Several experts on the region spoke with Salon about what the future holds for Afghanistan and the region and what the United States should do next.

Joel Charny, Asia expert from Refugees International

The Northern Alliance progress means that 70 to 80 percent of the Afghans in need of assistance are now in Northern Alliance territory. This is critical. We need the Northern Alliance to provide enough stability and security so we can provide humanitarian aid.

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Many Germans saw Tuesday's events as an attack against them as well, since the terrorist strike was clearly intended as a blow to the West. But Germany's sense of being closely involved with the American drama was heightened Thursday when news broke that three of the men involved in the hijackings lived in Hamburg and may have planned part of the attacks from here in what is being described as a terrorist cell.

Mohammed Atta, the 33-year-old who likely flew American Airlines flight 11, and his cousin, Marvan Al-Shehhi, 23, who was on American Airlines Flight 175, lived in a $500-a-month apartment in Hamburg's Harburg neighborhood, according to the Bild Zeitung newspaper. The two men left Germany in March 2001 for Florida, where they enrolled in flight classes at Huffman Aviation in the Gulf Coast town of Venice. German commandos reportedly stormed eight apartments in Hamburg and arrested one suspect after being tipped off by the FBI Wednesday night.

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A scan of recent royal relationship catastrophes reveals what a nightmare life has become for crown princes, the world's most eligible bachelors. For every wedding day special on network television, there seem to be dozens more varnish-removing exposés in the tabloids spotlighting every royal misstep -- be it sexual or financial -- which is making it downright difficult for the next in line for the throne to make it from "Will you marry me" to "I do." The torture starts almost from the first date. If the monarchs had their way, the poor princes would lead lonely, celibate lives or wind up with handpicked fiancies bred for the icy confines of proper royal life.

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Around 9 a.m., several dozen people gathered inside Schvneberg's City Hall -- where in 1963 President John F. Kennedy gave his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech -- to witness the union of theologian Gudrun Pannier and lawyer Angelika Baldow, the first lesbian couple to apply for a same-sex civil union in Berlin. Outside were an American-style media stakeout and a few demonstrators, most of whom protested that the new law, which permits "registered domestic partnerships," falls short of bestowing equal legal rights on same-sex unions.

Inside the City Hall, Pannier and Baldow, both 36, exchanged vows before family, friends and reporters. "We exchanged rings symbolically five years ago," says Pannier, "but this is the real thing."

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PhRMA is the association that looks out for the interests of industry giants like Pfizer and Merck on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. What the Times failed to report is that Sullivan has used his own Web site, as well as his posts at the New York Times Magazine and the New Republic to repeatedly -- and controversially - defend the pharmaceutical industry against criticism over its role in the global AIDS pandemic.

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But there were also enough firsts for AIDS activists, women's rights activists and gay and lesbian human rights groups that nearly everyone could walk away with some sense of a victory.

"I must say that, for once, controversial issues were not covered in a blanket of diplomatic language," said Pieter Piot, executive director of the United Nations AIDS program (UNAIDS). "The issues were discussed explicitly." Or, as Gudmund Hernes, director and coordinator of AIDS activities for the U.N. agency UNESCO, put it: "If anyone told me 30 years ago that the General Assembly would talk about condoms, I would have said that it was impossible."

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An alliance of groups argues for loosening intellectual-property laws in Africa and easing pharmaceutical patents in order to make available inexpensive, generic versions of the AIDS drugs that have prolonged countless lives in the West. Groups like ACT-UP, Oxfam and HealthGAP have asked the United Nations to use a good portion of its superfund monies to buy those drugs in bulk and give them to developing countries.

But critics of those proposals say that the generic-drugs plan would discourage pharmaceutical companies from continuing to fund AIDS research. More significantly, they say, the sub-Saharan African countries most affected by the disease lack the healthcare infrastructure necessary to distribute the complicated drug regimens. Without that infrastructure, the cocktail treatments would not be effective.

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That dispute was resolved by late afternoon, but members continued to debate whether a draft declaration pledging to halt the spread of HIV and AIDS -- and offering support for the $7 billion to $10 billion superfund proposed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan -- should specifically cite homosexuals, sex workers or intravenous drug users as people vulnerable to the disease. Conservative Islamic countries, led by Egypt, sought more generic terms that they said would let them support the effort without betraying their religious principles.

The spat over the gay-rights group's inclusion, as well as over semantics, underscores the difficulty the United Nations faces in mounting a unified international response to the worldwide AIDS crises. In North America and Europe, a high percentage of HIV/AIDS cases have been concentrated among those in the gay community, intravenous drug-using populations and sex workers; in Africa, the population most devastated by the illness has been heterosexual. Meanwhile, frank discussion of homosexuality, which is forbidden under Islam, is difficult if not impossible for the governments of more than a few member nations, as is talk of drug use or prostitution.

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Shaking pill bottles filled with pennies, the protesters chanted: "Pills cost pennies, greed costs lives, billions for the fund or millions die." Though the action lasted only a few minutes before a swarm of U.N. security officers sealed off the corridor in the basement and contained the group, the activists managed to bewilder bystanders and delegates alike, some of whom loudly clapped or otherwise cheered the group. The protesters had intended to march around a crowded cafeteria in the bowels of the U.N. headquarters, but made a tactical mistake when they marched down a hallway that led to an exit instead.

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"I feel a great degree of survivor guilt that I am able to live for 20 years with HIV when my brothers and sisters around the world are dying because they don't have my privilege of wealth and access to these drugs," said Eric Sawyer, the 47-year-old co-founder of ACT-UP New York. It compels me to spend every hour I can fighting for their right to access essential medicines."

The fight for access to life-prolonging drugs has led to a remarkable transformation in the public tactics of ACT-UP. Twelve years ago, ACT-UP made global headlines with over-the-top and occasionally violent protests against the government and religious leaders for their slow and sometimes homophobic response to the AIDS epidemic. In the 1990s, many of the organization's early leaders died -- literally. Then came promising new treatments and a focus on lowering drug prices -- a less dramatic story. The group slipped into a state of semi-obscurity until the battle in South Africa began, in 1998, over the manufacture of generic drugs and importation of less expensive brand-name drugs from other countries.

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All good news, right?

Wrong, says Jamie Love. It's just slick humanitarian-flavored spin.

For Love, one of the leading -- and most outspoken -- activists on the front lines of the AIDS-drug pricing wars, the real issue is that the major pharmaceutical companies still maintain control over who can manufacture their patented drugs and how much they cost. As the head of the Ralph Nader-founded Consumer Project on Technology, Love has been trying for years to persuade governments in developing nations to wrest control of AIDS-drug policy and pricing from the pharmaceuticals. Love argues that by issuing so-called compulsory licenses that would allow generic drug manufacturers to create cheap and ubiquitous versions of AIDS drugs, developing nations would drive down the cost of raw materials, increase competition and make the drugs more widely available.

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While it might have looked like the Democrats were firmly opposed to Olson's nomination, the party, according a senior Democratic staffer close to the proceedings, could not recruit the requisite number of 41 to support a filibuster to hold up the Olson nomination. So when the roll call finally came, only two Democrats (Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., and Sen. Ben Nelson, D- Neb.) voted for Olson, but the other 47 who voted against him already knew he was a sure thing.

Olson's success was a remarkable reversal of fortune. When word spread earlier in the week that Sen. Jim Jeffords, R-Vt., would be abandoning the GOP to become an independent, it slowly became clear that the Democrats would win control of the Senate, and Olson's chances began to look grim. Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., predicted Wednesday that, under Democratic Senate rule, "Ted Olson will be practicing law, making a lot of money" in the private sector.

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Brock moved to the center of the drama over President Bush's solicitor general nominee, Ted Olson, when he told a Judiciary Committee staffer and the Washington Post that Olson was integral to the Arkansas Project -- the American Spectator's aggressive investigations into the private life of President Clinton, funded with roughly $2 million from conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife -- despite Olson's claims to the contrary. Olson's supporters struck back, insisting Brock had nothing to do with the project.

"Although Mr. Brock has lately claimed to have been part of the so-called Arkansas Project, he was not," Spectator editor in chief R. Emmett Tyrrell and executive editor Wladyslaw Pleszczynski wrote to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "The record on this is indisputable."

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Fearing that his confirmation could be derailed by the allegations, Olson has attempted to downplay his role in the Arkansas Project, but with each new response, he seems to backpedal from his original account even further.

Olson's evasiveness drew a rebuke from the ranking Democrat on the committee. "The credibility of the person appointed to be the Solicitor General is of paramount importance," Leahy warned in a May 4 letter that followed Olson's written responses to additional questions forwarded by the committee following his April 5 confirmation hearing.

In 1998, Salon ran a number of stories investigating Olson's relationship with the right-wing magazine American Spectator, under whose auspices the Arkansas Project was run, and the circumstances under which he came to provide pro-bono legal representation for key Whitewater witness David Hale. Salon's reporting refutes many of the statements made by Olson at his confirmation hearing and in his subsequent written responses and raises serious questions about his fitness for the office of solicitor general.

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The latest victims were 13-year-old Yaakov Mandel, a dual American-Israeli citizen whose family emigrated to an Israeli settlement several years ago, and 14-year-old Yosef Ishran. Their bodies were found in a cave near the area where they had been hiking while playing hooky. According to police reports, the boys' bodies were so badly mutilated that one could only be identified by his fingerprints. The Associated Press reports that the killers "dipped their hands in the teenagers' blood" and smeared them across the walls of the cave -- an almost biblical act of cruelty.

Police believe Palestinians killed the children, whom they happened upon in a chance encounter, and they have arrested a dozen suspects.

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While it's true that more and more HIV-positive people are responding to treatment with these anti-retroviral drugs, the Food and Drug Administration says the direct-to-consumer ads have crossed the line and are misleading the public about the realities of the disease. On April 27, the FDA ordered pharmaceutical companies to change the ads within 90 days.

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"It was amazing, there was incredible energy," the 26-year-old law student recalls. "South Africa is such an astounding place -- you can still feel the living history of the revolution taking place in their country. The people are incredibly politically literate, active and motivated." The activists' slogan, with its appeal to justice and rejection of pity, fired Kapczynski's imagination. "It's not about feeling bad and doing things out of guilt," she says. "People have a right to medication. They have a right to dignity and to have their own lives and the highest attainable standard of health."

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The diplomats are there to negotiate the sweeping Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement. But to the protesters, Quebec City's new wall is a metaphor for the way the agreement has been negotiated -- with opponents walled out of largely secret negotiations. The FTAA, an idea first spawned at the Summit of the Americas in 1994, would dismantle protectionist policies that ban trade on certain products and services and would eliminate tariffs on goods imported and exported between member countries.

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U.S. Ambassador to China Joseph Prueher sent a letter Tuesday night to Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan expressing "sincere regret" over the loss of a Chinese pilot and stating that the U.S. is "very sorry" for entering Chinese airspace and making an emergency landing on Hainan Island "without verbal clearance." The missive also asked Beijing to "please convey to the Chinese people and to the family of pilot Wang Wei that we are very sorry for their loss." Beijing leaders responded positively to the letter, which provided it with a way out of an increasingly messy diplomatic crisis with the country that holds the linchpin to China's plans for economic growth.

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"Diplomacy sometimes takes a little longer than people would like," Bush told reporters, in a press conference that featured no flashes of diplomatic or political acumen, but no flubs, either.

Bush's defense of diplomacy might have seemed a simple, Stuart Smalley-style affirmation, but it actually took some courage, in the face of mounting criticism of his cautious China policy from conservative allies.

Tuesday's other major China news involved an American political leader doing something that comes much more naturally for him than press conferences do for Bush: The Rev. Jesse Jackson offered to travel to China to negotiate the return of the 24 crew members being held against their will, pending a resolution of the stalemate between the U.S. and China.

The Bush administration is said to have given the Democratic leader a gentle brushoff. Though Jackson was no doubt eager to burnish his image after a love-child scandal forced him to take a leave from public life earlier this year (a leave that lasted only a weekend), he did successfully negotiate the release of American POWs during the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

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