"Strategy of Outrage"

Foreign policy: For German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the shift in US President Bush's Mid-east policy - an affront to Europeans - has come at an opportune time. Schröder's party, the Social Democrats, intends to exploit the touchy subject as ammunition against the opposing union of Christian Democrats and Christian Socialists in the European Parliament election campaign, which has seemed a hopeless cause for the Social Democrats up to now.

European governments are criticising President Bush's concessions to Israel's prime minister Sharon behind clenched teeth. How will the shift in America's Middle Eastern policy affect relations between the US and Europe?

"Entanglement without a Result"

SPIEGEL interview with former security advisor Zbigniev Brzezinksi about the Vietnam War, the occupying regime in Iraq, and America's flawed strategy in the battle against terrorism:

"I think two misjudgements are to blame [for the plight in Iraq], perhaps they are even cases of deliberate misinformation: the first has to do with the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction which served as the excuse for the extreme approach - namely the unilateral use of force. And the second has to do with the unthinking forecast that we would be welcomed there as liberators, whereby the invasion of Iraq was likened at the highest government level to the liberation of France in 1944. Obviously the Iraqis did not view it that way, and I find that unsurprising. ... 'War against terrorism' - to me that's an empty phrase. It's as if you were to say the Second World War was not waged against the Nazis but against the blitzkrieg. Terrorism is a technique. But if we want to deal effectively with the terrorist threat we have got to ask ourselves: Who are these terrorists? Where do they come from? But instead we proceed the way we did in Iraq, which in all likelihood increases the number of terrorists who want to harm us."

"They Have Got to Submit"

SPIEGEL interview with Afghan president Hamid Karzai about the warlord Hekmatyar, the security situation in the provinces and the fight against the cultivation of drugs:

"Hekmatyar has frequently tried to incite the Afghans to a Holy War before, and he has been unsuccessful every time. His threats shouldn't be taken all that seriously. What he intends will not succeed. On the contrary: he and his Hesb-i-Ilsami party are seeing their supporters walk out on them by the score, they are distancing themselves from his radical views. ... We are increasing our influence everywhere, because we have the trust of our people. In addition, I have ordered the adversaries Dostum and Atta to Kabul; they will have to justify their behaviour. The government will soon decide on their future. Anyone who does not submit to us will be treated accordingly. ... Drugs are against our own interests, they destroy the economy and discredit Afghanistan internationally. Whoever traffics in drugs cannot be an honourable man. He will be prosecuted, no matter what position he holds."

"Death in the Convoy"

Federal Border Guard: What really did happen in Fallujah? There is a lot to suggest that a chain of unfortunate circumstances, but also dangerous recklessness, led to the death of the two members of the German GSG-9 squad. The German government, too, is still seeking an explanation as to why the convoy set off despite the fact that the route was known to pass right by the fiercely contested town of Fallujah and the Americans had closed the motorway. And the report to the lower house will also have to answer the question as to why the group did not turn back in Fallujah but instead detoured onto a bypass where guerrillas were waiting for prey. So far it is not even clear where the two men were buried.

"The Bear's Pelt"

Artwork captured during the war: The art hunter Clemens Toussaint earns millions tracking down the lost works of important artists which were expropriated by the Nazis or lost during the turmoil of the war. But his methods are controversial - and ultimately not always successful. Toussaint, who was born in the Saarland, regularly wrangles with renowned museums all over the world. Be it the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Basle's Fondation Beyeler or Cologne's Museum Ludwig - Toussaint is feared wherever he turns up. When he has discovered a work of doubtful origin and the museums refuse to surrender it or to pay compensation for it, he launches a press campaign and publicly denounces them as wrongdoers profiting by the iconoclasm of the Nazis and Stalinists. If this doesn't help either, he drags them into court - and if successful receives higher fees than any one else. Recently, however, business has become tougher for Toussaint. Heirs are rebelling against him, terminating their contracts with him and trying to get hold of the big money on their own.

"Nationalist Talk"

SPIEGEL interview with Aventis manager Heinz-Werner Meier about the heated take-over battle between Aventis and Sanofi:

"It's really a strange mixture of presumptuousness and national high blood pressure that is coming out of Paris at the moment. The French government is treating Aventis as a kind of disposable asset. ... In Aventis's articles of association, drawn up in 1999, the company's location is stated as being Germany, and Frankfurt is laid down as the headquarters of the pharmaceutical business. In return for this, Strasbourg was chosen as the headquarters of the holding. ... In contrast to Sanofi, which wants to swallow us on totally unacceptable terms, Novartis is offering a friendly merger. ... We aren't calling for any intervention from Berlin, since we reject equally it from Paris."

"Invasion of London"

The press: The head of Springer publishers in Germany, Mathias Döpfner, wants to take over the "Daily Telegraph". The major investment will determine the future of the conservative press publishing house -big fish in a German pond or global player?

"The Conscience of the World"

Genocide: Ten years ago General Roméo Dallaire, the commander of the United Nation troops in Rwanda, looked on passively while 800,000 people were murdered. Now Dallaire is returning to Rwanda for the first time, seeking forgiveness.

"Last Days in Paradise"

Botswana: Namibia wants to dam the Okavango river in order to run a power plant. The sensitive ecosystem of the unique river delta faces a slow death as a result. The proposed power plant by the Popa waterfalls, just a few kilometres from the border with Botswana, would in fact only have a power output of 20 to 30 megawatts. Critics of the project find it particularly absurd that Namibia's former South African occupiers already gave up their own plans for a dam back in 1969 - having found that the destruction of the Okavango delta would be out of all proportion to the amount of electricity they could expect to generate.

"Honeymoon on the Tigris"

Baghdad: In Baghdad's district Adhamija, the centre of Sunni Iraq, a new Iraqi nationalism is emerging under the mounting pressure of the occupying forces. Even Shiites are welcome. Adhamija is ruled by a crude and warlike logic, marked by an archaic sense of honour and lacking any sense of having to put up with an occupying regime for a limited time: 'Strike the occupiers. Teach them a lesson. That's the only way to get rid of them.' In the eyes of many Iraqis, the American offers for a cease-fire in Fallujah legitimise this spirit of resistance, according to political scientist Wamid Nadhmi: "If they were all just gangsters and terrorists, they would never have negotiated with them in the first place."

"The Collector of People"

Cultural history: Harry Count Kessler (1868 - 1937) knew them all - Bismarck, Rathenau, Rilke, Maillol, Josephine Baker. As a museum director, patron, diplomat and writer, he prompted and encouraged 'The Knight of the Rose' and printed amazingly beautiful books. In his diaries, an impressive panorama of that epoch unfolds. In precise detail and with a tinge of irony he records what he sees and whom he meets. And he meets well over 100,000 cultural leading lights. Only now has the complete text of the epic work been published. As of this Wednesday, the first of nine large-format volumes will be in the bookshops.

"The New Racial Debate"

Medicine: Genetic scientists are systematically looking for differences in the genotype of different ethnic groups. Their aim is to produce drugs and treatments that are tailored to patients with a particular skin colour. However, critics are worried about a new form of racism under the guise of biology. Although there has never been any question that people with different skin colours suffer from certain diseases to different degrees, science has until now attributed this to social discrimination, poverty and racism. Now doctors in hospitals and research centres are more and more willing to introduce a further factor into the equation: the genotype of the various ethnic groups.

"Migration of No Return"

Bird life: Half of all the waders on Earth are acutely endangered. Biologists are trying to help especially threatened species using ultralight aircraft, satellites and educational theories based on goose behaviour.

"Heat Insulation in the Township"

Climate protection: The private trade in emissions is to permit ecologically correct air travel. The environmental company Myclimate, established two years ago in Zürich, is pioneering a new kind of private emissions trade which allows air travellers to have a clear conscience. Myclimate offers tables for calculating the rates for any destination. The trade with pollutant emissions is basically a matter of paying compensation: air passengers are charged individually for a certain amount of carbon dioxide which is produced during the combustion of kerosene. In return they finance projects which help to reduce CO2 emissions.

"I'm Afraid of Failing"

SPIEGEL interview with the Irish singer Andrea Corr about the craft of song-writing, her acting ambitions and the most recent album by the family pop band The Corrs:

"I'm afraid no one should seriously expect our new album to achieve similar sales figures to the previous ones. ... Music piracy is to blame for this, which has reached truly destructive proportions. Unfortunately there's no sense of wrong-doing at all: the people who make pirate copies simply refuse to recognise that they are stealing the product of hard work, and destroying jobs. ... For me personally the [four-year] break had the pleasant effect that I can be truly proud of everything that I wrote for this album. ... It's rather strange when your own career is so closely tied to your family. In the band I am condemned to always being the little sister. So I very much enjoyed the fact that while the film ["The Boys from County Clare"] was being shot I could just be myself."

"Armchair Politicians Are Right After All"

Films: In his debut movie "Schultze Gets the Blues", film director Michael Schorr, 38, sends a man from Saxony-Anhalt, who has gone into early retirement, off to the swamps of Louisiana. The film tells the story of a man who knows his native soil from the darker side too, and who therefore finds it particularly hard to leave it. But since he ultimately recognises that he will find something better than death wherever he goes, he does end up setting off for America. The story is astonishingly similar to the success story of the film itself, with its 1.3 million euro budget: made in the East German provinces, "Schultze Gets the Blues" is a great success all over the world and, curiously enough, is now being brought to German cinemas by a major American distributor.