How the Mosley Orgy Ruling Could Affect U.K. Media | Newsweek International

One Bad Apple
Daniel Lyons 9/6/2008 12:00:00 AM
A former lieutenant of Steve Jobs's once told me something surprising about his ex-boss. "Steve is a monopolist at heart," he said. "He's just like Bill Gates. He just hasn't been as successful." Well, Jobs is getting there. This summer, Apple's market capitalization surged past Google's, making it the financial king of Silicon Valley. True, Apple still holds only 11 percent of the U.S. consumer PC market, according to researcher NPD, but its influence is far greater than that market share suggests. The iconic iPod dominates its market, and the iTunes music store has sold more than 5 billion songs, making it the No. 1 music retailer in America, ahead of Wal-Mart, according to IDC. Apple's iPhone is the No. 3 smart phone in the United States, according to NPD.
Gag Order
Michael Isikoff 7/30/2008 12:00:00 AM
The United Kingdom's highest court today provided new details of how the Saudis pressured British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government to shut down a politically embarrassing bribery investigation two years ago that implicated the Saudi ambassador to Washington. The ruling, by a House of Lords judicial panel, offers an unusually revealing window into how international power politics is played in the post-9/11 era.
IDEAS
The Art of Politics
Jerry Adler 7/19/2008 12:00:00 AM
In their idle moments, historians occasionally speculate on how the world would be different if Adolf Hitler had passed the entrance exam to the Art Academy of Vienna, where he applied (twice) in the early years of the 20th century. Presumably, if he'd been allowed to pursue his dream, he would have inflicted on the world only a large number of mediocre watercolors, rather than World War II and the Holocaust. Contrariwise, the world is better off that a certain British statesman with a gift for inspiring rhetoric never allowed his love of painting to interfere with his career in politics. Otherwise Britain might have gained a trove of derivative post-impressionist landscapes to clutter the antiques shops of Portobello Road, and lost the war to Nazi Germany. One can't help wishing that Hitler had been a better artist—and being grateful that Winston Churchill wasn't.
BRITAIN
Kinky Sex, Please, We're British
Rod Nordland 4/12/2008 12:00:00 AM
What is it about British public figures and sex scandals? Not only do they seem to have more of them, they tend to be more picturesque, more frequent, and more overexposed than anyone else's. From the Profumo scandal in the cold war, when a British minister and a Russian spy were sharing the same call girl, to the trials of David Blunkett, the Home Secretary in Tony Blair's Labour administration, they're a regular feature of the public life in a country with an aggressive tabloid press that often is ready and eager to make itself part of the story.
PERISCOPE
BETWEEN THE LINES
Dying For The Age Of Diana
Jonathan Alter
Historians are likely to judge that Diana's reign--and reign she did--owed its brilliance to the tranquillity of the times. With no global wars or cataclysm, no Hitlers or Churchills to dominate the public realm, we could turn our full attention to diversions of gossip and fantasy. We now routinely view image and spectacle as large with meaning, with old-fashioned substance suddenly the boring trifle.