Afghanistan: KSK troops report on their operations in Afghanistan.

“A Barometer for Future Disaster”

Pakistan: Nowhere else do militant Islamists find better shelter than in Karachi, where they are stirring up hatred against the West. Most of the town’s 15 million inhabitants suffer the daily outbreaks of violence with equanimity, but foreign helpers must fear for their lives. Over the years, the population explosion and catastrophic urban planning have turned Karachi into a monster of asphalt and stone. Heroin dealing, arms trafficking, human trafficking – all the scourges of Third World megacities are at home here. Since the Taliban fell from power in Afghanistan, and members of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaida have had to flee from the neighbouring country, the capital of Sindh province has become the new centre of Islamic terror. Hundreds of jihadis have trickled into the town and joined forces with local groups of fanatics, whose members received their ideological tools for the Holy War in the Koranic schools. Within a short space of time, they have turned Karachi into a nightmare for the Western world.

“Approachability Is Very Important to Us”

SPIEGEL interview with Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel about his battle for re-election, his relationship to Germany and Europe’s position ahead of a possible war against Iraq:

“If Iraq, with its present leadership, is not willing to make any allowances at all for the justified concerns of the international community, and once again imposes a range of conditions, then that is of course a different starting point than if we were to approach one another … 73 percent of Austrians consider our policies to be correct. Privatisation, the floods, educational reform, university fees, family policy. But some people have been irritated by this process, the fact that the former opposition party FPÖ has worked with us excellently. The FPÖ was brought down from within. … In the SPÖ, two former young socialists are at the helm. So the SPÖ has moved sharply to the left. My challenger Gusenbauer has first got to prove that he can come up with more than just a negative campaign against me.”

“The Incorruptible”

Careers: With lawsuits against the Wall Street money giants, New York prosecuting attorney Eliot Spitzer has become the most dreaded jurist in the United States. Now he has set his sights on a new enemy. He has just sued five former board directors of major telecommunications companies. Spitzer is demanding that they return 1.5 billion dollars made through share sales, and suggests that the managers raised their companies’ share prices artificially with the help of Salomon Smith Barney, so as to make a better killing. This is the largest sum of money that a US prosecuting attorney has ever demanded in a financial lawsuit.

“The Big Game Is Business”

SPIEGEL interview with historian Daniel Yergin on America’s oil interests in the Gulf region and new markets for Iraqi oil:

“The high price of oil undoubtedly includes an anxiety surcharge of about three to five dollars a barrel, because the entire Middle East is feeling very nervous. But the market is under great pressure at the moment anyway. OPEC hasn’t increased its production quota, and that’s bad for the world economy. … A new government in Iraq would presumably open its doors to countries such as Russia, Brazil or Venezuela for investments and for importing technology, but it would impose tough conditions on foreign companies. Companies all over the world are interested in this huge oil province. On the other hand they also have to be careful, because billions and billions of dollars are needed for repairs and for opening up oil fields.

“Venus Trims Her Wrinkles”

SPIEGEL cover-story: Cosmetic surgery: Skin lasers and botox injections are making cosmetic surgery socially acceptable. Even minor blemishes are eradicated, customers are becoming younger and younger. Now public-sector clinics are going into the business too. Senior physicians are padding buttocks, while nursing nuns help with facelifts. A group made up of doctors, pharmaceutical companies and eager customers, is working to achieve the ideal of a flawless human being. In total, 5000 doctors are involved in the Venus Project. Anti-ageing medicine had swelled and turned into an avalanche. Dermatologists, GPs and even dentists are reaching for their scalpels, learning liposuction in crash courses or attending the “Facelifts for Beginners” seminar. They practise on pig’s heads. Naturopaths and beauty studios are also getting involved. For decades, plastic surgeons have been attending to burn victims and sewing on shattered limbs, coming up with some incredible surgical techniques. Now they too have set their sights on the purgatory of vanity.

“Forget the Ratings”

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with the German television entertainer Thomas Gottschalk, 52, who lives in California, about the criticism of his show “Wetten, dass…?”, the crisis in public-sector television entertainment, and his new documentary series “Gottschalk America”:

“I don’t have any problems with flying the flag of the German post office if that allows me to afford guests like Ms. Taylor or Mel Gibson, in order to maintain the size which the media rightly demand of “Wetten, dass…?” … The public sector broadcasting houses should at last be given the chance to produce programmes without the excitement of commercial pressure, without this dependence on advertising and the associated need to squint into the lower compartments of cultural standards. … When planning the series on America I thought: I can’t just offer dog shows and hamburger tests… so I dutifully also visited Native Americans and unemployed people. But when I saw the reports, I immediately realised that no one would buy this from me. … I’m offering America light.”

“Long-distance Travel in a Magnetic Cinema”

Wildlife: Experiments with robins are providing new insights into bird migration. The animals can see the earth’s magnetic field – but only with their right eye. A patch over their left eye did not worry the birds in the least; they continued to follow their migratory instincts unperturbed. But as soon as their right eye was shut they lost their sense of direction, and headed off randomly in all directions. The researchers are thrilled – the magnetic sense of the robin proves to be strongly lateralised, a feature only otherwise seen in the human capacity for speech.

“Vaccuum Prodigies Caught in the Baby Trap”

Automatons: Last week, sixteen teams from six different nations met in Lausanne for the first world championships for cleaning robots. The supreme discipline of the expert meeting was “cleaning the floor in a normal living room”. Until now, robots have mainly competed at soccer, but their developers have recently discovered cleaning as a new challenge for the obedient helpers. However, before anyone gets too upset, let it be said that the profession of human cleaners is not threatened just yet. The attempts of these world-champion cleaners were accompanied by a series of flops, failures and fiascos.

“Beyond Schkopau”

Non-fiction: Jana Hensel’s debut book, “Zonenkinder” (Children of the Zone), is the biography of her “hermaphroditic” generation – a highlight in the mass of life portraits at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. Jana Hensel stands at the intersection: she belongs to the generation now in their mid-20s who stood to attention at the “roll call before the flag” in Egon Krenz’s FDJ, the East German youth movement, but who also no longer remembers when Raider became Twix; she missed the merciless brand war between Geha and Pelikan witnessed by the slightly older “Golf generation”, for two reasons: she was too young and lived too far to the east. The dilemma is obvious: on the one hand the hermaphroditic child of the East German “zone” does not want to be identified as an “East German”, either at home or abroad – on the other hand she feels a longing for identity and recognition; apparently still haunted by a glimmer of that untiring effort to achieve “world standard” which was such an unmistakable feature of the German Democratic Republic – the eternal fear of being seen as provincial and uncool, here and now: the “old anguish” of still not having learnt to “dress properly”, even years after reunification. A typical GDR problem, but also a problem of Germany as a whole: Who am I, where do I come from, do I look okay?