CLIPS 2003

TIME EUROPE MAGAZINE. November 3. 1,101 words.
A Saudi School for Scandal
By William Boston |Bonn

On a clear, chilly October morning, Mahmoud Abdelwahab leads a group of about 200 Muslim parents as they march on Bonn's city hall to protest efforts to shut down their school, the King Fahd Academy.

German counterterrorism and local government officials claim that the academy promotes a radical brand of Islam, and that people affiliated with the school are linked to terrorism. Abdelwahab, 44, a spokesman for parents whose children attend the academy, says that's nonsense. …

The tussle over the King Fahd Academy is emblematic of the fear and suspicion that have existed between Muslims and some of their neighbors since Sept. 11. German counterterrorism investigators are still smarting over revelations that some of the al-Qaeda operatives involved in those attacks masqueraded for years as foreign students in Hamburg. They're determined not to let the same thing happen again.

"The lesson of Sept. 11 is that we didn't look close enough," says Jürgen Roters, president of the Greater Cologne Regional Government …

TIME EUROPE MAGAZINE. October 9. 1,501 words.
Is 4G The Future?
By William Boston

Ask a European mobile-phone exec about fourth-generation cellular technology — 4G — and you can almost see them bite their tongue. These are the same folks, remember, who just five years ago couldn't stop talking up third-generation technology. The pitch went something like this: 3G services, with their high-speed wireless Internet access, would allow us to use our mobile-phone handsets to do everything from making home videos to surfing the Web. If investors would just give them billions of dollars, telecom operators would have the whole world plugged into 3G by, oh, about 2001.

They got their money, from credulous investors and governments, but they are nowhere near keeping their side of the bargain. About 1% of the world's more than 1 billion mobile phone users now have access to 3G technology — and what services they get are clunky and bug-ridden. "The time frame for 3G is still unclear," says Christoph Nettesheim, a partner with Boston Consulting Group in Berlin. "There aren't too many services available today which absolutely need it." No wonder the industry is so reluctant to talk about 4G, a leap in technology that could render all those hideously expensive 3G networks obsolete even before operators figure out how to make them work. "Those operators who are deploying 3G are worrying about what they're going to use them for," says Jeremy Green, a senior analyst with Ovum, a London-based communications research group. "It would be bad if they already started talking about 4G."

TIME EUROPE MAGAZINE. September 23. 721 words.
On the March Again?
By WILLIAM BOSTON |Munich

Nov. 9 is a big day for Munich. it's the 65th anniversary of Kristallnacht — the infamous pogrom against Jews launched by Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Göbbels — and it's the day construction is set to begin on the city's first major synagogue since World War II. Hundreds of politicians and dignitaries, including German President Johannes Rau, Bavarian State Premier Edmund Stoiber and Paul Spiegel, head of Germany's Jewish community, will attend the groundbreaking ceremony. But if a ring of alleged neo-Nazis had its way, police say, Nov. 9 would also have been the day a bomb containing 1.7 kilos of TNT went off near the synagogue site.

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR. September 18. 1,170 words.
Germany's neo-Nazi terror front
By William Boston

BERLIN Police with assault rifles stand behind a barricade, casting a suspicious eye over passersby. Visitors are asked to open their bags and walk through a metal detector. There is more security at the synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse in the heart of the German capital than at many airports. Some 65 years ago, this house of worship was in flames as Nazis rampaged against Jews in the pogrom known as Kristallnacht. In many cities, synagogues were destroyed and to thi...

FORTUNE MAGAZINE. September 1. 703 words.
INTERNATIONAL FIRST - Die Welt With a Vengeance
Springer's Mathias Doepfner scores a knockout over Leo Kirch.
By William Boston

When Mathias Doepfner became CEO of Axel Springer a year ago, it looked as if he had been dealt a bad hand. Germany's largest newspaper publisher had just posted its first annual loss, the German economy was sinking badly, and media mogul Leo Kirch, who owned 40% of Springer and had been trying to take control of the company for 17 years, was waiting in the wings. Today the German economy...

TIME EUROPE MAGAZINE. August 6. 963 words.
A Peek Behind The Wall
By WILLIAM BOSTON |Berlin

As an icon of escape, Wolfgang Mattheuer's Die Flucht des Sisyphos (The Flight of Sisyphus), from 1972, is unmistakable. A worker is suspended in mid-stride, fleeing the path of the stone he has been pushing uphill; he's both dodging the plummeting boulder and heading for an idyllic valley. But here's the twist: when he painted it, Mattheuer was an avowed communist coddled by East German apparatchiks, yet the work is an obvious protest at the condition of life for ordinary folk in the G.D.R. — not the sort of thing one expects a state-supported artist to have produced. It is such ambiguity that "Art in the G.D.R.," the new show that runs until Oct. 26 at Berlin's New National Gallery, seeks to reveal. The exhibit, the largest and most wide-ranging demonstration of art from East Germany since the country was reunified almost 13 years ago, includes some 390 works by 145 artists — ghosts of a not-so-distant past.

Since East Germany no longer exists, it may seem obvious to view its culture as a marked-off "period." Many believe its artists can be clearly divided into those who created propaganda for the totalitarian state and those who remained independent and were repressed. But curators Roland März and Eugen Blume demonstrate that many easy assumptions about art in East Germany do not hold up to closer scrutiny. Rather than reinforce the consensus view that this art can only be seen in its social and political context, they let the art speak for itself.

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR. July 7.
Demoralized German unions may bode well for Schröder
Members of the country's largest union are calling for more moderate leadership after a strike failed.
By William Boston

BERLIN - Once powerful enough to virtually dictate government policy, German trade unions are in disarray, and that has opened a rare window of opportunity for Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to push ahead with efforts to revive Europe's biggest economy.

With the economy stagnant for the past three years, Germany's center-left government has tried to reform the labor market, tackle a pension time-bomb that threatens to bust the budget, and repair a universal healthcare system that it can no longer afford.

Yet unlike trade unions elsewhere in Europe, such as in the Netherlands and Scandinavia, where union leaders worked together with government to reform the economy, Germany's biggest trade unions sought instead to block what they called neoliberal economic reforms.

But now the tide seems to be turning in Schröder's favor again. The unions are demoralized, which has also silenced voices friendly to the unions within Schröder's Social Democrat Party (SPD). IG Metall, Germany's biggest trade union with 2.7 million members, lost a strike two weeks ago for the first time since 1954, which has plunged the union into a crisis.

TIME EUROPE MAGAZINE. June 1. 1,125 words.
Chips Ahoy!
By WILLIAM BOSTON

It was March 2000, the height of the technology bubble, and Ulrich Schumacher wanted to drive a point home to the world's investors. His semiconductor company, Infineon Technologies, was about to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Like another Schumacher — Formula One star Michael — the CEO is serious about racing, so he cruised down Wall Street in a F-1 car.

Infineon's stock sped out of the starting blocks on March 13, 2000 and hit a high on the Frankfurt exchange of €92.50 in June. Then demand for semiconductors slumped, and Infineon hit a slick of red ink as losses mounted over the next two years. The company's share price has fallen more than 90% to around €7.

That boom and bust story — minus the racing car — is true for companies across the semiconductor industry, which has been mired in the worst economic slump in its history. Semiconductors are the fuel of the modern world of communications; they run everything from your computer to the airbag in your car. … It has been a long cold lonely winter, but finally there are signs that the semiconductor sector may be warming up again soon.

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR. May 12. 1,065 words.
Europe considers its alliances
By William Boston

BERLIN As the US and its "Old Europe" allies try to overcome their differences over Iraq, Europe is also examining its internal rifts laid open by the Iraq war. While differences remain over how to rebuild Iraq and the role the United Nations should play in that process, Germany, which, along with France, sought to block US war plans at the UN Security Council, appears to be retreating from the idea that Europe could become a rival in world politics and a challenge to ...

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR. April 14. 829 words.
Rifts over Iraq: how deep?
By William Boston

BERLIN As the antiwar axis of Russia, France, and Germany seeks to find common ground with the US to rebuild Iraq, divisions remain within the European Union over Europe's relationship with Washington. At a meeting dubbed the "summit of the losers" by a leading Russian daily, leaders of France, Germany, and Russia gathered over the weekend in St. Petersburg - Russian President Vladimir Putin's hometown - and called for the UN to play a central role in postwar Iraq. The ...

HANDELSBLATT. April 11.
Jazz für Schiefertafel und Stahlwolle
Wieder robbt sich Berlin ein Stück näher ans große Vorbild New York: Denn Jazz-Clubs boomen. Das Weekend Journal schaute sich um zwischen Mainstream und Freestyle.

BILL BOSTON HANDELSBLATT, 11.4.2003 Sedal Sardan zieht langsam an seiner Zigarette und entlässt den Rauch in Richtung der Bilder internationaler Jazzlegenden. "Es muss in der Luft liegen", sagt der 41-jährige Betreiber des Jazz-Clubs "Soultrane". "Als ob die Geister von allen Musikern, die da gespielt haben, im Raum sind. So ging es mir, als ich zum ersten Mal im "Blue Note" war und im "Village Vanguard". Ich habe gespürt, wie sie dastanden: Coltrane, Monk und Miles. Sie sind alle da gewesen."

Es liegt ein Hauch von New York in der Luft, wenn Sardan vor den Gigs in seinem Club alte Live-Aufnahmen von Konzerten und TV-Auftritten der großen Namen zeigt. Klassischen Jazz - den soll das "Soultrane" verkörpern.

TIME EUROPE MAGAZINE. April 6. 1,592 words.
Wi-Fi Fever
By WILLIAM BOSTON

At Rockabilly Barbers in East Northport, New York, you can get an Elvis-era haircut while listening to vintage rock. But it's not all throwback: Rockabilly also offers the hottest new networking technology on the planet. Proprietor Robert Wagner, an ex-Marine, noticed that many of his patrons would lug their laptops in to do a little work while waiting for a trim. Spotting an opportunity, he installed a wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) network in the barbershop to offer customers high-speed wireless Internet access. "I've got lots of musicians and business executives who come in and read e-mail," Wagner says. "Some even edit video online while they wait. We aren't your father's barbershop."

DETROIT NEWS. April 2.
German protesters remember Dresden, reject war with Iraq
By William Boston

DRESDEN, Germany - A cool wind rushes out as Joachim Zirchler, a pale-skinned Lutheran minister with a graying mustache, pushes open the heavy wooden door of the Church of the Holy Cross.

The air tastes old and musty as it winds its way down the twisted stone, across the sanctuary where the Dresden Boys Choir performs, and over the broken heads of angels. The gutted church still bears the scars of Feb. 13, 1945, when, just after 10 p.m., 650,000 bombs ignited a firestorm in the city, killing more than 100,000.

"My grave doubts about the war in Iraq are connected to this day (to) my memories as a child playing in the ruins of Dresden," Zirchler says. "We were the perpetrators because we started the war, but we were also victims."

TIMEEUROPE.COM. March 24. 787 words.
Auf Wiedersehen, It's Been Good to Know You
By William Boston | Wiesbaden

As U.S. bases move east to New Europe, the communities that used to host thousands of American troops come to terms with their loss
Sitting at a rustic wooden table in the softly-lit Zum Paulaner restaurant, Franz Walter, a gray-haired regional court judge in Wiesbaden, twists a glass of beer in his hands and tries to remember the last time an American showed up. "It's been a while," he says with a frown. "It used to be different."
Heads nod around the room in solemn agreement. The group of six mostly middle-aged men find the conversation at their monthly German-American friendship gatherings a little one-sided without the Americans. But since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the number of U.S. troops here has steadily declined — from 30,000 at the height of the cold war to 12,000 today. The two American bases in this town of 280,000 people, 40km from Frankfurt, once accounted for more than 2,000 local jobs; now they account for barely 200. Things could get a lot lonelier for the men of Wiesbaden's Good Neighbors Association, a German-American Friendship club that was formed in 1956, as Washington considers moving more bases out of Germany and into the new NATO member countries of Eastern Europe.

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR. March 20. 997 words.
Europe shifts to post-war focus
By William Boston

BERLIN At odds with the US and deeply divided among themselves, Europeans opposed to going to war with Saddam Hussein are now scrambling to play a role in shaping postwar Iraq. For months France, Germany and Russia - key European countries on the UN Security Council - have been trying to stop President George Bush from invading Iraq, severely straining the transatlantic alliance. Now, Europe is looking beyond the war with hopes of ensuring a role for the UN and Europe ...

NEWSWEEK. February 17. (Reporting)
Living by Uncle Sam's Rules
By Michael Hastings
With William Boston in Berlin

The United States is in the grip of a reform fever not seen since the Roosevelt era, seven decades ago. This January the Securities and Exchange Commission issued more new rules than in any month since it was created in 1934 to clean up Wall Street, still devastated by the great crash of '29. Now, as real losses in the market hit more than $4 trillion, even worse than '29, the vengeful winds of reform are back. Congressional lawmakers, prosecutors and regulators are out to restrain … (1583 words)

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR. January 31. 900 words.
On Iraq, Blair reprises role as US bridge to Europe
By William Boston

LONDON With Europe deeply divided over whether to back the United States in a potential war with Iraq, Britain's Tony Blair is again emerging as President George Bush's most important diplomat. The British prime minister has embarked on a global diplomatic mission reminiscent of his efforts to help President Bush build international support in 2001 to oust the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. He engaged in a wave of diplomacy this week in a new drive to build support for ...

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR. January 28. 1,132 words.
In Europe, terror trail leads to Algeria
By William Boston

LONDON In an Arab butcher's shop, near a mosque that British police recently burst open with battering rams, an Algerian with a goatee cautiously emerges from behind a curtain. "No one here will talk to you," he says. "Not anymore." Fear is a constant companion in Finsbury Park, a neighborhood teeming with young Muslims, and a mix of Arabic and African markets and shops. As Britain steps up the war on terror, these local Arabs, many of whom have lived in this country f...

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. January 27.
Online brokers in Europe are revamping their strategies as they
struggle to survive
By William Boston

During the boom years, it seemed all you had to do to launch a successful online brokerage firm was to set up a Web site and wait for the customers to arrive and start trading.

By the height of the technology-stock boom in 2000, nearly 200 online brokerage firms had sprouted in Europe, and retail investors came in droves. But when the bull market went bust, online trading shriveled. Suddenly, sites that had invested heavily in technology and staff to keep up with frenzied trading were left holding the bag as revenues plummeted.

Now, online brokerage firms across the Continent are slashing costs and revamping strategies as they struggle to survive. Many are developing new services to meet the needs of customers who have been bruised by the decline in stock markets.

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR. January 17. 1,091 words.
European leaders, public at odds over war with Iraq
By William Boston

BERLIN As US warships ply the oceans to move within striking distance of Iraq, a gap is widening between European leaders who support the US-led effort and a public increasingly opposed to war. Even staunch US allies such as British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac are on the defensive as public opposition grows and opponents in their political camps speak out against attacking Iraq. Public-opinion polls indicate a growing sense among ordin...

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR. January 15. 776 words.
Sensing vulnerability, Germany steps up terror defenses
By William Boston

BERLIN As America's European allies confront evidence of terrorist activity in their own backyards, they are increasing defensive action against what many see as a growing vulnerability to attack. Germany is taking the threat so seriously that it has begun preparing a defense plan against a bioterror attack using agents such as ricin or smallpox. And as US troops move from Germany to the Gulf ahead of a possible war with Iraq, security around bases here has been increase...

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR. January 8. 1,034 words.
Germany braces as workers prepare to strike
By William Boston

BERLIN Germany's public-sector workers seem poised to launch a crippling strike for the first time in more than a decade, highlighting a growing gap between the Social Democratic-led government and its traditional allies in the trade unions. Trade unions provided key support for Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's reelection campaign last September. But they are critical of his efforts to reform everything from Germany's economy and labor market to its healthcare and social s...