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...Prime Minister rules over this reality-show republic by virtue of his political persistence and surprising popularity (this is his third term), with his control of the airwaves (he owns the three main private TV channels) and, perhaps most intriguingly, with his ability to transform his personal whims into a disturbingly entertaining public discourse in a democracy of 58 million people. But his critics - and they do manage to get airtime in Berlusconistan - believe that the 72-year-old master manipulator may have triggered a news cycle that could actually lead to his political demise. (See Berlusconi's worst gaffes...
...cranky old man, his eyes asquint, as if daring any kid to take one. Pete Docter's sketch, made back in '04, suggested another droll innovation at Pixar, a studio proud of taking risks in a traditional genre; mean and old are words rarely attached to the main character in an animated feature. But Docter, 40, who'd done the 2001 Monsters, Inc., and his co-director and co-writer Bob Peterson didn't want just to have fun with the elderly gent. They would send him and the audience on a journey in two new directions: penetratingly inward...
...Except for The Incredibles, Brad Bird's obligatorily cartoony vision of a superhero family, Up is the first Pixar feature in which the main characters are humans. Up isn't realistic either. It revels in a minimum of dialogue, deft comic underplaying and a style the Pixar people call simplexity, a character design that stresses circles and cubes. (Carl looks like a trash-compacted Spencer Tracy in his later years.) "We tried to push caricature," Docter says, "and the language of shapes - to make these drawings an expression of the characters. Carl wants to stay enclosed...
...effort to gain operating efficiencies and to outmaneuver rivals, some of Europe's main rail operators are already forming partnerships. SNCF, for example, runs a high-speed Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam-Cologne service called Thalys along with Belgian rail operator Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Belge (SNCB) and Germany's Deutsche Bahn (DB). DB also uses the French company's track to operate its high-speed Intercity-Express (ICE) trains between eastern France and Paris. But, despite their cooperation on some routes, DB and SNCF are locking horns over Eurostar. The French have a majority stake...
...preparations for the military offensive. (Schools across the North-West Frontier Province have closed for six months; their buildings are being used to house refugees.) "The Taliban took over the food shops and changed the locks," says Mohammad Ali, 30, who used to sell clothes in Mingora's main bazaar. "They occupied a high school to make their base there. In the town there was a stock of wheat flour that had arrived for us from the government of Punjab. The Taliban took that over also. They stole government vehicles for their...