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INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS: HIGHLIGHTS AND EXCLUSIVES, MAY 5, 2008

COVER: Turning Green. Special Correspondent Barrett Sheridan and Hong Kong Bureau Chief George Wehrfritz report on the rising global interest in environmental issues and look at what the world’s leaders are doing about it. In a Pew Global Attitudes Project, all but three of 47 nations surveyed said that the environment had swelled in importance between 2002 and 2007. Between 45 and 66 percent of Western Europeans named environmental issues as a top threat last year, as did 70 percent of Chinese. People in India, Brazil and other large developing nations also felt strongly. Chalk it up to the blizzard of doomsday predictions from scientists or Al Gore’s PR blitz—either way, it equates to a rising global demand for environmentally sound leaders, and a public that will give them unprecedented support for tackling the thorny problems facing the planet.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/134262

Just the Tree of Us. Senior Editor Jerry Adler reports on where the three U.S. presidential candidates stand on the environment and why some environmental advocacy groups, such as the League of Conservation Voters, which influences mainstream environmental groups, are still undecided on which candidate to endorse.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/130624

A Leadership Reality Check. Editor-At-Large Evan Thomas and Washington Correspondent Pat Wingert report that to truly tackle the greenhouse effect, will require the one thing from voters that few politicians dare to ask for and fewer achieve: massive public sacrifice. Accomplishing this would require the rhetorical skill of Barack Obama, the tenacity of Hillary Clinton and the courage of John McCain—all combined in one leader.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/130629

Iceland Has Power to Burn. Senior Editor and Columnist Daniel Gross writes about what the island nation can teach the world. Gross writes that while “many American states have set goals of obtaining 10 or 15 percent of their energy from renewables at some point in the distant future, and the European Union has pledged to reach 20 percent by 2020.” Iceland is already at about 80 percent.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/130626

Iceland’s Green Man. Gross interviews Iceland’s Prime Minister Geir Haarde about how the island nation took the lead in alternative energy. “We are blessed with a lot of clean and renewable energy. For us, it’s always been natural to use the natural warm water that comes out of the ground. We have done that for centuries to heat pools to bathe in, and for the past 70 years to heat our houses.”

http://www.newsweek.com/id/134260

10 Fixes for the Planet. Reporter Anne Underwood asked dozens of thinkers for their solutions to the world’s environmental woes. The ideas include using LED light bulbs, driving 300-mpg cars, using enormous kites to help pull ships and having manufacturers produce products that are fully recyclable.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/130625

 Sounds Good, But… Senior Editor Sharon Begley writes about the errors that have plagued efforts to help improve the planet, from not recycling properly, to the pitfalls of hybrid cars to, “perhaps the greatest folly… the push for ethanol to replace gasoline,” she writes.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/130628

Sense and Sensibility. General Editor Anna Kuchment reports on New York Fashion Week’s “Future-Fashion,” a show organized by the New York-based nonprofit Earth Pledge, which inspired  many top designers to work with sustainable fabrics such as sasawashi (a Japanese fabric made from paper and herbs), peace silk (a process that lets silkworms live out their full life cycle) and hemp. Several top designers have since pledged to incorporate organic fabrics into their lines.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/130627

The French Revolution. Paris Bureau Chief Christopher Dickey reports on the success of small and highly professional French combat units that have coordinated with military forces from different countries in varying alliances—the kind of fighting Western armies are called on to do more and more. The French do it well and it is key to their growing—perhaps pivotal—role in NATO that has changed dramatically since the end of the cold war.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/134269

Tibet Through Chinese Eyes. Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, writes in an essay that the Chinese view on the protests over Tibet and the Olympic torch is different from that of western leaders. The reality is that virtually all of the Chinese believe that the Western protests have had little to do with human rights, Tibet or Darfur. “Instead, the Chinese think, the West’s real motivation is to deny China the triumph it deserves for its enormous successes.”

http://www.newsweek.com/id/134272

Raúl Castro's Big Cuban Gamble. Jorge Castañeda, a former foreign minister of Mexico and Global Distinguished Professor at New York University, writes that Raúl Castro is gambling with the changes he’s made in the everyday lives of ordinary Cubans. “He is betting that he can…satisfy Cuban citizens with these gestures, improve their living standards somewhat by freeing up agricultural production and allowing wages to rise in the ‘foreign’ sector of the economy, while keeping the lid on political dissent, exile and a slew of imponderables, including, crucially, Hugo Chávez and his increasingly precarious position in Venezuela.”

http://www.newsweek.com/id/134261

Liberate Us From the Liberators. Africa Bureau Chief Scott Johnson and National Security Correspondent John Barry report on the chaos that has engulfed Zimbabwe since the March 29 general elections. A region that has witnessed unprecedented growth and political stability is now consumed by an all-too-familiar problem—how to persuade a Big Man to go. Robert Mugabe is not likely to leave gracefully. A leader in the bush war that overthrew white minority rule in 1980, he helped make the new nation of Zimbabwe a model for the rest of the continent. But he failed his country the same way so many other African liberation leaders failed theirs—by seeing himself as indispensable.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/134375

WORLD VIEW:  McCain vs. McCain. Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria writes that in March, Sen. John McCain proposed in a speech that the U.S. expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries, and should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil but pointedly excluded China. McCain’s proposals “would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries in the global order, a policy that began under Richard Nixon (with Beijing) and continued under Ronald Reagan (with Moscow),” Zakaria writes. He writes that he admires McCain and agrees with much of what else he said in that speech. “But in recent years, McCain has turned into a foreign-policy schizophrenic, alternating between neoconservative posturing and realist common sense.”

http://www.newsweek.com/id/134317

THE LAST WORD: Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani. In his first interview with a foreign publication since taking office, Pakistan’s newly-elected prime minister talks about his plans for the country and his priorities. “Political stability leads to economic stability. My priority will be to control the law-and-order situation in the country, so we have to discourage this extremism and terrorism. That’s what is affecting our economy.”                  

http://www.newsweek.com/id/134275

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