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BRITAIN
Quids, Pros and Cons
In Istanbul, terrorists hit British targets, leaving behind devastation and carnage. At Westminster Abbey in London, President George W. Bush consoled the families of British troops who died in Iraq this year. Around Trafalgar Square, antiwar protesters vilified not just Bush, but Prime Minister Tony Blair as well. For Britain the costs of its post-9/11 partnership with the United States were excruciatingly plain last week. Less obvious, even to many Britons committed to paying dearly if need be, is what Britain gets in return.
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In public, Blair belittles the notion that the U.S.-U.K. alliance should be treated like "some scorecard," where every quid deserves a quo. But NEWSWEEK has learned that the Blair government has quietly sought concessions from Washington on a variety of matters, including greater military cooperation, and has been rebuffed. Disagreements over military intelligence became so serious last summer that the issue was placed on the agenda of the July Bush-Blair summit so the two leaders could deal with them personally. Bush agreed to "better information-sharing" at the time, but military sources tell NEWSWEEK that progress has been meager.
More ambitiously, NEWSWEEK has learned, Blair wants Washington to recognize the unique closeness of the U.S.-U.K. partnership by having the United States treat the British as if they were American in all matters of defense. This extraordinary license would apply to "people, intelligence and products," as one source put it. Blair has been pushing for this ever since the end of major hostilities in Iraq, and Downing Street believed it had secured agreement from Washington. In private, Blair is complaining that nothing has happened. The real-world consequences of inaction are no small matter. In Iraq, for example, U.S. military commanders still do not have Pentagon authority to share fully with the British their intelligence on Iraqi insurgents.
Like the British prime minister, the White House pooh-poohs the scorecard approach to alliance-watching. "I don't understand the criticism of Blair," said one senior Bush administration official. "He clearly didn't go into Iraq for political gain. He is only doing it because he thinks it's important. That speaks rather well of him. If he says he wants to make the world a better place, maybe that is what he's trying to do." Further, by allying itself with America, Britain punches well above its weight. "The U.K. matters," said the official."In the 1950s British power appeared to be ebbing. Now British power seems to be growing. He's gained a tremendous amount." Of course, that's how the White House sees it. Many Brits don't agree at all. For Blair, his new challenge is to ensure that Britain's losses don't overwhelm its gains.
GEORGIA
A Rough Weekend
For 30 years he has been Georgia's dominant political figure. It took a raging mob only about 30 minutes to drive Eduard Shevardnadze unceremoniously out of the country's Parliament. As NEWSWEEK went to press, the standoff between Shevardnadze and tens of thousands of opposition protesters was continuing, as outrage grew over allegations of fraud in the impoverished country's Nov. 2 parliamentary elections. With the former Soviet republic teetering on the brink of civil war, Russia sent Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov to Georgia within hours of Shevardnadze's declaration of a state of emergency.
Moscow's quick support came after weeks of calculated silence. Shevardnadze, though one of the Kremlin's least favorite foreign leaders, apparently won a pledge not to meddle from Georgia's giant northern neighbor. Russia, which has three military bases and 4,500 troops in Georgia, is potentially in a position now to act as a peacemaker among Georgia's notoriously fractious political clans and perhaps get a friendly Georgian leader, something it hasn't had since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. "They want a buffer country, one that will cover the southern flank of Russia," says Dmitry Trenin, an expert at Moscow's Carnegie Center.
That would certainly be in keeping with the Kremlin's strategy to reassert influence over the former Soviet republics. In recent years the Russians have used mainly military sticks, most often by supplying weapons to separatist movements or taking sides in civil wars. To this day, 30,000 Russian troops remain in countries stretching from Tajikistan in the east to Moldova in the west. Last month President Vladimir Putin opened the latest Russian military outpost, a 500-man air base in Kyrgyzstan, to much approving hoopla at home.
Now, with Russia wallowing in record oil revenues, Moscow is increasingly likely to use economic levers to get what it wants. Russia provides an estimated $5 billion in subsidized natural gas annually from state-controlled Gazprom to former Soviet states. The biggest recipient is neighboring Belarus, where dictator Alexander Lukashenko is demanding $2.1 billion in aid before moving ahead with closer economic and military links. Pumping money into neighboring economies, no matter how badly run, is smart, says former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar. Simply put, he says, "It makes sense to have friendly neighbors."
TAIWAN
War of Words
When Chinese officials last week denounced Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian as a "splittist" whose pro-independence activism could "trigger war," the invective was all too familiar. But Beijing's real target may have been a new one: Chen's rivals in the pro-unification Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT). Less than five months before presidential elections, the KMT reversed its position on the controversial matter of reforming Taiwan's Constitution, which Beijing fears is only a prelude to declaring independence. Lien Chan, the party's chairman and presidential hopeful, pledged to unveil a new draft constitution and challenged Chen (who has made rewriting the Constitution a main plank in his re-election platform) to debate their versions of the island's supreme law. Led into exile by Chiang Kai-shek in 1949, the KMT ruled Taiwan for half a century, always clinging to its claim to be China's sole legitimate government. But after slipping from power in 2000, the KMT now seeks to woo back voters by reasserting Taiwan's sovereignty (which Beijing disputes) and embrace a welling sense of Taiwanese pride (which Beijing sees as nationalism). Lien says he's still committed to eventual reunification with the mainland. Tell that to Beijing.
HEALTH
A Shot in The Arm
Ebola is a terrifying word: it calls to mind phrases like "extensive internal bleeding" and "rapid death." Last week, scientists at the National Institutes of Health started the first human trials for a vaccine. What kind of a person would volunteer to test a vaccine for a disease that kills nine of every 10 people infected? To find out, NEWSWEEK's Michael Hastings talked to Steve Rucker, a 36-year-old nurse and one of only two people to volunteer. Excerpts:
HASTINGS: Why would you want to have anything to do with Ebola?
RUCKER: Good question. It actually looked like an exciting opportunity.
What did your mom say?
[Laughs] Actually, my family has been fine.
How did it work?
A lot of people have asked me, "Will they be giving you Ebola to see what happens?" They definitely will not be doing that. This is a new generation of vaccines. It's not like the old vaccines where they have some of the virus in the vaccine.
So you're not in harm's way?
No, absolutely not. This study is simply to see if the vaccine is safe for human beings.
Would you want to test it for real?
If a team from the NIH takes this vaccine to an Ebola outbreak, I've asked them if they'd consider including me. I'd be on the plane the next day.
So getting the Ebola vaccine has been a good thing?
I would definitely recommend this to other people.
CURRENCY
The Dollar Drops Big
DOLLAR AT A RECORD LOW AGAINST THE EURO. So read the front page of the Nov. 19 Financial Times in a bold black headline that once might have announced war. In one of the largest single-day currency moves in years, the U.S. dollar fell to $1.19 against the euro. The main trigger: a report that, in September, foreigners bought the lowest level of U.S. assets in five years. How in the world is the United States going to finance its burgeoning $5.1 billion current account deficit, traders wondered?
If that alone wasn't enough to spook the markets, the Bush administration's continuing march to a trade war seems to have finished the job. To right its trade imbalance, analysts say, the United States may have no choice but to export more and import less, which could provoke a vicious cycle of protectionism. Just last week, as the European Union and Japan moved to retaliate against Washington's steel tariffs, the United States slapped import quotas on certain Chinese textiles. "The market is more worried that the Bush administration is willing to take protectionist measures than about any underlying economic argument," says Aziz McMahon, currency strategist for ABN Amro in London, referring to the dubious foundations of the U.S. recovery--massive tax cuts and an exploding federal budget deficit. How will all these anxieties play with the greenback? John Llewellyn, global chief economist for Lehman Brothers, has been predicting that the dollar could easily fall to $1.30 against the euro by the end of 2004, but now thinks the move "could go well beyond that."
Horse Racing
Love for A Loser
Haruurara, a petite 7-year-old Thoroughbred racehorse in Japan, is nothing if not consistent: she's never won a race. Since she started running in 1998 she's lost 97 competitions in all. But her luck turned around in June after she was profiled by a local reporter. She didn't start winning, but she achieved cult status. After a slow economy in Japan for more than a decade, her countrymen share her pain. And they like a sure bet--even if it is a losing one.
The horse that never wins now has a reputation as a lucky charm: workers bet on her and keep the tickets to ward off being sacked. Last week the Kochi horse-racing union sold out 500 of her lucky horsetail charms within three hours. "We had no idea the loser horse would become such a star," says union director Hidehiro Maeda.
Major dailies, TV networks and magazine reporters now flock to Haruurara's stable. Already, two books about her are expected to come out in December (one by an award-winning novelist), and the NHK public-broadcasting system has started work on a documentary. The horse is inundated with food, fan letters and even cash. "I have never won in any competition in my entire life," one 71-year-old woman writes. Looks like the only unlucky thing Haruurara can do now is win.
FILM
Bridging the Basque Divide With a Ball Game
Director Julio Medem said he wanted to start a healthy "dialogue" with his new documentary, which chronicles the violent three-decade conflict between the Spanish government and Basque separatists. Well, he certainly got people talking: Spain's Culture minister publicly condemned the film; a journalist and a professor Medem interviewed tried to get their appearances cut out, loudly objecting to what they called the film's pro-Basque bent. Members of ETA, the terrorist wing of the Basque movement, wouldn't even agree to be interviewed. All in all, maybe not the healthiest dialogue on record.
Luckily, "The Basque Ball: Skin Against Stone" has received a warmer reception from critics. Still, the hostile reaction from the principals may be the film's strongest endorsement. Medem interviewed some 70 people--usually against the stunning backdrop of Basque country--and by focusing on those caught in the middle of the conflict, he provides a more nuanced view of Basque nationalism. We hear not only from Daniel Mugica, who bitterly describes his father's assassination by ETA in 2001, but also Anika Gil, who alleges she was stripped and tortured during her five-day detention by Spanish police in May 2002. Medem always returns to the pelota court, the traditional Basque game in which a ball is furiously thrown against the wall from one player to another. In that to and fro lies the arc of a dialogue that has been frustrated again and again.
ARCHEOLOGY
Unearthing Egypt's God of, Er, 'Fertility'
He is politely called the god of "fertility," but the Egyptian deity Min had a lot more on his mind than agriculture. Invariably depicted with a large, erect penis, he was the god Pharaoh would pray to when he needed Egyptian women to conceive more soldiers for his Army. Ninth-century Arab travelers who visited the temple to Min in Upper Egypt, built by Ramses II about 1300 B.C., came away wowed--but the site was long ago lost and buried by the modern city of Akhmim. A tantalizing trace turned up 15 years ago during an excavation for a post office, in the form of a giant statue of Ramses' Queen Meritamon. But no further discoveries were made at the site.
Until three months ago, that is, when authorities nabbed a grave robber who had broken through the wall of a crypt in Akhmim's cemetery. They recovered the head of a large Ramses statue and notified Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt's powerful antiquities department. Hawass's exploratory excavation established that this was, indeed, the site of the famous temple. Next year he plans to begin exhuming and moving thousands of graves to get at the temple, whose size can only be guessed at from the distance between where Meritamon's statue was found and the Ramses head: 150 meters. As Hawass recounts in his new book, "Secrets From the Sand," even some educated modern Egyptians believe in the power of the god Min. One Cairo doctor credits a Min statue with helping his wife conceive a son. What will happen if they unearth an entire temple dedicated to Min, the gods only know.
Q&A: Dustin Hoffman
This month Dustin Hoffman costars with Gene Hackman in "Runaway Jury," his 2,750th movie. No? Fine, then you count 'em. Next year he'll be in the much-anticipated "J.M. Barrie's Neverland"; recently he nearly flew away (assisted by wires) with NEWSWEEK's Nicki Gostin.
I don't want to scare you but...
Are you the mother of my child?
No, but when I first came to New York I went to your production offices to try and meet you. Is it creepy being interviewed by an ex-stalker?
No, but you didn't really stalk me. Well, it makes me feel that you're not so ex.
Have you ever been called up for jury duty?
Yes, but I never went. I was always working.
What's been your favorite role?
You always want to learn something, so I would say "Tootsie." The crew started bringing friends on the set and introducing me as Dorothy Michaels. How brutal.
See? Guys are pigs.
Yes, that was an insight as to how men will just erase you. Had I met myself at a party I would have ignored me, and I thought I was an interesting woman. I went home and I said to my wife, "I've missed out on a lot of interesting women."
You know what? You still wouldn't have gone out with them.
That's not true. That's not true.
Is Al Pacino the Italian you?
I won't even answer that, because he'll probably send out a hit on me no matter what I say.
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