Periscope

Slobodan Milosevic's funeral last week was but a prelude. The dominoes he sent toppling will continue to fall over the coming months, likely culminating in the territorial breakup of his own nation.

Begin with the untenable coupling that is the rump of the former Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro. The latter intends to hold a May 21 referendum on independence. Polls show a slender but clear majority in favor. If the vote to separate is indeed yes, another newly independent European nation will have emerged from the Balkan implosion.

It won't be alone. Milosevic's death coincided with the kick-off of formal talks between Belgrade and the international community on the future of Kosovo. The province has been a U.N. protectorate since 1999, but there is little doubt that its uncertain status will soon be resolved, possibly as early as this summer. Said EU Enlargement Commissioner Ollie Rehn just last week: "There can be no return for Kosovo to Belgrade's rule." The negotiations underway in Vienna, mediated by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, center on a single main issue: how to protect the rights of minority Serbs when the United Nations declares Kosovo independent. Serbia's erstwhile ally, Russia, has signaled that it will not veto such a resolution, as has China.

Meanwhile, Brussels has given Belgrade an ultimatum. Serbia will have no chance of joining the European Union--nor receive further aid--until Milosevic's partners in war crimes, Gen. Ratko Mladic and the former president of the Serb Republic of Bosnia, Radovan Karadzic, are arrested and sent to The Hague. Last week, Europe's foreign ministers set a cutoff date: April 5. It remains to be seen whether Belgrade will comply, but the odds have never looked so good. Perhaps 2006 will be the year when the fortunes of the Balkans finally turn.

A new French rule allowing bosses to fire workers under 26 within the first two years of employment without cause was supposed to stimulate hiring and bring down stubbornly high unemployment. Instead, it's spurred student riots. Are the protesters right to be so skeptical? Data from a new study by the London-based Centre for Economic Performance suggest that while countries that have adopted hire-and-fire labor policies do post lower unemployment rates, those numbers can hide cases of chronic joblessness. Take Britain, where the official unemployment rate of 4.7 percent is roughly half that of France or Germany. The 8.6 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 who have simply given up looking for work is higher than the averages for all developed countries. This level of long-term joblessness is more than four times higher than it was in the highly regulated mid-1970s. The kids may have a case after all.

The latest quiet reform undertaken by India's government deals with one of its oldest problems--land reform. Across the country, thousands of acres of land are tied up in disputes over decrepit edifices. But last week, a landmark Supreme Court judgment removed restrictions on the sale of land owned by Mumbai's defunct textile mills, freeing up hundreds of acres in the city center for development. Is this a turning point? On the surface, certainly. Six hundred acres of valuable land in the heart of the city are now slated for massive projects including office buildings, high-rise apartments and shopping malls. However, environmentalists and representatives of Mumbai's millions of slum dwellers argue that unfettered development of the mill lands will do nothing to solve the housing crisis facing the city's poor, as well as exacerbate water and power shortages. An equally pressing question is whether the ruling will speed the conversion of agricultural land on the edge of India's cities into much-needed residential and industrial developments--a transition to modernity that until now has been hopelessly slowed by red tape.

Will this weekend's elections mark the end of Ukraine's Orange Revolution? Last week Kiev's Independence Square was a sea of blue--not orange--flags, waved by tens of thousands of supporters of Moscow-backed Viktor Yanukovych, revolution leader Viktor Yushchenko's archrival. Some demonstrators even paraded an orange-painted toilet to show their disgust at broken Orange promises for a better future. They complain that the government has failed to deliver economic growth, crack down on corrupt oligarchs or find new investment for Eastern Ukraine's rust-belt heavy industries.

Enter Yanukovych. With promises to use his close relationship with Moscow to get Ukrainians a better deal on energy and give their economy a much-needed boost, it's no wonder polls predict his party will come out on top in the March 26 vote--forcing a coalition with closer ties to Russia. Apparently, for most Ukrainians, the romantic dream of independence from Moscow hasn't lived up to the cozy comforts of the past.

Theater: It's 'Grey Gardens,' Again The documentary "Grey Gardens" has long been adored by fashionistas and gay men, but now the cult classic is going mainstream with an off-Broadway musical and an upcoming book and movie. The 1975 film examined the bizarre lives of Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Little Edie, a former debutante. (Yes, those Bouviers--an aunt and first cousin of Jackie O.) The eccentric pair lived in a decrepit 28-room East Hampton, New York, mansion with no running water but swarms of cats and raccoons. Why the love? "Little Edie's so inspirational to a lot of disenfranchised people," says Scott Frankel, composer of the musical. "She somehow managed to put on some incredible headgear and still think the best years were ahead. She faced each day with optimism, energy and style." The show stars theater vets Mary Louise Wilson and Christine Ebersole and begins with Little Edie's brief engagement to Joseph Kennedy Jr., which was mysteriously broken. Those who can't make it to New York can content themselves with a newly released DVD that has unseen footage and also look forward to a scrapbook of Little Edie's photos and letters. It was also just announced that Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange will star in a movie about the Bouvier pair. It's another revival for Camel-not.

Hugo Weaving :I was actually planting trees up at my property [in Australia], and [director] James McTeigue rang. They were almost four weeks into the shoot, and he said they were having some problems with James [Purefoy] and they made the decision to say goodbye to him, and was I interested and how quickly could I get to Berlin.

It was actually very important to get the right performance, because there were minute movements in the mask, and if they were out of sync with what I'm saying, it looked ridiculous.

I was always doing that. It's a very pleasurable feeling. I don't know how pleasurable it was for her. She slapped my hand away a couple of times.

At the moment, with the beard, not really. I have had some strange letters, but they were sort of tragic rather than geeky. Nicki Gostin

Garry Wills's latest book, "What Jesus Meant," should affront most of his fellow Christians--right from the foreword, which argues that Christ was not one of them. The megachurch set won't care to hear that "Jesus did not come to replace the Temple with other buildings, whether huts or rich cathedrals." The Christian left, committed to good works, won't care to hear that Jesus "does not work miracles from humanitarian motives." The Christian right, cozy with secular power, won't care to hear that "if they want the state to be politically Christian, they are not following Jesus." Pope Benedict XVI really won't care to hear that he, "like his predecessors, is returning to the religion that Jesus renounced, with all its paraphernalia of priesthood." What parishioner of any denomination wants to hear that the Gospels are "a deep threat to the institutional church," since Jesus opposed "just about every form of religion we know"?

This devout contrarianism is no less than you'd expect from Wills--who followed his 2000 broadside "Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit" with a work of history and spiritual autobiography called "Why I Am a Catholic." He's a tough-minded, many-minded man: a historian, a critic and a social and political observer, as well as a Christian apologist. In this book he praises Jesus as a "radical egalitarian," a proto-feminist and a subversive who "was never afraid to speak truth to power." He critiques the lingering notion that sex is somehow "unclean," and he sticks up for the right wing's latest punching bags: "Those persecuting gays are persecuting Jesus."

Wills does let some inconsistencies slip in, but overall, gives believers a spiritual workout. And he puts Jesus, whoever we think he is, in our faces with enough immediacy to startle even those who think they know him.