Word: showdowns
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...perhaps managing expectations for the season's highly hyped debut, also downplays the showdown. "We're in a different business," demurs HBO chairman-ceo Chris Albrecht. Says Chase: "I never really have paid attention to ratings." But somebody at HBO does: a memo tacked on Chase's bulletin board listed ratings for episodes from last year. And, business-model differences or no, a Sopranos viewer is still two fewer eyeballs for those new-car ads. "[The networks] are afraid to endorse controversial and innovative programming because they're afraid they'll lose the mainstream, but they're losing much...
...protest over Columbus Day is uncharacteristically heavy-handed in airing Italian-American and other ethnic grievances. But they are close enough. Chase says he already knows how he plans to end the series, and the looming fed investigation and conflicts with the New York Mafia point toward a climactic showdown. But even as the cordon tightens around Tony, the show's emotional range expands. For all its flashy violence, it has become a work of aching sadness and irony about people who can't say what they feel and so express themselves with bullets and money. In the season premiere...
...that has put Terengganu on a collision course with Malaysia's central government. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has no intention of letting parts of his moderate, secularly governed nation go the way of Afghanistan. Until recently, it seemed a showdown would not be necessary. Nine years ago, PAS tried to enact similar laws in Kelantan, a neighboring state that it also governs, yet these were never implemented owing to the threat of legal challenges from Kuala Lumpur. But the party's hard-line leader, cleric Hadi Awang, personally runs Terengganu as Chief Minister and he is a determined adversary...
...Qatar three weeks ago in anger at the lack of progress, telling friends he planned to quit. He was persuaded to return by Egyptian and Jordanian leaders who want to keep the pressure on Arafat for change. Palestinian officials close to Abbas expect him to have a showdown with Arafat soon...
...steered his country in a risky U-turn after Sept. 11 that led him to accept America's invitation to break with Afghanistan's Taliban, overhaul his internal security forces and act as host for the war on terror. And this past May he clashed with India in a showdown that risked nuclear escalation; this time he curbed Pakistan's Kashmir insurgency in exchange for peace. Each time Musharraf has gambled, and so far his luck has held. "I was always a risk taker," he tells TIME from his perch in a gold-upholstered chair in the parlor of Army...