Michael Meyer

Twenty years ago this week, a bold move began the process that would bring down the Berlin Wall.

The Kremlin has a reputation for using the courts to rein in--or bring down--rivals. Witness the demise of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former boss of Yukos Oil.

Uzbekistan is quiet, for now. But the violence that shook the eastern town of Andijan is reverberating elsewhere. In the capital of Tashkent, Uzbekistan's autocratic president, Islam Karimov, clearly hopes his strong-arm tactics will maintain his hold on power.

The new year was seconds away in Bucharest's Universitatii Square, where young people died fighting communism in 1989. A short, bald man jumped on stage. "Happy New Year, Romania.

After five years as Russia's leader, career KGB man Vladimir Putin has finally acquired the aura of an American politician. George Bush might notice the change this week when the two men sit down together in Slovakia's capital, Bratislava.

Everyone agrees. Condoleezza Rice came to Europe and made very nice noises. A gentler, wiser, more diplomatic Bush administration appears eager to repair the tattered transatlantic relationship.

Everyone agrees. Condoleezza Rice came to Europe and made very nice noises. A gentler, wiser, more diplomatic Bush administration appears eager to repair the tattered transatlantic relationship.

Viktor Yushchenko may worry the Kremlin, but other authoritarian regimes in the former U.S.S.R. find him downright scary. The Ukrainian opposition leader's triumph in last week's presidential rematch was a sharp display of people power to the region's inhabitants--and to its leaders.

Everyone knows there are too many people in the world. Whether we live in Lahore or Los Angeles, Shanghai or So Paulo, our lives are daily proof. We endure traffic gridlock, urban sprawl and environmental depredation.

"Europe has never existed. it must be created." So said Jean Monnet, father of the original Common Market, at the outset of the grand experiment that over the past five decades grew to become the modern European Union.

U.S. GIS are finally in Liberia. In the next crisis, will private soldiers replace them on the front lines?

Silvio Berlusconi had a plan. Once Italy took over the rotating six-month presidency of the European Union--which it did last week--the wildly controversial prime minister would launch his very own rehabilitation from his new bully pulpit.

In the summer of 1990, before the first gulf war, an adviser to President George H.W. Bush instructed White House aides on how to deal with the media. "Tell them we can't just let Iraq get away with this," he said. "There is a new world order developing." Half an hour later, that famous catchphrase blipped up on CNN.

What a difference a fortnight makes. In mid-January, George W. Bush had hardly an ally in sight as he moved toward war against Iraq. Even his staunchest comrade in arms, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, looked wobbly to some.

The Delaware Indians called him wegh-wu-law-mo-end, the "man who tells the truth." That quality seems to have been as rare in 18th-century American politics as it is today.

Open mouth, insert foot. that has long seemed Silvio Berlusconi's patented political style. The Italian prime minister has been pratfalling his way across the world's stage ever since he took office last May in one of the most controversial and scandal-pocked elections Europe has ever seen.

You can feel winter coming on, and it's not just a matter of snowstorms blowing down the mountains of Afghanistan. The international alliance against terrorism is entering a new and dangerous phase, opening hidden cracks and fissures--not unlike crevasses in a slow-moving glacier.Without question, European governments stand squarely behind America and the war.

Robert Venturi apotheosized Las Vegas as an icon of American culture. What would the great post-modern architect say of it today? There is the Luxor, with pyramids and a Great Sphinx.

Jeffrey E. Garten, Dean of the Yale School of Management, is author of a new book, "The Mind of the C.E.O." In our era of hypercompetitive globalization, he argues, few chief executives genuinely think globally.

Sarajevo. Srebrenica. Vukovar. Kosovo. It is impossible to calculate the toll exacted by Slobodan Milosevic. A quarter of a million dead. More than 3 million refugees.

Shades of 1997. Once again, there's hand-wringing over a global financial crisis, loose talk of spreading "contagion" and toppling dominoes. The lira's crash in Turkey sets the next most vulnerable economy awobble--Argentina.

Imagine the scene last week in Kosovo. The acrid smell of burning metal. The scraps of clothing, children's books strewn across the road, the blood and bits of bodies--the sad human detritus of a bus blown apart by a powerful mine that killed seven Serbs on a holiday pilgrimage to the graves of their ancestors and wounded more than 40 others.Now consider this.

They're called "irates"--fliers who spin out of control. Mysterious crashes and terrorism are more fundamental worries, but for the vast majority of passengers the biggest danger may be in the next seat.

Dale Miller had a problem with his little dog, Button. He was harassing guests, and whenever Miller left the house, the year-old Maltese would melt down in a fit of separation anxiety.

You can't miss the books. At Amazon.com, three of the top 10 best-selling business books over the past year were how- to manuals for budding day traders--those glamorous New Age financial buccaneers who make a living (and retire early) buying and selling stocks over the Internet.Nor can you miss the ads.

MARC MCCORD HAS IT ALL. Nice house, car, boat. Works when he wants and says he makes ""in the high six figures.'' He's 33 and never went to college. How does he do it?

JOHN KEYSER ALREADY MAKES BIG bucks. So why is he working most nights until 1 or 2, sweating over business-school case studies? Because, at 58, the New Jersey plastic surgeon decided he needs an M.B.A.

GLENN FORD, 17, IS A PRETTY TYPICAL senior. He likes sports and studies English, trigonometry and history. But come afternoon, he morphs into a Future Technician of America--thanks to an innovative training program sponsored at his Wilmington, Del., high school by Microsoft Corp.

TALK ABOUT FIDDLING WHILE Rome burns. As Apple Computer laid off workers and hemorrhaged money, how did chief executive Gilbert F. Amelio spend his days? Discussing upgrades to his personal jet, insiders say, and planning his new executive offices.

THERE'S ABSOLUTELY NO TRUTH TO it.'' ""It's not happening.'' ""There's no deal. No one's looking at a deal.'' So declared the various spokespersons for Microsoft, CBS and its parent, Westinghouse Electric, dismissing a report that the ubiquitous Microsoft Corp.