Sept. 17, 2007 Issue

COVER: Sex and The Macho Man (All overseas editions). Latin America Regional Editor Joseph Contreras reports that the growing maturity of the gay-rights movement in the West is having a marked effect on the developing world. Since 2001, Western European countries like Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain have gone even farther than the United States, placing gay and lesbian partners on the same legal footing as their heterosexual counterparts. In Mexico, the declining clout and prestige of the Roman Catholic Church have emboldened gay-rights activists and their allies in state legislatures and city councils to pass new laws legalizing same-sex civil unions, starting with Mexico City in November. As Contreras reports, the biggest and perhaps most surprising change is in Latin America, the original home of machismo, with new laws being passed in Brazil and Colombia. By year-end, Colombia could become the first Latin American country to grant gay and lesbian couples full rights to health insurance, inheritance and social-security benefits. The push for "more modern ways of thinking" about minorities, feminists and homosexuals has roots that go back to the political ferment that shook the region in the late 1960s and 1970s, says Braulio Peralta, author of a 2006 book on gay rights in Mexico, "The Names of Rainbow." But it has gained in recent years, due in part to troubles in the Roman Catholic Church, which includes eight out of 10 Mexicans and long stood opposed to any attempt to redefine marriage laws.

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(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070909/NYSU006 )

INTERVIEW: Sir Ian McKellen, actor and gay-rights advocate. McKellen talks about his lobbying experience in the United Kingdom. "Tony Blair's New Labour did not campaign for new legislation. Indeed they defended the status quo until they were told by the European Court of Human Rights to admit gays into the military and to equalize age of consent. Europe was of great help to us. The sky didn't fall in, the die-hards began to look like extremists and the government was emboldened. With the approval of the mainstream press, they felt able to introduce not marriage but the next best thing: civil partnership that the state recognizes," he says.

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Brainiac Brigade. Baghdad Bureau Chief Babak Dehghanpisheh and National Security Correspondent John Barry report on the forthcoming report about progress in Iraq from Gen. David Petraeus and the brain trust he assembled around him. Petraeus will argue that the Anbar strategy shows enough promise to justify delaying anything but token troop withdrawals until next spring. Lawmakers seem inclined to give him the time, reflecting a feeling that he and his advisers are at least seeing Iraq for what it is, not what their plans and schemes tell them it should be.

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The Next Battlefront. Africa Regional Editor Scott Johnson reports on how America is quietly expanding its fight against terror on the African front. Two years ago the United States set up the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership with nine countries in central and western Africa. Sometime in the coming months, after a vetting process to find a good partner country, the United States plans to establish a new headquarters in Africa to spearhead this armed battle for hearts, minds and the capture of terror suspects. Called Africom, the Pentagon says it will bring its hearts-and-mind campaign closer to the people; critics say it represents the militarization of U.S. Africa policy.

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The Comeback Artist. South Asia Bureau Chief Ron Moreau reports that, in a surprising turn of events, former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif may return from exile in London this week to a hero's welcome. Current President Pervez Musharraf overthrew Sharif in a bloodless coup in October 1999, sending him into exile. Now, as Musharraf's own popularity and power have plummeted, Sharif has seized the moment. Musharraf's political party, the Pakistani Muslim League, is largely made up of defectors from Sharif's faction of the league. If they rally to Sharif, as analysts predict, he immediately becomes the front runner in the next parliamentary elections.

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Skidding Into a Deal. Stephen Haggard and Marcus Noland, authors of "Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform," write in a guest essay that they think they know why North Korea is now softening, or appears to be, with inspectors from the U.S., China and Russia now invited to begin the nuclear- disablement process. It's about the economy. "The North Korean economy had been in weak but steady recovery since 1999, growing about 15 percent over the next six years despite its isolation and increasing backwardness," they write. "Then came a new setback ... Our research suggests the main reason for the downturn was that U.S.-led sanctions hit harder than most people realize. Now more than ever, North Korea needs the financial benefits of a nuclear deal to survive."

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Europe Goes to Club Med. London Reporter William Underhill reports on the improving relations between EU countries and the nations of North Africa, which are emerging from political and economic obscurity. Libya is fast shedding its status as a global pariah, Morocco has recast itself as a Westernized quasi democracy and tourist magnet, and Algeria-now splurging $150 billion on an infrastructure-renewal program-is awash in petrodollars. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking immediately after his election in May, declared: "The time has come to build a 'Mediterranean Union'' that will be a bridge between Europe and Africa."

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WORLD VIEW: Picturing Iraq Without Maliki. While there is finally some sign of life at the grass-roots level in Iraq, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has not been able to set Iraq on the right path and Iraq's central government remains deadlocked, writes Kenneth M. Pollack, director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. "From a historical perspective this is unsurprising: even in successful counterinsurgency campaigns, political accommodation usually trails bottom-up security and economic improvements, sometimes by many years. But the American political calendar won't wait that long. And the surprising progress being made in some areas has put the spotlight back on Baghdad as the primary obstacle to meaningful change," he writes.

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THE LAST WORD: Craig Venter, president of Celera Genomics. Venter, who completed the DNA sequencing of a human genome, recently completed another milestone: the sequencing of his own genome. And he hopes it will be the first of thousands to join a database that could yield breakthroughs in preventative medicine. "What we got this time was a diploid genome-a genome that includes both sets of chromosomes from both my parents. We were surprised at how much variation between individuals there was," he says.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20657245/site/newsweek/ SOURCE Newsweek

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