a Risk-Avoidance Strategy.’ Joschka Fischer, Germany’s foreign minister from 1998 to 2005, writes that Merkel is learning to forget her radical reform agenda and seems to using a risk-averse strategy. “Now, after two years in power, what does the balance sheet show? Is she the reformer she claimed to be—or has she been stymied by this unwieldy right-left coalition? In fact, the case is neither. Rather than taking the bold steps she once promised, she has demonstrated that she is a risk-averse politician, driven by popular sentiment,” Fischer writes.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/57434
‘ She Has Shown She Is Not Afraid.’ William Drozdiak, president of the American Council on Germany, writes that Merkel has mended fences abroad but is frustrated at home. “Merkel’s most serious challenges still lie ahead of her. She has achieved record approval ratings on the strength of her foreign policy, but with economic growth slowing and workers stepping up demands for higher wages, political pressures are mounting within Merkel’s coalition to backtrack on the cuts in retirement benefits and other austerity measures that propelled the recent recovery,” Drozdiak writes.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/57433
‘Was She Ever Really a Reformer?’ German journalist Hugo Müeller-Vogg writes that Merkel is a politician without any domestic policy compass. “She was a Joan of Arc fighting the socialists in every political party. A German Margaret Thatcher. But Angela Merkel never took up the fight for a resurgence in sound economic and social policy. Instead, this would-be economic reformer slipped into a very different role as the pragmatic head of a grand coalition of Social and Christian Democrats,” Müeller-Vogg writes.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/57414
‘Her Anthem is a Soothing Lullaby.’ Josef Joffe, publisher-editor of the German weekly Die Zeit who currently teaches at Stanford, writes that while Merkel once preached self-reliance, she doesn’t anymore. “The chancellor’s regal role on the international stage is far from the real reason for her popularity. Once hailed as a German doppelgänger of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, preaching markets and self-reliance, she has moved sharply to the left,” he writes.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/57435
The Price of Suspicion. Special Correspondent Tracy McNicoll reports that a new book by two French economists, Yann Algan and Pierre Cahuc, says the French consistently have less trust in one another than almost any other people in the industrialized world. They are also more distrustful of powerful institutions like the judiciary, Parliament and unions, and only 21 percent of the French “trust other people.”
http://www.newsweek.com/id/57418
The Self-Absorbed Dragon. Andrew Moravcsik, a professor at Princeton University currently based in Shanghai, writes that, “In China, like everywhere, all politics are, at heart, local—but when your constituency totals nearly a quarter of humanity, the local pressures are particularly acute. Despite 30 years of growth, China today is still just a generation away from poverty, with half its population mired in abject conditions. Beijing’s overriding concern thus remains the economy.”
http://www.newsweek.com/id/57420
THE GOOD LIFE: Furnished By Ferrari. Special Correspondent Jenna Crombie reports that for car aficionados, names like Lamborghini, Aston Martin and Mercedes-Benz conjure up images of speed, divine craftsmanship and impeccable style. But these traits need no longer be confined to the garage; some top luxury carmakers are now applying them to home furnishings.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/57425
GLOBAL INVESTOR: How to Beat Inflation. Barton Biggs, the famed Wall Street strategist, writes that if “The Maestro,” Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, is right that America is on the verge of a gradual rise in inflation to a trend-line rate of 4 to 5 percent or higher, then, “it has immense implications for everyone with some wealth and retirement funds,” he writes. “Higher and rising inflation is categorically bad.”
http://www.newsweek.com/id/57424
WORLD VIEW: Stalin, Mao and…Ahmadinejad? Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria says the American discussion on Iran has lost all connection to reality. “Iran has an economy the size of Finland’s and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century…And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?” he writes.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/57346
THE LAST WORD: Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, has loudly campaigned for changes in environmental policies essentially putting an end to the scientific debate over global warming. He told Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria that he is “optimistic” about the future. “The extent of awareness has increased over the last eight or nine months—ever since our reports started coming out. This gives me hope that maybe the tide is turning,” Pachauri says.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/57495
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