NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS: Highlights and Exclusives, Nov. 28, 2005 Issue

NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS: Highlights and Exclusives, Nov. 28, 2005 Issue

COVER: Lennon: The Afterlife (Atlantic edition). Twenty-five years after John Lennon's tragic death launched an endless season of mourning, Senior Editor Jeff Giles examines the Beatle's afterlife. Building Lennon's legacy has been a fraught proposition. That's partly because he left behind a fairly small and uneven body of solo work; partly because the biographer Albert Goldman, having feasted on Elvis Presley's corpse, was thrilled to have a new legend to stick his fork into; and partly because Lennon and Yoko Ono had, in their love-struck desire to shut out the world, torched so many bridges. Despite turmoil and infighting among his survivors, two things have remained fairly constant since the last day in Lennon's life. One, of course, is the universal appeal of the music that he made with the Beatles, though Lennon himself was famously weary of it by the time he died. The second constant is how much Lennon the man-with all his failings and contradictions-still resonates with fans.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10115403/site/newsweek/

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20051120/NYSU012 )

COVER: Time to Cash Out? (Pacific edition). Some economists believe that serious problems are lurking beneath a robust Chinese economy, reports Hong Kong Bureau Chief George Wehrfritz. They argue that exports and excessive investment cannot continue to drive growth, because both have already reached unsustainable levels. If that's true, then a slowdown in China may be imminent. Manufacturers of low-value toys, sporting goods and garments along China's eastern seaboard, for example, no longer turn big profits. Meanwhile, high-value-added technology companies are increasingly frustrated with intellectual-property theft and China's weak legal system. As a result, many foreign enterprises-American, Korean, Taiwanese and Japanese-are starting to hedge their China bets.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10117466/site/newsweek/

Homegrown. Not that long ago only foreign buyout firms made headlines in Japan. It's taken some time, but now homegrown buyout firms are pushing to the fore in the latest striking transformation of Japanese capitalism. The buyout market is modest compared to those of the United States and Europe, but growing steadily, reports Tokyo Bureau Chief Christian Caryl.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10117468/site/newsweek/

A Buyout Backlash. Intensely nationalistic South Korea has long been ambivalent about foreign investment, but now that foreign buyers are cashing out, suspicion and resentment are on the rise, reports Special Correspondent B. J. Lee. Koreans have been particularly irked by the size of profits the foreigners are racking up. Buyout firms do like to make quick bucks, but right now South Korea could use more not fewer of them. Many analysts credit foreign firms with revitalizing the Korean corporate sector.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10117470/site/newsweek/

Vietnam Revs Up. In many ways, Vietnam is a throwback to Asia's export- driven tiger economies, which thrived until China emerged as a world-beating manufacturer in the 1990s. Yet its emergence illustrates how China itself has become vulnerable to cut-rate competitors, reports George Wehrfritz. Unlike other Asian economies, which sought to align themselves with the juggernaut in their midst, Vietnam has instead become a giant-killer.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10117467/site/newsweek/

Tigers With No Claws. During the previous boom in emerging markets, the superstars were the tigers of Southeast Asia. Today, we're well into another bull run in global equities. But this time most markets in emerging Asia have lagged considerably, with those in Taiwan and Malaysia, for instance, rising by less than a third of the average increase in the emerging-markets equity benchmark, writes Ruchir Sharma, co-head of global emerging markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10115588/site/newsweek/

Bush At the Tipping Point. Chief Political Correspondent Howard Fineman profiles Rep. Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania-a hawkish Democrat and Vietnam vet- and explains why his call for pulling out U.S. troops marks a new turning point in the war in the United States over the war in Iraq.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10118733/site/newsweek/

Awaiting the Big Fire. When it comes to gauging Russia's future, Kremlin watchers would do better to look away from Moscow and farther south toward Nalchik, a bellwether for the entire region, report Special Correspondents Michael Meyer and Anna Nemtsova. The question is whether Moscow's hard-fisted policies are keeping the threat that looms there in check-or fanning the resentments that could inflame it.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10117469/site/newsweek/

The Myth of Stability. The conventional wisdom about Russia-on everything from the state of its economy, to whether or not Russians can handle full democracy-is not only an illusion but a dangerous one, writes Gary Kasparov, chairman of Committee 2008 Free Choice and leader of the United Civil Front of Russia. The freedoms gained after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. have been steadily eroded. Putin is clamping the lid down so tight that an explosion is inevitable. Stable? Not Russia.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10115586/site/newsweek/

Reining in the Army. Members of the Turkish military sought to spark ethnic unrest when they set off a bomb intended to kill a former Kurdish rebel. After being caught red-handed, their plot backfired, report Correspondent Owen Matthews and Special Correspondent Sami Kohen. The incident touched off a scandal that could rock the country's powerful security forces to the core. It could also be just what Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan needs to complete the job of edging the military out of politics.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10116407/site/newsweek/

Looking For a Way Out. We should be holding a big national debate about whether the presence of U.S. troops [in Iraq] reduces the insurgency or fuels it, writes Columnist and Senior Editor Jonathan Alter. "Strategic redeployment" is not just an elaborate retreat from Iraq. It's a strategy for repairing the American position there, by offering a pledge, for instance, that the U.S. will not build permanent bases in the country. The plan also calls for a major diplomatic initiative to bring surrounding Arab nations into Iraq as peacekeepers and to beef up American support for democratic institutions.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10117464/site/newsweek/

The Seats of Power. The pending merger of the New York Stock Exchange and electronic-trading firm Archipelago is a dream scenario for Goldman Sachs, which owns 15 percent of Archipelago and is also one of the NYSE seatholders, giving it the right to trade shares and an ownership stake in the NYSE. The deal is perhaps the most obvious example of a fact of life on Wall Street: Goldman wields power like no other firm. Yet there is a chance that the deal, just a week away from a vote, could unravel, sending a message to Goldman that it overreached, reports Senior Writer Charles Gasparino.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10117462/site/newsweek/

WORLD VIEW: First Ladies, in the Truest Sense. One of the quiet, underreported tidal waves of the past decade has been the rise of women in public life, writes Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria. Since the 1990s more than 30 women have become heads of government. In the 1950s there was just one. Overall, 50 countries, including Iraq, have quotas for female representation in their legislatures. "There is growing evidence that, at the very least, where women make up a significant percentage of the government, they tend to hold priorities that are different from men's," writes Zakaria.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10118241/site/newsweek/

THE LAST WORD: Vinton Cerf, Google chief Internet evangelist and chair of ICANN. ICANN, the organization responsible for assigning Internet domain names, is overseen by the U.S. Commerce Dept. and was subject to much debate at last week's U.N. World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, during which several nations pushed to take control away from the United States. "Governments frequently don't believe anything can work if nobody's in charge," says Cerf. "The immediate and incorrect conclusion is that if ICANN has a unique responsibility, it must be in charge of the Internet. That's, frankly, not true."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10117471/site/newsweek/

PRNewswire -- Nov. 20

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Source: Newsweek

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