1. "The Madhouse"

Cover story: Should one laugh or cry? The road toll for lorries, the railway discount card, the health reform - one blunder after another is making Germans despair of their country. Are we a nation of hopeless cases, incapable of progress, governed by bunglers? Or ought we to bear the increasingly carnevalesque politics with a sense of humour?

2. "End of the Line: Jihad"

Terrorism: Islamists from Germany are playing an increasingly important role in Iraq. They are supporting the resistance against the occupying US forces with money, military equipment and voluntary fighters. Particularly in southern Germany a network of active supporters has been established which obtains money and fake passports for the Islamist underground fighters at home, and which smuggles night vision aids, tents and telescopic sights, as well as new fighters, to Mesopotamia. The military equipment is financed using donations collected in mosques.

3. "Upgraded to the Coddled Class"

Foreign policy: In his search for people who might help him in his election campaign, US President George Bush not longer shies away even from the Germans and the French, who are relishing Washington's charm offensive - at discount rates. The disaster in Iraq has made the American president modest; Bush is a hunted man. On Friday, the president of the year 2004 will not only be taking the time to grant Gerhard Schröder a prolonged audience. He is even asking the chancellor, who is jetting to Washington between appointments in Chicago and Tennessee, to lunch in the White House. And to make quite sure the pictures of this unaccustomed harmony are distributed appropriately, the press has been asked to attend the event in the Oval Office. Thus the Germans and the French are on the one hand enjoying the pleasures of this American charm offensive. On the other hand, they find the sudden familiarity of Bush the campaigner a little eerie.

4. "In the Shadows of the Wall"

Middle East: The International Court of Justice in The Hague is to hear a case dealing with the barriers put up by Israel to protect itself from suicide attackers. But its construction can scarcely be stopped any more. Like Israel, many states question the jurisdiction of the court; the European Union, too, rejects the hearing. But almost all states criticise the line followed by the wall, which in some places penetrates deep into Palestinian territory. The actions before the Supreme Court in Jerusalem and the massive pressure by Washington appear to have had more effect than the court case in The Hague in making Israel shift to a more conciliatory tone. Initially the official line was that the fence would at most impair the lives of Palestinians to a small degree; now Israel admits: "Yes, the fence causes suffering." For the first time, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has even promised "corrections" in the course of the dividing line. But he leaves no doubt about the fact that it will indeed be completed.

5. SPIEGEL interview with Shiite leader Ali al-Sistani about his demand for speedy elections in Iraq.

6. "Battle over the Dormant Land"

Russia: The icy east is gripped by an apocalyptic mood - Siberia has lost almost ten percent of its population since the end of the Soviet Union. The continuing migration poses a threat to Moscow's rule over the huge realm's treasury of raw materials. Siberia is inhabited by an average of two people per square kilometre. They have a surplus of commodities that are scarce elsewhere: space, water and fuel. Forty percent of the world's reserves in natural gas and ten percent of oil reserves lie between the Ural mountains and the Pacific; in addition to more than one fifth of the world's freshwater reserves; ten percent of forests; one in five kilograms of gold; plus diamonds, nickel, platinum and uranium. Russia's state statistical offices expect no more than 126 million inhabitants by the year 2016 - a drop of a further twenty million people. Boris Gyslov, the former minister of domestic affairs, no longer rules out that the population might be halved to some 70 million within the next fifty years. The more labour is missing in Central Russia, the greater the pressure to migrate on those people still remaining in the icy expanses of Siberia, say demographers.

7. "The Reward of Fear"

Arms: Throughout the world some 100 million mines are buried beneath the soil; most of them kill civilians. Vera Bohle has put her life at risk as a minesweeper in Kosovo, Mozambique and Afghanistan. Now she is fighting on a second front: at disarmament conferences in Geneva.

8. Interview with Reinhard Kurth, head of the Robert Koch Institute, about the first test of an HIV vaccine in Germany.

9. "A Bolt from the Blue to Heart and Mind"

Historians have refuted the legend of the popular enthusiasm among the masses for the war in the autumn of 1914. A nation that suddenly no longer thought in terms of individual parties, but of Germans; soldiers confident of victory in carnival-like high spirits; summer flowers in gun barrels; troops being transported in wagons chalked with warlike slogans - for almost a full century such images of the beginning of World War I shaped the collective memories of the German nation. And yet they reflect, at best, half the truth. Everywhere in Germany professional and amateur historians have gone off in search of clues. In church and town archives, diaries and forces' letters, local researchers are finding evidence that puts the widespread images of the beginning of the war into a different perspective.

10. "What Are You Doing Wrong, Harvey"

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with Harvey Weinstein, boss of the successful company Miramax and producer of "Pulp Fiction", "The English Patient" and "Chicago", who is renowned for his fits of anger, his mafia methods and fights with directors like Martin Scorsese, and admired for films such as his latest work "Cold Mountain":

"I had to struggle most with anger during the first years after founding Miramax. I lacked money, I was working without any reserves, and whenever anything went wrong it was all up to me. ... In "Cold Mountain" we tell the story from the perspective of a simple man who is against this war. A man who nevertheless has the courage to fight against this war. The film has grossed almost 100 million dollars in the US so far. It fits the mood in the country."

11. "New Life in the Mud Desert"

Environment: The North Sea mudflats known as the Wattenmeer were once a marine Garden of Eden. Great white egrets stalked through saline lagoons, wolves roamed the marshes, walruses hunted in the North Sea. But what has become of all this splendour? How did the Wattenmeer degenerate into a mud desert? Scientists agree that the Friesians themselves put an end to this huge variety. Now biologists want to shift the dykes and so revive the region's former diversity. Bit by bit since 1985 it has been turned into a national park; and the United Nations is considering declaring it a World Heritage Site.