October 13, 1997

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World

Passport to trouble

K haled Meshal knows he is lucky to be alive—even if he remains mystified about precisely what it was that almost killed him. “It happened all of a sudden,” recalled the 41-year-old Palestinian, politburo chief of the militant Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, as he recounted the bizarre details of his brush with death on Sept. 25. By BARRY CAME, STEPHANIE NOLEN

COVER

More clicker confusion

In television circles these days, “fragmentation” is the buzzword. With the explosion of cable offerings over the past decade (along with the more recent incursion of cable’s competitive sister, satellite TV), network execs have had to contend with the new realities of the multi-channel universe— shrinking audiences who can switch from the broadcast nets to any number of specialty stations, their channel allegiances as fickle as the fingers on their remote controls. By JOE CHIDLEY

World

A blight at the centre of power

IN WASHINGTON The southeast corner of Washington, D.C., is a rough part of town, a far cry from the tourist city of magnificent monuments and fashionable Georgetown streets. It is the kind of place where even the police get nervous, which is exactly what happened on one recent day. By ANDREW PHILLIPS

World

War and memory

After screen legend Marlene Dietrich died in 1992, hundreds of fans made a pilgrimage to her grave site at the back corner of a leafy Berlin cemetery. There on the freshly laid dirt, the words of one handwritten note stood out among the wilting flowers. By NOMI MORRIS

Canada

John Munro's quest for redemption

For a guy who pumped so many hands over the years, built a political network that turned Hamilton into his personal fiefdom and had his elbows on the cabinet table in every one of Pierre Trudeau’s governments, John Munro has ended up remarkably bereft of friends. By BRUCE WALLACE

Business

Assessing Black's Toronto plan

Apologies for this trite journalistic trickery, but we feel the urge to open a direct line of communication, or direct report, as you would say in your business. We have concerns about certain rumblings within the Southam empire, and we thought we should share these with you. By JENNIFER WELLS

Opening Notes

An anchor's right to speak out As the world’s athletes paraded into the stadium for the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Radio-Canada TV co-hosts Bernard Derome and Marie-Josée Turcotte waded into controversy. By BARBARA WICKENS

Columns

Trading principles for popularity

The history of Canadian politics is filled with people and parties who, to put it politely, often exercise their democratic right to change their minds. The best example is Lucien Bouchard, who has belonged to three of the five parties in the House of Commons (missing only Reform and the New Democrats). By Anthony Wilson-Smith

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For the Record

Some Cuban sizzle

Ry Cooder’s résumé is one of the most impressive in popular music. He has lent his guitar skills to recordings by The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison and Neil Young, among many others. His own albums, which have won critical acclaim and modest commercial success, are respected for their loving treatment of such early styles as Dixieland, gospel, blues and 1950s rock ’n’ roll. By NICHOLAS JENNINGS

October 61997