The Arabic edition of NEWSWEEK is published in Kuwait by Dar Al-Watan Publishing Group, and distributed throughout the Middle East, North Africa and selected cities in Europe and the United States. Our international reporting is edited in New York, then translated into Arabic by translators and editors based in Washington and Kuwait. NEWSWEEK BIL LOGHA AL-ARABIA is the fifth foreign-language edition for us. Our others are NEWSWEEK NIHON BAN in Japanese, NEWSWEEK HANKUK PAN in Korean, ITOGI in Russian and NEWSWEEK EN ESPANOL for Latin America....

The next wave of movies will push the virtual envelope even further. None represents the breathtaking visual delights of “Jurassic.” But in “Jumanji,” opening before Christmas, all of the jungle animals are computer inventions. The lion has a mane that digital artisans worked for years to create. Human faces will always be the elusive grail, given their complexity. But hair presents a special challenge. It’s very fine, it defies the order computers like and it’s impossible to light....

That morning the rats finally got the hang of it. By 9 o’clock, when 30-degree Celsius heat forced a halt to the work, the rodents had managed to find nine mines. In the next eight days, the rats found a total of 22 mines–a success rate of 100 percent, as established by subsequent sweeps of the area with metal detectors. “We opened a bottle of champagne in the camp to celebrate,” says Weetjens....

I mention this by way of conceding that the odds on keeping resolutions are slim. Nobody keeps them. The record is terrible. But even so, I am going to urge that we try to make a national resolution this year. It is once and for all to stop looking at the world around us as the sum total of its governments, to stop looking at whole countries and the vast populations within them as if they were nothing more than their political leaders or even official buildings: the White House feels … the Kremlin believes … Downing Street knows … and so forth....

In Washington, officials are worried that the breakup of the Soviet Union may create an entirely new kind of global nuclear threat. “It’s terrifying what might happen,” a Pentagon analyst told NEWSWEEK. “The dimensions of this problem are beginning to sink in with us.” Both the White House and Congress appear uneasy. With Gorbachev’s advisers wondering out loud about the Soviet Union’s ability to control its own nuclear arms, Bush last week demanded that their safety be “totally guaranteed…The last thing the world needs is some kind of nuclear scare....

I reached Jim Leyland by phone around lunchtime. We’ve known one another since the late Seventies, when he was a minor league manager in the Tiger system, and he’s always honest. He said he hadn’t been called about Fielder in any way. An hour later Leyland was headed to the office. A short time after that, Prince had a nine year, $214M deal with the Tigers. Less than 23 months later, Prince is a Ranger....

Since it split from the Soviet Union, Mongolia has found an aggressive new patron in Washington. The United States now provides a sizable chunk of $330 million in foreign aid each year, a third of Mongolia’s GDP, or about what the old U.S.S.R. provided until 1990. The reason: Washington sees strategic gain in supporting a free and democratic Mongolia, sandwiched between Russia and China in a region rife with dictators and swelling Islamic fervor....

Sen. Bob Kerrey has got to be a populist: his native heath is Nebraska, populism’s sacred soil. Iowa’s Sen. Tom Harkin is the real McCoy, a “prairie populist” like his pinup, George McGovern. Last week Harkin, that horny-handed son of toil and of Congress (where he has toiled much of his working life) spent a day wearing work boots and gloves and blue jeans and a hard hat, stringing wire at a Los Angeles construction site....

Their shock was premature. Last week’s BBC report was premature; in fact, no verdict had yet been handed down on Parry. And negotiations had already begun that seemed highly likely to spare the women punishments under Saudi Arabia’s version of traditional Islamic justice. Still, the case created the biggest row between the two countries for 17 years. In 1980, British television aired a dramatization of the execution of a Saudi princess convicted of adultery....

My generation has a strong tradition of leadership. As young men and women we fought in World War II, and after we had won, we selflessly helped rebuild Europe and Japan. For 40 years, we held steadfast against communism and oppression. By standing for democracy and strength, by our willingness to sacrifice, we won the cold war. And when Saddam invaded Kuwait, we knew what to do, We knew that we had to stand up to aggression, and we did....

The reality is often quite different, a great national striving consisting frequently of failure. Many of the oft-told stories of the most pluralistic nation on earth are stories not of tolerance, but of bigotry. Slavery and sweatshops, the burning of crosses and the ostracism of the other. Children learn in social-studies class and in the news of the lynching of blacks, the denial of rights to women, the murders of gay men....

Yeah, he knew what that meant. He just didn’t understand what any of it had to do with him. MORE: Ranking the best four-year players in college hoops All week, McLean had been aware of the transcript scandal cycloning through the basketball program at Westchester Community College in suburban New York, where he’d completed his junior college career. Two players had lost their scholarships at Florida A&M because of alleged transcript fraud, but they’d been gone before he arrived at WCC....

Phillips has done more than simply dangle from the fringe. The film-school dropout is now a cult-music hero of sorts, packing clubs from L.A. to London. Phillips honed his vocal skills early on, singing church hymns with his grandma in his hometown of Stockton, Calif. His passion for spinning colorful narratives eventually drove him to film school in L.A. Soon he strayed from his curriculum and started the psychedelic acoustic outfit Shiva Burlesque, which morphed into Grant Lee Buffalo by 1992....

When word of these experiments reached the public, the out cry was such that NIH halted all federally funded fetal research except that which directly benefited the fetus. Those rules still hold. But now that the NIH is free to fund research using aborted human tissue for transplantation, the public-no less than politicians, physicians and science researchers–still faces profound moral questions. What limits any, should be observed when experimenting with human fetuses?...

If Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has his way, tens of thousands of workers like Tamari won’t earn any shekels in Israel. As part of a broader policy of “separation,” Barak wants to drastically reduce the number of day laborers in Israel. He has proposed an electric fence and even an overland bridge between Gaza and the West Bank so that Palestinians shuttling back and forth will never touch Israel....

Solitude has taught me to see the world differently in the three years since my divorce. It has made me more conscious of my aloneness but also more aware of my connections. I have been both snickered at and praised, belittled and admired, shunned and supported. It seems there is something about my experience that sets people off. It makes them think I know things I don’t or don’t know things I do, makes them say things they needn’t and do things I wish they wouldn’t....

Soon after “Shock Troops,” the piece that contained this anecdote, was published in July, conservatives questioned the accuracy of the reporting–and lambasted The New Republic for the unsubstantiated “anti-war” message of its stories. Foer quotes Weekly Standardeditor Bill Kristol as saying: While criticism for The New Republic has continued over the past five months, almost equally vehement is criticism of Foer’s recent article. Bob Bateman of Media Matters highlights his belief Foer waited too long into his lengthy article to actually give his position on Beauchamp....

Dawn McCall, the dancer who has organized fundraisers for social causes in the past, and Reverend Adam Ericksen of Milwaukie, Oregon’s Clackamas United Church of Christ discussed the initiative in a Facebook video on Friday. In the short clip using the hashtag #SinnersandSaints, Ericksen said he and McCall were working together to “raise awareness and support for the children in Mississippi who were torn apart by the ICE raids from their families....