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INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS: HIGHLIGHTS AND EXCLUSIVES, FEBRUARY 25, 2008

COVER: Actual Size*. (Asia and Latin America editions). Midwest Bureau Chief Keith Naughton, in a special report, takes a closer look at the increasing popularity of compact cars, or minis, among automobile consumers and examines whether small is the new big. Driven by growing earning power in emerging markets, and rising gasoline prices and global-warming concerns in developed countries, small-car sales are hitting high gear. By 2012, forecasters expect consumers around the world to buy a record 38 million small cars annually, up 65 percent from a decade earlier.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/112729

In the Slow Lane. Hong Kong Bureau Chief George Wehrfritz reports on improvements to the much-anticipated electric car. Under the radar, a selection of zero-emissions cars has crept onto global markets over the past few years thanks to entrepreneurial start-ups that constitute the industry’s green underground. Sales so far are tiny—only in the thousands—but mass-market production will begin this year. Billed as anti-muscle rides for urban drivers, their creations eschew expressways for traffic snarls and deliver energy efficiency that makes Toyota’s Prius hybrid look like a Hummer.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/112730

Supersize the Automobile. Amory Lovins, chairman and chief scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute, writes that there’s a big difference between making a car light and making it small. “The way to save lives and oil and money, all at the same time, is to make cars relatively big, which is comfortable and protective, without making them heavy, which is hostile and inefficient,” he writes.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/112733

Vanilla Option. Special Correspondent Barrett Sheridan reports that the next revolution in green cars is more likely to come from ordinary combustion engines than some exotic technology. “It’s hard to believe that engineers can wring way more efficiency out of the humble car engine, but they can,” he writes. “There are a thousand and one incremental improvements … that can potentially turn the average sedan into a machine even Al Gore could love.”

http://www.newsweek.com/id/112734

The Road Ahead. Bob Lutz, General Motors’ vice chairman of global product development, writes on the future of the automobile and the automotive industry: “One thing is certain: the landscape of automotive transportation will be markedly different decades from now than it is today. You won’t even recognize it. And the key components driving the differences are proportion and propulsion.”

http://www.newsweek.com/id/112736

A Post-Car Society. Special Correspondent Akiko Kashiwagi reports on a worrying trend in Japan; the automobile is losing its emotional appeal, particularly among the young, who prefer to spend their money on the latest electronic gadgets rather than wheels. Last year sales fell 6.7 percent— 7.6 percent if you don’t count the minicar market. A widening wealth gap, demographic changes— fewer household with children, a growing urban population— and general lack of interest in cars led Japanese to hold their vehicles longer, replace their cars with smaller ones or give up car ownership.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/112735

COVER: Italy’s Mess. (Atlantic edition). Special Correspondents Jacopo Barigazzi and Barbie Nadeau and Paris Bureau Chief Christopher Dickey report that, once a star of Europe, Italy has lapsed into “sterile anger” over its increasingly dramatic slide into economic and political disarray. At this point, government is not just dysfunctional, but nonfunctioning. Wherever Italians look, it seems, there are signs of rot both figurative and literal. Yet for all this, many Italians feel that the country still has the potential—the creativity amid the chaos—to make a magnificent comeback. There endures in Italy what might be called the dolce vita factor. People still think life is sweet.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/112727

The Fox Is Hunted Down. Jerusalem Bureau Chief Kevin Peraino reports that the assassination of Hizbullah’s Imad Mugniyah, who was responsible for some of the deadliest attacks on  Americans on record, could carry very real consequences for stability in the region. Regardless of who was responsible, Hizbullah is almost certain to strike Israel or its interests abroad. At Mugniyah’s funeral in Beirut last Thursday, Hizbullah’s leader-in-hiding, Hassan Nasrallah, appeared via video and declared: “Zionists, if you want an open war, let it be an open war anywhere.” Israel has put its Air Force and Navy on alert and warned its diplomats abroad. “Retaliation is inevitable,” says a well-placed Israeli source—“a big one.”

http://www.newsweek.com/id/112771

Ending the Electoral Monopoly. Jorge Castañeda, Mexico’s former foreign minister, writes that Latin America has in some ways never had it so good with economic growth, a growing middle class and receding poverty. “Yet two challenges endure, and they may be worsening. The first is the endless series of conflicts within and between virtually every country in the region … The second challenge is the immense, ancestral concentration of power in the Americas—the public and private monopolies in business, the labor movement, the media, the electoral arena, just about everywhere, in every country.”

http://www.newsweek.com/id/112737

A Perennial Press Opera. Editor-at-Large Evan Thomas reports that if Hillary Clinton loses the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama, it’s a good bet that she, or her minions, will blame the press. The bad blood between the Clintonistas and the media has less to do with any personal failings of the Clintons themselves—or the foibles of individual reporters and editors—than it does with a poisonous, and predictable, dynamic between the press and presidents that goes back at least a half century.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/112842

GLOBAL INVESTOR: The $3 Trillion Cop-Out. Contributing Editor Robert J. Samuelson writes, “The $3.1 trillion budget submitted last week by President George W. Bush with a projected $407 billion deficit for 2009 reminds us of the huge gap between uplifting political rhetoric—including the rhetoric of this campaign—and the grim realities of governing. Budgets are not just numbers. They express political choices.”

http://www.newsweek.com/id/109610

WORLD VIEW: The End of Conservatism. Conservatives believe a return to principals is the only way to return the Republican Party to power. But Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria notes that today’s world has a different set of problems and Americans’ views of the state are shifting. “Political ideologies do not exist in a vacuum. They seek to solve the problems of the world as it exits. Ordinary conservatives understand this, which may be why—despite the urgings of their ideological gurus—they have voted for McCain.  He seems to understand that a new world requires new thinking,” he writes.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/112770

THE LAST WORD: U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno. As the No. 2 commander for the past 15 months, Odierno has seen the high and lows of war in Iraq and presided over a huge drop in violence. He says he struggled with the idea of talking to his enemies. “But as we secured areas, they became more willing to cooperate with us and turn against Al Qaeda. I realized that many of these people were fighting against us for survival. It wasn’t really because they were insurgents. It wasn’t really because they were ideologically against the government or against progress. They were just trying to survive … And slowly we saw the effects: increased security, reduction in attacks.”                     

http://www.newsweek.com/id/112738

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