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...Ironically, the only short-term winner from the crisis appears to be Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy - front-runner in the 2007 presidential race that Villepin is expected to contest too, with Chirac's likely backing. Sarkozy called for "compromise" with protesters - a position at odds with his plan for vast reforms cutting far deeper than the youth labor law. "We have a program, but we're pragmatic," says a Sarkozy adviser. "Plus, you need stability and calm to reform." Until the next protests, anyway...
...measure of how optimistic businesses are about the future - last week reached its highest level since German reunification. The reason for all this good cheer? Columnists call it the Merkel Factor. It was even given solid form on floats at the annual Carnival parade in Cologne. Last year, a vast, papier-mâché Merkel bent over to kiss the bottom of a George W. Bush figure; this year she had undergone a makeover into a motherly barkeeper, huge breasts enveloping her coalition partner, apparently loving him - and Germany - to death. From figure of fun to Mother Germany, from...
...ruthless with long-winded colleagues. "When I met her alone it was like meeting a leading business figure," SAP's Kagermann tells Time. "She is very effective at managing discussion." Merkel also likes to keep her channels of communication open. She often abandons the desk in her vast Chancellery office and works instead from an oval conference table that puts her on a par with colleagues. She prefers visiting staff to summoning them to her office. And while she can be stilted in media interviews, she is hooked on text messaging, requiring even the most tech-reluctant older members...
...these new arrivals? While the vast majority are Mexicans, a small but sharply growing number come from other countries, including those with large populations hostile to the U.S. From Oct. 1 of last year until Aug. 25, along the southwest border, the border patrol estimates that it apprehended 55,890 people who fall into the category described officially as other than Mexicans, or OTMs. With five weeks remaining in the fiscal year, the number is nearly double the 28,048 apprehended in all of 2002. But that's just how many were caught. TIME estimates, based on longtime government formulas...
When the crowds cross the ranches along and near the border, they discard backpacks, empty Gatorade and water bottles and soiled clothes. They turn the land into a vast latrine, leaving behind revolting mounds of personal refuse and enough discarded plastic bags to stock a Wal-Mart. Night after night, they cut fences intended to hold in cattle and horses. Cows that eat the bags must often be killed because the plastic becomes lodged between the first and second stomachs. The immigrants steal vehicles and saddles. They poison dogs to quiet them. The illegal traffic is so heavy that some...