"Dancing around the Bomb"

Iran: Israel is threatening to bomb Iranian nuclear plants, Iran in return wants to destroy the nuclear factory in the Jewish state. The United Nations is warning Teheran to cooperate more with the international monitors and to refrain from manufacturing nuclear weapons. DER SPIEGEL has learnt from intelligence circles that Teheran's leadership is contemplating a change in its strategy.

"The Money is Lying in the Streets"

How former under-secretary for armaments Holger Ludwig Pfahls became a manager at Daimler: While Pfahls is waiting for extradition to Germany in a Paris prison, previously unknown memos of a Daimler-Benz member of the board raise explosive questions about his shady change from the Ministry of Defence to the industrial corporation Daimler-Benz. At that time, the present Chairman of DaimlerChrysler, Jürgen Schrempp, was head of the Daimler subsidiary Dasa and responsible for armament projects.

"Soldiers Instead of Politicians"

German foreign policy: After the Bundeswehr affair in Kosovo, dissatisfaction with the German mission in the Balkans is growing. Minister of Defence Peter Struck has disagreed publicly with Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer about Fischer's Kosovo strategy, where for the past five years, German soldiers have tried to keep the peace in the small province of former Yugoslavia, at present numbering a good 3000. Even the UN wants a change of course.

"The Brilliant Adventurer"

SPIEGEL cover story: Alexander von Humboldt was an adventurer and a scientist - and the most famous world citizen of his day. Two hundred years after his legendary journey to America, he is now being celebrated as a model German, with the publication of new books and with ceremonies in his honour. The astonishing thing is that he did not subjugate any foreign people, but caught butterflies instead. The ground he conquered did not yield any gold, slaves or mining rights - it was entirely in the interest of human knowledge. In short: Humboldt was the most radiant and the most courageous, and at the same time the gentlest hero that Germany has ever produced. In these times, in which torture and mass murder are every day annihilating the grand project of the Enlightenment, Humboldt shines out as an example of what humanity can really be.

"The Man Goes All Out"

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with Hans Magnus Enzensberger about the contagious force of Humboldt's thirst for knowledge, the topicality of this scientist in our day and the role of the resistive intellectual in the past and present:

"I admired him. ... This man didn't want to allow himself to be tied up, nailed down or reduced. That was often demanded by society in those days, because Germany was a small-state, narrow-chested country. ... When Humboldt talked to President Jefferson in Washington he suggested the Panama Canal to him. Whatever he did always went one step beyond pure research. ... I think in all fields, science has got to see the limits of what it can do, to get away from pure reduction and then expand its own horizons. Not losing one's eye for things as a whole, that's what Humboldt can help us do."

"A Terrible Blow"

SPIEGEL interview with Ahmed Sakayev, the European representative of Chechen underground president Asian Maskhadov about the hostage-taking in Beslan and his willingness to mediate:

"The one thing I realised was that if this hostage-taking ended in bloodshed, at the expense of hundreds of innocent children, this would be a terrible blow against us, against Maskhadov and all Chechens - because it would totally discredit our struggle and our idea of independence. So there was no time for a double game. I agreed to speak to Maskhadov the very same day. He had already condemned all the recent attacks and declared that we had nothing to do with these cruel actions. ... The Kremlin personifies the conflict in the Caucasus, but it still hasn't defined its relationship with Chechnya - it is turning it into a problem of international terrorism. Ever since the North-East hostage-taking incident, Putin has been trying to brand Maskhadov, who is considered a moderate in the West too, as a brutal terrorist; now he seems to have succeeded."

"To the Gulag and Back Again"

Contemporary history: Stalin sent thousands of Germans, including women, to the Soviet forced labour camp Vorkuta. Now some have gone back to visit the scene of horror. The town was purpose-built overnight between the Urals and the Arctic Sea, 2000 kilometres north-east of Moscow. It has to battle with nine-month winters during which temperatures drop to -60° C and it hardly gets light at all. But the inhospitable countryside hides a treasure. Huge coal deposits lie beneath the permafrost, and starting in the 1930s former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and his successors had them mined by some two million slave labourers, who were imprisoned in a gigantic camp. By 1968 more than 180,000 inmates had died in the icy wasteland, 15,000 had been shot.

"A Deal with the Devils"

Afghanistan: The election campaign for the presidential office is forcing warlords to don tailor-made suits and underground fighters to renounce terrorism. But Hamid Karzai's challengers include some cruel despots. Afghanistan is in the middle of an election campaign, and that has radically altered the situation there. It is a question of votes and majorities, everything is at stake. Democracy is a sluggish process in Afghanistan: more than 60 percent of Afghans are illiterate. They receive their scant political information by word of mouth, sometimes through listening to the radio. The rural population will in most cases make its choice based on the decision of the clan chief or the shura, the council of elders. In Afghanistan people are fighting using every means at their disposal, excepting those that are customary in a democracy. As the past 25 years have shown, this state does not inspire much confidence.

"Full Stomachs Thanks to Designer Plants"

Genetic engineering: Agricultural companies intend to conquer famine in the world through the extensive cultivation of GM plants. But will the green genetic revolution really benefit the poor? Or are such promises of salvation by the industry simply a ruse to assist the breakthrough of this controversial technology?

"Sorcerers at the Mixing Panel"

Computers: Discotheques have recently started managing entirely without turntables. Cunning software allows DJs to mix files right on the computer. DJs prefer mixing digital files by computer because it allows them to chop up their music, filter it and mix it together again virtually any way they like - and the transitions are no longer any problem. The computer automatically recognises the beat, and slows down or accelerates each track as necessary, without changing its pitch.

"The Survival Artist"

Music: The career of soul singer Senait sounds rather like a campaign against fate: her father turned her into a child soldier, as a refugee she slept beneath bridges in Hamburg - and so she regards her songs as a victory over her parents. Senait Mehari was born in Africa and has acquired German citizenship; she is a singer and has appeared in talk shows and on magazine covers. She has been asked questions one would not normally put to a pop singer, and the answers she gave have been curt: "Yes, I come from Eritrea. Yes, I took part in the war when I was a child." Now she has decided to tell more about all this in a book which is to be released in a few weeks' time. It is a book about how disasters can be survived - perhaps. What it depends on, whether you want to go on living, and in what world.

"Aliens in the Rock Cathedrals"

Free climbing: Their climbing acrobatics have earned Alexander and Thomas Huber the reputation of currently being the world's best mountaineers. However the Bavarian brothers' showman-like approach is the subject of some controversy. The discipline that is causing such fierce debates is called "free solo". In contrast to classical "free climbing", where ropes and pitons are not permitted as a means of advancing along the rock face, but are available to secure climbers against falling, on free solo tours the brothers dispense with a lifeline altogether. What is to be made of people who dispose of a lifeline while scaling an overhanging cliff 500 metres above the ground? Have they given up on life, do they feel they have to sell the ultimate sensation in order to keep finding sponsors and being invited to management seminars, or are they just such outstanding climbers that they can afford to do it?