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INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS: HIGHLIGHTS AND EXCLUSIVES NOV. 12, 2007 ISSUE

COVER: The Billion Dollar Wild Card (Atlantic, Latin America and South East Asia editions). Newsweek takes an in-depth look ahead to the 2008 presidential election. Editor Jon Meacham profiles New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, asks him about his rumored presidential aspirations and explores how his bid for the White House would impact the 2008 race. Senior Washington Correspondent Howard Fineman and Senior White House Correspondent Richard Wolffe debut “Report From the Front” with an interview with Sen. Barack Obama about the growing sense of urgency in his campaign and his new willingness to criticize Democratic front runner Sen. Hillary Clinton. White House Correspondent Holly Bailey reports on why Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee may be the dark horse for the GOP nomination. This package also includes an extensive online component.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/68113

COVER: Rich Man, Poor Man (North East Asia edition only). In this special report Senior Editor Daniel Gross examines how, more than any other region, Asia exemplifies the stark disparity between the rich and poor, and how this has grown throughout the world over the last decade. Gross looks at how the rich-poor divide is most striking in the places that have embraced turbo-capitalism most wholeheartedly—namely, the United States and China. But the growing wealth gap is not solely a function of the uncontrollable forces of globalization and technological change, which are most often blamed for it. Inequity, it turns out, is at least in part controllable, and policy decisions made by increasingly right-leaning, market-friendly governments have exacerbated it in recent years.

http://www.newsweek.com/ID/67846

The Death of Social Mobility. Hong Kong Bureau Chief George Wehrfritz reports that East Asia’s “four tigers” (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) now are finding themselves in a situation loosely analogous to that which beset the American rust belt in the 1980s, when factory towns like Detroit and Pittsburgh went into decline and a middle class built on career manufacturing jobs suffered as a result. While the tigers are not exactly rust belts, it’s no longer possible for young entrants into the labor market with little education and few skills to land jobs that pay living wages.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/67847

              Gated Gardens. Special Correspondent Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop reports that while conspicuous wealth was once frowned upon in Asian countries such as Singapore, it is now flaunted by the very wealthy that can afford to live in lavish homes rather than its state-run housing system. While 1 percent of the population lives in high-end luxury homes, 84 percent of the rest live in public housing as private spaces become more unaffordable. Public housing is becoming housing for middle-income and even the upper-middle-income families.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/67848

               How Brazil Reversed the Curse. Special Correspondent Mac Margolis reports that thanks to a mix of economic gains, soaring enrollments in primary schools and well-targeted cash handouts to the poorest households, Brazil, which once had one of the most abysmal income gaps in the world, managed to cut the number of people living on $2 a day or less from 36 percent in 1992 to just over 19 percent last year. Now the gaping divide between Brazil’s haves and have-nots, as measured by the Gini coefficient, has fallen by 5 percent (.59 to .56) from 2001 to 2006.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/67850

            ‘The Gap Society.’ Tokyo Bureau Chief Christian Caryl and Special Correspondent Akiko Kashiwagi report that while Japan may be the richest country in Asia, it is not immune to the pressures of the “shrinking middle.” The number of Japanese applying for welfare payments has reached record highs—just as members of Tokyo’s business elite are preparing to receive their largest year-end bonuses in years. Earlier this year, the opposition Democratic Party of Japan scored an upset victory by harping on the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s perceived failure to deal with the growing “income gap.”

http://www.newsweek.com/id/67844

            Homegrown Luxe. Special Correspondent Alexandra Seno reports that for years, rich Chinese, who now represent 12 percent of the global luxury market, have been drawn to high-end Western brands like Armani, Cartier, Rolls-Royce and Louis Vuitton. Goldman Sachs predicts that by 2015, China will be the world’s largest luxury market, accounting for 29 percent of sales, some $11.5 billion. But now, many among the Chinese elites are willing to pay for a small but growing tribe of homegrown brands, including high-end fashion brands or cosmetics.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/67849

Beware Pashtunistan. Selig S. Harrison, director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy, writes about the political state of Pakistan’s Pashtun region. “The January parliamentary race, like most Pakistani elections under military rule, will likely be rigged by the Army and intelligence agencies,” Harrison writes. He also predicts Benazir Bhutto will become prime minister, but will not have enough power to enforce the power-sharing deal that President Pervez Musharraf promised.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/67966

Do-Gooders Gone Bad. Senior Editorial Manager Arlene Getz reports that the many activists who have brought issues like Darfur into living rooms has been astonishingly effective, but there is a downside. For all their success in raising public awareness, there’s been little improvement on the ground. And critics say the activists’ growing influence hasn’t always been helpful, with the simplicity of their messages sometimes getting in the way of response.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/67923

A Civil War on Campus. Baghdad Bureau Chief Babak Dehghanpisheh reports that universities in Iraq are being torn along sectarian lines with Sunnis and Shiites dividing classrooms. A UNESCO report shows that hundreds of college students and teachers have been kidnapped or killed since 2003. Students now make a habit of finding out whether their instructors and classmates are Shiite or Sunni before signing up for courses.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/67922

The New German Zeitgeist. Berlin Correspondent Stefan Theil reports on last week’s developments in Germany and how the very traditional German Social Democratic Party (SPD) effectively buried the reform agenda of the Gerhard Schröder years, dooming German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s attempts at further change.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/67845

WORLD VIEW: This Won’t Be the Iraq Election. Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria writes about why the Iraq war is fading as the top issue going into the 2008 presidential election. A new Newsweek Poll shows that the economy now tops Iraq as the issue that will most influence voter’s choices. While Zakaria speculates that the Bush administration would argue that this is happening as a consequence of the surge, he admits, “there’s some truth to this.” He adds, “Violence is down, Al Qaeda in Iraq is weaker and American casualties are falling. Gen. David Petraeus’s new strategy is working, though not exactly for the reasons initially advertised.”

http://www.newsweek.com/id/67924

THE LAST WORD: French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde. The first woman to hold a Finance Minister position in any G7 country, Lagarde is helping President Nicolas Sarkozy dial back the 35-hour workweek but is meeting some resistance. She discusses how they hope to change French minds. “Clearly, the 35-hour week was a very derogatory way to look at work, as if it was something that had to be cut out of the system, rather than a positive for the overall wealth of the nation. We need to reverse that, which is what we are doing with [tax breaks] on overtime.”

http://www.newsweek.com/id/67854