NEWSWEEK: International Editions: Highlights and Exclusives December 3, 2007 Issue

COVER: Rudy's Roots. (Atlantic and Latin America editions). Senior Writer Suzanne Smalley looks at GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani's background and influences that explain his moral code, which is at once rigid (in public) and flexible (in private life). The roots of Giuliani's outsized, complex adult personality can be traced back to his childhood and youth in New York City and Long Island, to a family of cops and hoods and to a Catholic culture with a strict moral code but always holding out the possibility of redemption and grace. On the one hand, Giuliani has been a crusader against outlaw policemen, as well as mobsters, pornographers, drug dealers, crooked businessmen and politicians and death-dealing jihadists. He now offers himself as the presidential candidate who would deliver us from evil, from terrorism abroad and corruption at home. With Investigative Correspondents Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff, Religion Editor Lisa Miller and Miami Bureau Chief Arian Campo-Flores.

COVER: Why India Is Blowing Its Chance (Asia edition). South Asia Bureau Chief Ron Moreau and Special Correspondent Sudip Mazumdar report on the current strong political status of India's reigning communist ideologue, Prakash Karat. If Karat gets his way, India will turn its back on its recent, much-touted modernization. He also hopes to undermine Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's recent pro-Western foreign-policy overhaul-embodied in the pending U.S.-India nuclear deal-in favor of old, blinkered, nonaligned politics. Moreau and Mazumdar examine the political landscape and look at what has lead to the rise of Karat and how he became a kingmaker and potential spoiler.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/71982

Messiah On a Hill. Jerusalem Bureau Chief Kevin Peraino reports on Palestinian billionaire Munib al-Masri, who, like a Palestinian Ross Perot, recently announced he was forming a movement called the Palestine Forum to challenge the two major Palestinian parties. Al-Masri has a couple things going for him. One is the depth of Palestinian anger. Since its May coup in Gaza, Hamas has been strangled by Israeli and international sanctions.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/72025

China's African Misadventures. Africa Bureau Chief Scott Johnson reports on China's efforts to build a railroad in Angola, as well as dozens of other potential projects and how work has stalled in all of them. China has had success in working in Africa-last year trade between Africa and China topped $50 billion and China has extended $11 billion in loans to Angola, more than the World Bank. But all that money doesn't mean the Chinese working in Africa are insulated from the continent's troubles.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/72028

The Silence of the Monks. Special Correspondent Lennox Samuels reports how empty Burma's temples and monasteries seem since the junta's crackdown on rebellious monks in September. The military junta has jailed monks it sees as ringleaders and has persuaded abbots to get rid of dissidents. Hundreds were killed and injured, many more have been placed under "monastery arrest," confined to quarters except perhaps to collect their daily alms and still others have been forcibly "derobed," or have fled to the countryside. The government claims it has released all but about 90 of the 3,000 monks and civilians initially jailed. But today, few monks can be found around the main Rangoon protest sites.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/71984

Staying Safe In the Middle Of the Road. London Bureau Chief Stryker McGuire reports on how European politicians are all staying in the ideological center. It's happening all over Europe, except in France, where there is no ongoing battle for the center ground. The gravitational force of the center is greatest when people feel comfortable and prosperous. The task for those political thinkers who have traveled to the center in the past is to make sure the politics there don't go stale.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/71988

Beltway Bandits. Special Correspondent Roya Wolverson reports on the pervasiveness in the Bush administration of privatizing government operations. Hiring Blackwater Worldwide, the private security firm that facing allegations that its agents gunned down civilians in Baghdad, was just the tip of the iceberg. Education, space exploration and foreign aid are just a few government operations the Bush administration has privatized, turning the outskirts of Washington into a sea of private firms that live off public contracts.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/71987

Keeping the Lights On. Special Correspondent Sam Knight reports on the booming energy plan in much of the developing world: the portable-generator business. Already temporary electric generators supply 50 percent of the power grid in Uganda, 10 percent in Kenya and a significant chunk in many other countries including Yemen and Venezuela. The No. 1 provider is a British company called Aggreko, which, in the last three years, has moved beyond its traditional business of airlifting temporary power into disasters or set-piece events like the Olympics and into the new territory of supplying temporary power to developing-nation governments.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/71989

WORLD VIEW: A New French Revolution. Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria writes about French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who has intrigued all of France with his vigor, assertiveness and action. "He even appears to be triumphing in his most significant challenge yet, facing down the country's striking transport unions," he writes. "If he succeeds, it could be the beginning of the biggest turnaround in Europe since Margaret Thatcher revived Britain in the 1980s."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/72024

THE LAST WORD: Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. Secretary-General's new special representative in Iraq. De Mistura was last in Baghdad just after the Samarra shrine bombing set off sectarian warfare. He says now, he's noticed that there has been some change "for the better, and also some very strong worries. There is a perception compared to two or three months ago that things have been improving. Now, there are still 90 incidents per day [in Baghdad]. There used to be 300. We have to be realistic: improving from 300 to 90 is good, but 90 is a lot ... So the feeling I get is one that there has been a change, but the change is fragile-quite fragile, because we need now to altogether capitalize on it, and particularly the Iraqis have to. There is a window of opportunity, which needs not to be missed."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/71990