MIDDLE EAST
Getting Out Ahead
The Bush Administration's grand plan to reform the Middle East may be gaining traction--even though most governments in the region remain deeply suspicious of the U.S. president and his proactive agenda. Last week all parties in Iraq signed an interim constitution that is the first major step in that country's transition to self-rule. The Constitution, which contains the region's first "bill of rights," will remain in force until an elected assembly writes a new one, which then must be approved in a nationwide referendum.

Washington has far less power to effect change in the rest of the Middle East. Still, there is a "bubbling movement toward reform everywhere in the Arab world," says a diplomat in the region. Saudi Arabia has approved the creation of its first private human-rights council, and may soon grant women the right to vote in municipal elections.

In Egypt in particular, President Hosni Mubarak is quietly loosening some of the harsh constraints by which he has ruled for 23 years. Mubarak "is under pressure to [liberalize]," says the diplomat--and his mid-April summit with George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas, is providing an additional fillip. Mubarak last month released hundreds of political prisoners, abolished hard labor for those dissenters still incarcerated and ended prison sentences for journalists. Newspapers now regularly ridicule Parliament and the prime minister, although complaints about Mubarak are still off-limits. "Egypt has a conflicted view of reform," says the diplomat, "rejecting it publicly but working with the U.S. in private. They're taking baby steps in the right direction."

Any reform process is sure to be slow. Religious extremists oppose change, and even moderate Arab regimes are deeply frustrated by America's perceived coddling of Israel. After meeting last week with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher made clear the sentiment: "Reform is needed in the Arab world, we agree on that. But for it to work, we need ownership of the process, not a one-for-all blueprint from Washington." The Bush administration, taking that view to heart, has decided not announce a broad reform agenda for the Middle East at G7 meeting in June, as originally planned.
-Matthew Craft and Richard Ernsberger Jr.

MALAYSIA
A Leader Takes the High Road
Malaysia's leading opposition party, the Parti-Islam se-Malaysia, has been playing the Islamic card heavily in the run-up to parliamentary elections this weekend. One of its senior officials has repeatedly promised voters that they will go to heaven if they vote PAS, which controls two northern states and 26 seats in Parliament. Hadi Awang, the party's leader, demanded last week that the Constitution be revised so only a Muslim can be prime minister. Awang is now questioning why Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi didn't lead prayers at his own mother's funeral. How good a Muslim can he possibly be?

Interestingly, given how leaders in neighboring Indonesia were too timid last week to speak out against the release of alleged terrorist leader Abu Bakar Bashir, for fear of alienating the country's Muslim majority, Abdullah has not risen to the bait. Senior advisers say his strategy is simply to ignore the PAS clerics. "[He's] focused more on what he considers a modern, moderate, progressive Islam," says political analyst Karim Raslan. "He's dismissed PAS out of hand and moved on." Abdullah may be setting an example for how to deal with the region's relatively small Islamist movements. Most poll watchers are predicting that his ruling coalition will win 80 percent of the national vote, and may retake the Muslim majority state of Terengganu.
-Joe Cochrane

RUSSIA
A Reshuffled Deck
Everyone from media pundits to savvy Western investors have been hoping that Vladimir Putin's victory this week would signal the start of real reform in Russia. The cheers that greeted the firing of his previous government were renewed last week when he reappointed liberal Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, while dumping old hacks like Communications Minister Leonid Reiman, known for playing favorites in the lucrative mobile-phone sector. Overall, the cabinet shrank from 30 ministers to 17. Putin spoke of turning a "shady government" into an "effective and modern" one. Yet already the moves look like window-dressing. A day after the president's big announcement, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov revealed that Reiman, linked to Putin's wife, Lyudmila, would in fact keep his old responsibilities but with a new title. Fradkov also reassured those lower down the food chain, saying, "It is not our goal in and of itself to reduce the number of bureaucrats."

What's going on? One theory is that Putin's attack on the bureaucracy would be popular with voters in Sunday's ballot. If so, though, why did Fradkov seem to contradict his boss? That gives rise to theory No. 2: those tens of thousands of civil servants are capable of boosting voter turnout above the 50 percent needed for a valid election. A third theory suggests Putin was only making the right noises to keep investors coming in. Take your pick.
-Frank Brown

IRAQ
Cheney's Evidence
Those skeptical of comments by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration neocons linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11 will not be heartened by their provenance. One principal source was a slide show, classified "Top Secret/Codeword," prepared by an obscure Pentagon policy unit nicknamed "Team B." The office, originally composed of two analysts (one of whom, David Wurmser, now works as a Mideast adviser to Cheney), was assigned shortly after 9/11 to pore through raw intelligence reports looking for data CIA analysts might have missed, linking foreign governments to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. After two months of research, Team B came up with an elaborate two-hour presentation, later shrank to 50 minutes, suggesting that Hizbullah and Al Qaeda jointly sponsored the 9/11 attacks with likely support from several governments, including Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Officials close to the CIA say the agency was "underwhelmed" by the show, many of whose points--including that 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Atta had met in Prague with Iraqi agents--have been discredited. Cheney's office says the VP did not see the slide show.
-MARK HOSENBALL

EUROPE
New Fat Busters
Once again, European and American regulators are moving fast in opposite directions. First it was trust-busting and genetically modified foods, now it's fast food. Last week the U.S. House of Representatives passed a "cheeseburger" bill, banning lawsuits against food companies for making customers fat. California Republican David Dreir summed up the official opinion by scolding Americans for "eating themselves to death and looking for someone else to blame."

Meanwhile, Europe seems ever more ready to blame fast food for the fact that nearly 2 billion of the world's 6 billion people are overweight. The Geneva-based World Health Organization has proposed a "fat tax" on junk food and limits on vending machines in schools. Britain's Food Standard Agency last week proposed stricter rules on marketing fast food to kids. Many of the intiatives are due to take effect this summer, but fast-food companies aren't waiting. Last week McDonald's announced a healthier menu in Europe. And last month Coca-Cola started stocking healthier juices in many European schools.
-Rana Foroohar

MONEY
Yen Attacks Dollar!
Japan is escalating its war on the falling dollar. After spending 20 trillion yen to slow the dollar's decline in 2003, the Bank of Japan spent another 10 trillion yen in January and February alone, aiming to keep the yen from rising against the dollar and undermining Japan's export-led recovery. The government authorized 21 trillion yen more to be used if necessary in March, and is now requesting an additional 40 trillion yen for currency purchases in the fiscal year, which begins in April. The message to speculators: Japan will respond to betting on the yen with weapons of mass intervention.

The yen-busting strategy seems to have worked: the currency is 10 percent weaker than it would have been without the bank's intervention, by one estimate. In recent weeks it's fallen sharply, returning to fall 2003 valuations of more than 110 to the dollar, while showing a bizarre tendency to jump a percentage point or two, then fall back just as quickly. Befuddled market watchers joke that the Bank of Japan has just one guy buying dollars at any given time, so "the minute he goes and has coffee, the yen begins to move immediately in the other direction," says one London-based hedge-fund manager. The truth, of course, is that Japan is likely fighting this battle with an army of bankers, not just one.
-Jonathan Adams

FILM
Name That Tune, OK?
The best songs make make you feel--tears, happiness, nostalgia. Few tunes, though, inspire passion like "Uskudar," the Turkish name of a folk melody beloved throughout the Balkans. For decades Serbs, Serbian Roma, Bosnian Muslims, Greeks, Macedonians, Albanians and Turks have laid claim to the song as their own. A new documentary examines the roots of the anthem, finding in it an apt metaphor for a deeply divided region, where music is just another battlefield for competing ethnic claims. The film, "Whose Is This Song?" has been shown in Western Europe, India, Turkey, Lebanon and Bosnia; this month it airs on Serb TV.

Adela Peeva, the film's Bulgarian director, takes the viewer on what should be an innocuous journey. Not so. In Bulgaria, an old man tells Peeva that anyone who suggests the song is Turkish should be killed. And in Serbia, she narrowly avoids a beating at the hands of a group of drunken men after she plays them a Muslim version from Bosnia. In the end, her findings are inconclusive; the song's roots have been obscured by time. Sadly, though, the anthem's story is a powerful reminder of how deeply mutual hatred and suspicion still pervade the region.

-Zoran Cirjakovic

AFGHANISTAN
The Very Picture of Propaganda
One of the Taliban's many oppressive idiosyncrasies was its prohibition of photographs or of any kind of reproductions of the human face and body. But now, in a desperate effort to enliven its drab propaganda against the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the guerrilla group is publishing at least three propaganda magazines that for the first time are replete with photos in full color. Azam, or Tenacity, which first appeared as a thin propaganda leaflet in the first months after the collapse of the Taliban regime in late 2001, has been joined by two other colorful monthly magazines: The Voice of Jihad and Jihad. Several thousand copies of the magazines, written in the Pashto language, are distributed monthly inside Afghanistan and among Afghans in Pakistan.

The magazines feature color pictures of the "infidel enemy" displaying un-Islamic behavior. One photo shows a U.S. soldier frisking a young Afghan woman. Another depicts GIs' checking a group of young boys for weapons. Another photo shows Karzai holding what appears to be a glass of wine during a toast with former Chinese prime minister Zhu Rongji. (Islam prohibits Muslims from drinking alcohol.) But the pictures aren't reserved just for infidels: a recent issue of Azam proudly offered a large color photograph and accompanying interview of Mullah Rozai Khan, a senior Taliban commander.
-Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau

FADS
Games People Play
South Korea has long been considered the world's online-gaming mecca. Seventy percent of households have the broadband connections needed to play, and a staggering 21 million people--more than 40 percent of the population--are registered for games like Counterstrike and Starcraft. A new craze, though, is rolling through the country: old-fashioned board games. One estimate counts some 600 board-game cafes in the Seoul area alone, up from about 150 just six months ago.

What's driving the fad? It's certainly affordable. For as little as $1.30 an hour, players can sit at a table and use any game in the cafe. Many establishments offer more than 100 choices, including classic games like Diplomacy. A simple theory is that South Koreans just like their games, online or off, and are looking for a new thrill. If that's so, then the new cafes may soon be making more than just Monopoly money.
-Mark Russell

MUSIC
The Tyra Typhoon
Tyra Banks has obviously forgotten she's a supermodel. At an age--30!-- when most models give up and marry a rock star, Banks has big plans. She's trying to launch a singing career, and debuted her first video on her very own reality-television show, "America's Top Model." After watching the leggy contestants vie for a major modeling contract, viewers besieged the show's Web site, replaying the "Shake Ya Body" video 155,000 times. "I want to be successful across the board," Banks says. "I want an empire like Oprah's. I may do it with a little more cleavage, but I plan to get there."

While her singing debut--as backup for a rapping Kobe Bryant at the 2000 NBA All-Star Game--was less than auspicious, Banks is undaunted. She paid $30,000 to make the "Shake Ya Body" video herself, and hired top manager Benny Medina to promote it. She's hoping the song will lead to a record deal. "I know I could fall on my face, but that's life," she says. "I'm not going to let that stop me." Why should she? Few things have slowed the luscious supermodel before.

-Marc Peyser and Allison Samuels

Q&A: Kelsey Grammer
So this is it? After 11 seasons, the very last episode of "Frasier" airs on May 13? Kelsey Grammer told NEWSWEEK's Nicki Gostin about it, and he refused to say it wasn't so. Excerpts:

Do you think you're going to cry like a 12-year-old girl at the final episode?

Probably like my 2-year-old.

You've played the same guy for nearly a quarter of a century. Are you completely sick of him?

No, not at all. He's a character that's kind of like a muse. He'll go anywhere for you.

Did you know you beat out James Arness from "Gunsmoke" as the longest-running TV character?

I think I tied him. If I'd done another year, I'd beat him. I doubt I'll find another role that will last 21 years.

You're getting, like, $10 million an episode. Am I close?

Somewhere in that range. There have been some surreal moments of understanding what I was getting for what I love doing.

So what are your plans?

We have a musical of "Scrooge" that we are going to do for NBC and there's a possibility of some work in New York. Some Broadway.

You trained as a Shakespearean actor. Are you worried that if you play King Lear one day someone's going to yell out from the audience, "Hey, where's Niles?"

It would sadden me but it wouldn't surprise me. I did "Macbeth" three years ago on Broadway and all they wrote was, "Is this Frasier I see before me?"