pakp suggested readings

Pakistan's Dar named best umpire for the third consecutive year

2011-09-12T23:06:00.001-07:00

Pakistan umpire Aleem Dar has won the David Shepherd trophy for the Umpire of the Year for the third consecutive year at the ICC Awards ceremony in London. He beat competition from Steve Davis, Ian Gould and five-time winner Simon Taufel.

Way to go Aleem... you are a great ambassador for the country. We are all proud of you!

LUMS professor among 35 'World’s Top Young Innovators 2011

2011-08-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

Associate Professor, School of Science and Engineering, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) Dr Umar Saif has been recognized by MIT Technology Review as one of the top 35 innovators (TR35) in the world. He is the first Pakistani scholar to have been selected for the prestigious TR35 award in the last decade.

Redefining Identity: How Young Technologists Are Leading a Silent Revolution in Pakistan

2011-08-19T10:54:00.000-07:00

Redefining Identity takes a look at the amazing entrepreneurship and creativity that is being unleashed in Pakistan, where young technologists are coming together to lead a very real revolution that has powerful social, economic and technological implications. In doing so, these young Pakistanis are also transforming Pakistan's perception in the minds of millions of people all around the world who use their products and appreciate their creativity. This 10 minute film is a rare glimpse into the reality of today's Pakistan. Anyone with an interest in technology and startups in general, or Pakistan specifically, will find it a very worthwhile watch.

Two thumbs up!

Visit the Beautiful Pakistan

2011-08-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

A beautifully done video depicting the cultural diversity and the natural beauty of Pakistan. It gives us an insight into the softer image of this country, the warm heartedness and inclusive nature of its citizens and the opportunities Pakistan has to offer. And not to forget its culinary delights......

Great effort... Enjoy!

Jazz album by Pakistan music veterans storms western charts

2011-08-13T12:13:00.000-07:00

An ensemble of veteran Pakistani musicians has pulled off an unlikely coup – storming western charts with an innovative jazz album and prompting comparisons with Buena Vista Social Club's rediscovery of a lost generation of Cuban musicians.

The Sachal Studios Orchestra has captured imaginations with a cover of Dave Brubeck's Take Five blending sweeping classical violins with sitars, tablas and other eastern instruments.

The piece has brought praise from jazz greats – Brubeck, 90, says it is "the most interesting" version of Take Five he's ever heard – and propelled the orchestra's album towards the top of the iTunes jazz charts in the US and UK. The album, which includes versions of The Girl from Ipanema, Misty and Desafinado, reached the top 10 in both countries.

The project is the brainchild of Izzat Majeed, a millionaire philanthropist based in London. Eight years ago Majeed built a state-of-the-art studio for the orchestra: engineers from Abbey Road Studios provided technical advice, while western session musicians were hired to play instruments unavailable in Pakistan.

Click here to watch Sachal Studios Orchestra play Take Five .

ShopHoller is here!

2011-07-30T23:08:00.000-07:00

Some friends and I recently launched a mobile app, ShopHoller. The app, currently available for the iPhone, allows users to 'holler' out to their friends for real-time, personalized shopping advice. Just snap a picture, select friends or social networks to send the picture to, and enjoy their advice as it rolls in.

If you want to learn more, check out our amateur video on YouTube!

Try out the app and let us know what you think. We are keen to learn and improve it. You can download the app from the ShopHoller link on iTunes

Mudassir

Moghul emperor Babur and Kabul - Economist

2011-01-02T06:22:00.000-08:00

Foreign invaders have always had a difficult relationship with Afghanistan. The diary of Babur, the first Moghul emperor, offers some lessons in how to manage—and to enjoy—the place

Babur’s pedigree primed him for greatness. On his father’s side he was descended from Timur-i-lang (Tamburlaine), whose empire stretched from the Caucasus to Delhi, and on his mother’s side from Genghis Khan, who conquered Asia from the Black Sea to Beijing. But by the time Babur was born, in 1483, the empires had crumbled and the emperors’ descendants had multiplied into a horde of princelings fighting for loot and territory.

Though Kabul was not rich in grain, it was a cosmopolitan city—Babur reckoned that 11 or 12 languages were spoken—on the trade route between Central Asia and India. “Up from Hindustan come ten, fifteen, twenty thousand caravans bringing slaves, cotton cloth, refined and unrefined sugar and aromatic roots. Many merchants are not satisfied with 300% or 400% profit.” Mr Dale reckons that merchants provided most of the revenues for Babur’s remarkably sophisticated taxation system. They were taxed at 5% on gold coins and 2.5% on silver. There was also a tariff on foreign trade (of 5% or 10%, depending on whether the merchants were Muslim or not) an income tax on harvests (a third to a half) and a progressive wealth tax on flocks (one sheep from a herd of 40-120, and two from herds of 120 and up).

Education Reform In Pakistan - Sir Michael Barber (McKinsey)

2010-12-31T12:35:00.000-08:00

Some startling facts from this report by Sir Michael Barber, the co-chair of the Pakistan Education Task Force.

- One-third of primary age children, a larger proportion of girls than boys, are not in school at all.

- Around 35 per cent of those children who do attend school and make it to grade 3 cannot do single digit subtraction.

- Each day around a quarter of the country’s teachers do not turn up to school; each day, many thousands of schools that could be open are not – “ghost schools” they are called.

- Government school facilities are very poor – 60 per cent have no electricity and 34 per cent no drinking water.

- The low-cost private sector delivers better performance than the government schools at around a quarter of the unit cost.

- Karachi, a city of around 16 million people and four million children of school education age, has just 600,000 children enrolled in public schools and up to two million more in low-cost private schools. This suggests perhaps a million children unaccounted for; Karachi, it seems likely, can lay claim to the unenviable title of the worst educated megacity on the planet.

The powerpoint slides (link) show that we spend about 50% less on education than India, and that a cost of a single chair to the Ministry of Education is at least four times to that of the open market price.

Alcoholism booms in 'dry' Pakistan - Guardian

2010-12-31T11:12:00.000-08:00

Pakistan has been dry for much longer – since 1977 – and drinkers risk severe punishment: 80 lashes of the whip under strict Islamic laws. But the law is ignored, alcohol is widely available and, for those who go too far, addiction clinics offering help are quietly flourishing.

Demand for alcoholism counselling is so brisk that many clinics now take out prominent newspaper ads, some depicting a depressed man nursing a glass of scotch – a rare public nod towards a thinly veiled drinking culture.

Waiters serve scotch on the sidelines of society weddings and corporate functions; ministers drink openly at functions but hide their glasses when photographers come round. Bootleggers offer home delivery, so that ordering a bottle of booze is as easy as calling for a pizza, and likely to arrive more quickly.

The last time a Pakistani drinker received 80 lashes was under the Islamist dictator Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s; these days the culture has changed. Former president Pervez Musharraf made little secret of his fondness for a drink; neither does his successor, Asif Ali Zardari.

Asian Britons seek discount plastic surgery in Pakistan - Independent

2006-01-24T05:56:00.000-08:00

A growing number of well-educated, British-born Asian women in their 20s are combining annual visits to relatives in Pakistan with cut-price, nip-and-tuck operations, surgeons say. Hundreds of Pakistani Britons are booking cheap plastic surgery in their ancestral homeland, three times the number just four years ago. Nose jobs, tummy tucks, liposuction and breast enlargements are the favoured treatments for many who feel "pressure to have Western features" but who want to pay only a fraction of what they would be charged in Britain. The women are mostly middle-class professionals who take 10 days out of their time abroad to travel from the small villages where their extended families live to Islamabad, Lahore or Karachi where almost all the country's 70 registered plastic surgeons are based.

India to finally pay up 1996 Cricket World Cup dues - Reuters

2006-01-24T05:47:00.000-08:00

"India will hand over money owed to the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) from the 1996 World Cup, an Indian cricket official said on Monday. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has been holding around $4 million belonging to the Pakistan-India-Sri Lanka Committee (PILCOM) which organised the 1996 World Cup. This was due to long-pending tax cases in India, some of which are yet to be settled, Indian board treasurer N.Srinivasan told reporters. 'Pending the resolution of the income-tax matters, their (Pakistan's) portion of the money would be released on the PCB furnishing a suitable guarantee,' he said. India and Pakistan are leading a joint south Asian bid to stage the 2011 World Cup. "

Pakistan to show Bollywood film - BBC

2006-01-24T05:44:00.000-08:00

A film from Bollywood's movie industry is to be screened in Pakistani cinemas - despite an official ban on Indian films lasting almost half a century. Sohni Mahiwal - based on folklore popular in the Punjab region - has been given special exemption. The Pakistan Film Producers Association said the move did not mean the overall ban on Indian films was being lifted. Pakistan banned screenings of Indian films in 1965, when the countries fought the second of their three wars ... said the distributor of Sohni Mahiwal, a 1984 romance and Indo-Russian joint production, had approached Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for the waiver. The film's distributor, Ali Zafar, said he had imported the film in 1989 and had fought a legal battle since then to screen the film in Pakistan.

So an American comic walks into Pakistan - Toronto Star

2006-01-19T23:37:00.000-08:00

With a provocative title like Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, how could Albert Brooks not grab our attention?

The picture opens with Brooks being cold-shouldered by a real-life movie director (Penny Marshall) and casting director (Victoria Burrows) before being inexplicably chosen by the U.S. government for a top-secret project. (Maybe the President saw Finding Nemo.) His mission, should he decide to accept it, is to journey to Muslim lands to find out what makes people there laugh. Perhaps if Americans understand Muslims better, the reasoning goes, they might feel less inclined to fear or want to kill them. The premise is potentially hilarious, not to mention seriously provocative, and there are several ways Brooks could have approached it. He opts for the path of least offence, by making himself the butt of his mild humour.

Muslim investors top 2005 faith funds table - MSN Money

2006-01-08T12:39:00.000-08:00

In a year when the Standard & Poor's 500 index has nudged up barely 5 per cent, investors would have done better by investing according to the principles of the Koran. Among the small but rapidly growing band of faith-based mutual funds, the main US Muslim fund has beaten funds run according to the principles of the Catholics, the Mennonites, the Presbyterians, and the evangelical Christians. In fact, with the $100m (£58m, €84m) Islamic Amana Growth fund posting a 22 per cent return for the year, they have pretty much beaten everyone, according to data provided by Lipper.

America's first Islamic sorority formed - WP Herald

2006-01-08T12:27:00.000-08:00

America's first Islamic sorority is more about God than being Greek. There will be no beer at Gamma Gamma Chi functions, in obedience to Islamic law, nor will there be group fraternizing with the opposite sex. "Partying is allowed in Islam, but it's how you party," said Althia Collins, an Alexandria businesswoman who has helped create it. "You can have fun with girls and it doesn't have to include men."

Thirteen women at the University of Kentucky will form the sorority's first college chapter this spring, and another group is waiting to start at the University of Maryland's Baltimore campus. A citywide chapter in the District, made up of women from several local universities, is also in the works. Along with pledges, there will be prayer to Allah. Instead of hazing, there's hijab, the scarf some devout Muslim women wear. Covering one's hair is not mandated within Gamma Gamma Chi; in fact, four out of the five board members do not wear one. Mrs. Collins' daughter, Imani Abdul-Haqq, came up with concept for Gamma Gamma Chi while rushing sororities at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C. As Mrs. Abdul-Haqq entered the room wearing her scarf, "They looked at her like she had three heads," Mrs. Collins said.

Earthquake Rattles Political Landscape in Pakistan - VOA

2005-12-01T08:42:00.000-08:00

The massive response to the Kashmir earthquake has changed political relationships in Pakistan. The United States and Kashmir's Islamic parties are gaining friends, while President Pervez Musharraf and his allies are suffering in popularity.

Social commentators say the massive quake also upended the political landscape. The public is questioning Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's handling of the crisis, which many victims complained was slow. On the other hand, outsiders, including the United States, are seeing an unexpected spike in popularity.

Every few minutes U.S. military helicopters fly over Muzaffarabad's congested streets. In the city, more than 200 Americans soldiers run a field hospital. Army physicians say they have already treated nearly 2,000 patients. Doctors say the hospital is doing more than just saving lives, it is also improving the U.S. reputation on the front lines of the war on terror. Elizabeth Clawson is one of the Army doctors at the camp.

But the United States is not alone in winning the hearts of quake victims. On the other side of town, another relief operation is also under way, staffed by a very different group of volunteers. A member of the Islamic group Hizbullah Mujahideen uses an old megaphone to offer food and shelter to weary quake victims. The group runs a sprawling relief camp on the edge of Muzaffarabad. It is the largest of at least half a dozen operations run by known militant groups in the quake zone.

Old Cinema in Pakistan Gets New Life After Quake - IHT

2005-11-30T10:59:00.000-08:00

Tucked inside a popular bazaar, there once was a place where women shimmied their hips in full Technicolor splendor. Today, it is a refuge for women who can barely lift their legs. It is an odd transformation, wrought by the devastating earthquake on Oct. 8.

The Melody Cinema had sat fallow for two years, ever since a mob of religious radicals set it on fire and reduced it to nothing more than a charred, trash-filled shell. Today, it is reborn as the Melody Relief and Rehabilitation Center, and the occupants of its 53 beds are women with broken backs.

The youngest patient is 13, the oldest 50. Most of the others are in their 20s and 30s, women who had been cooking and cleaning at home when the earth shook and roofs collapsed. They have all undergone surgery for spinal-cord injuries, and the Melody is a way station of sorts, a place to rest and recover before returning to their homes or whatever is left of them. Their futures are full of uncertainty. Even if they can get into a wheelchair, how will they survive in the terraced hills back home? If they are destined to be paralyzed for life, how will they take care of their homes and families?

Among the married patients, there is this aching question: Will their husbands abandon them for an able-bodied woman? Among the unmarried, another agony: What man will have them now?

Pakistani entrepreneur acquires French designer - Fashion

2005-11-30T02:49:00.000-08:00

THE frills and flounces of couture are to embrace the button-down world of Silicon Valley with the sale of Emanuel Ungaro, the Paris fashion house, to the internet tycoon, Asim Abdullah. The luxury label, best known for its brightly hued floral designs, is being sold by Salvatore Ferragamo, the Italian footwear firm, for an undisclosed price. Ungaro’s resident designer, Vincent Darre, will be dumped in favour of a designer with fresh vision, whose identity has not yet been decided on.

Ungaro has fallen on hard times, running up €21 million (£14 million) in losses last year on revenues of €30 million, according to reports in the textile trade. It is the second loss-making French couture brand to surrender to America this year, following the disposal in January of Christian Lacroix to Falic, a Miami-based duty-free retailer. Ferragamo, which acquired Ungaro in 1996, has been looking for a way out of the high-cost and low-profit world of haute couture and Ungaro has found an unexpected benefactor in the form of a California-based venture captialist.

Born in Karachi, 42-year old Asim Abdullah made his fortune from hi-tech investments, notably the sale of his company Veo Systems, to Commerce One, the business-to-business internet marketplace. He made $300 million (£171 million) from the flotation of Commerce One in 2001 and bought himself a $15 million mansion on Pebble Beach, a highly sought-after piece of California real estate, only to see it burned down by arsonists two years later. Last summer, the entrepreneur was spotted in Paris at Ungaro’s fashion show, the first clue that the Silicon valley millionaire was to become a fashion sugar daddy.

Asim Abdullah is an active member of the Pakistani entrepreneurial community in the Silicon Valley. He is a charter member of OPEN's Silicon Valley chapter. I found the following on him in a 2000 issue of Silicon India:

In 1981, teenager Asim Abdullah came to the US from his native Karachi. He enrolled at the University of Michigan to study electrical engineering, and ended up earning a bachelors degree in computer science as well.

After graduating, Abdullah went on to work for Rolm Systems and later for Taligent, a joint venture company started by Apple, Hewlett-Packard and IBM. In 1996, Abdullah quit just months before the alliance was abandoned, and joined CommerceNet, an organization funded by the US government’s Department of Commerce to help the country transition to e-commerce. Since then, he hasn’t looked back — except with success and satisfaction, that is.

As executive director of CommerceNet, Abdullah established global alliances and, even more importantly, established a rapport with Jay Tenenbaum, a technological visionary whose company was the first to conduct an electronic transaction and auction over the Web. In 1997, he and Tenenbaum took technology developed at CommerceNet and started Veo Systems, with the objective of developing technology to facilitate the even more lucrative B2B, or business-to-business, e-commerce. They also secured funding from the National Institute of Science and Technology, a Department of Commerce organization.

According to Abdullah, the biggest challenge for Veo was in crafting XML, a programming language that emerged from the publishing business into a useful tool for software engineering. With that vision in mind, Veo made some smart market moves and assembled a 35-person team, hiring proficient XML programmers from faraway lands including Russia. He also hired two other sets of programming talent: those experienced in distributed objects from, notably, Sun Microsystems, and those that were already crafting e-commerce software.

Veo established a lead over most other companies while Abdullah, its CEO, led
the company to crucial initiatives. Late last year, Veo merged with Commerce One, another hot B2B company poised for an initial public offering. When, a few months later, Commerce One went public, Abdullah was sitting on a pile of wealth. He holds 1.8 million shares of Commerce One that are valued currently at over $300 million.

Abdullah is clearly enjoying the fruits of being an early mover.

WHO investigating Congo fever in Karachi - Reuters

2005-11-29T21:11:00.000-08:00

A three-member medical team has been despatched to Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi to oversee the health situation after reports of some 40 suspected cases of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF) over the last two months. At least two people suspected of having contracted CCHF, including one female doctor, died last week, according to health officials.

Health authorities on Sunday sent blood samples from the five suspected CCHF patients to the National Institute of Virology in South Africa for further tests to ascertain the disease. CCHF is one of the severest human viral diseases. Symptoms include headaches, muscular pain, vomiting, massive bleeding through the nose, mouth and ears and internal organs. According to WHO officials, 200 cases of CCHF have been reported since the first case appeared in 1976, out of which some 63 people had died of the disease.

HIV/AIDS set to spread in Pakistan, warns UNAIDS - Reuters

2005-11-27T20:10:00.000-08:00

Pakistan could see the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS among the general population due to a combination of high-risk behaviour and limited knowledge, warns the latest report from the UN joint programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). The UNAIDS policy position report entitled, 'Intensifying HIV Prevention', and released on Monday, has called for urgent prevention programmes to limit HIV transmission within, and beyond, high-risk groups such as intravenous drug users and sex workers. According to the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP), some 2,943 HIV/AIDS cases have been reported since the programme started in 1986, of which 321 were full-blown AIDS cases. The programme also records a 7:1 male to female ratio. However, estimates of HIV/AIDS cases in the country, according to UNAIDS, go as high as 70,000 to 80,000.

The UNAIDS report noted, a major epidemic has already been detected among injecting drug users in the southern port city of Karachi, where 23 percent of users were found to be HIV positive in 2004. At the same time, a survey of sex workers in the country's main trading city of Karachi showed that only 2 percent of female sex workers used condoms. One in five sex workers could not recognise a condom or did not know that condoms could prevent HIV/AIDS, the report maintained.

Pakistan remains in denial, reports IRNA:Pakistan disputes UN report on AIDS spread

Pakistani spices tingling Indian taste buds - Navhind Times

2005-11-27T20:06:00.000-08:00

Ready-mix spices from Pakistan seem to be up for grabs at the India International Trade Fair (IITF), considering the rush of visitors jostling for a wide variety of fare on sale. Spices of major Pakistani brands like National, Shan, Laziza, Mehran and Mersi are vying for space on the Indian kitchen shelf this time.

"The taste of the Pakistani masala is very good, besides giving a different flavour to the curries," said Ms Hema Gupta, a housewife, who despite being a vegetarian picked up many a ready-mix spices for meat dishes. The reason was the green label on the packet, denoting vegetarian ingredients, said Mr Nitin Goel of Ruchin Enterprises, which has recently been appointed the main stockists of Shan Products in the country.

Body art in vogue among Lahore youth - Webindia123

2005-11-27T20:01:00.000-08:00

Body art is fast becoming a fashion statement among the young in this most liberal city in Pakistan, and they are flaunting tattoos and body piercings despite rebuke and ridicule. Naveed Ahmed, a tattoo artist, said boys and girls in the age group of 14 to 28 years and even older clients came for body art. The favoured designs for tattoos were maps, dragons, reptiles, alphabets, comic book heroes and flowers. Ahmed, who has two body art parlours (X-Tra 1 and 2) here, said he had tattooed 900 people, but body piercing was more popular. He has pierced more than 8,000 bellies, ears, noses, nipples, eyebrows, lips, chins and private parts for customers, according to the Daily Times newspaper. On an average, Ahmed said he made four tattoos and 10 piercings every day and had more female clients than male. Belly button piercing was a favourite with the girls while boys preferred eyebrow rings.

While body art might be a hit with the fashion conscious youth, their parents are not too thrilled about their children's frivolities. According to a student, parents were not ready to accept the new "cultural variation" or "fashion plague," as his parents referred to it. He said his parents thought his tattoo looked like he had got burnt and his wounds had turned black. Hamza, a graphic design student, said going around with tattoos on the neck or elbows was not easy as people stared hard and often ridiculed him.

Justice System in Ruins in Pakistan Quake Area - Los Angeles Times

2005-11-27T19:59:00.000-08:00

Aamir Nazir knows it has never been easy to dispense justice in the hardscrabble Himalayan mountains of Kashmir. He regularly worked with an overcrowded docket and in dilapidated courtrooms. But at least Nazir had a courtroom to call his own. After last month's magnitude 7.6 earthquake that killed more than 87,000 people, he spent weeks banging his gavel in a crowded bus station parking lot. He recently moved into makeshift quarters, but fears they could crumble in the intermittent aftershocks.

"I worry every day I walk into this room," he said of the tiny office near the demolished court lockup. The Oct. 8 earthquake played havoc with all areas of life throughout Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. About four-fifths of public buildings collapsed in the isolated rural region, including an estimated 10,000 schools, according to government estimates. But one sector that hasn't received much attention is the judicial system. Hundreds of courtrooms were destroyed and at least 1,500 attorneys killed, as well as 100 judges and countless defendants.

Things to learn from India: Shahid Javed Burki - Dawn

2005-11-27T00:26:00.000-08:00

While I was in India last month I came across an American friend who had also travelled to Delhi to pursue some interest in development economics. This was his first visit to the country and he was initially very impressed with what he saw. He had also read Thomas Friedman’s book from which I quoted in the column last week. “India is indeed an economic superpower; one that will change the structure of the global economy”, he said to me, fully agreeing with Friedman’s thesis.

My friend was impressed with the hotel in which both of us were staying; impressed with the sights and sounds of Delhi; impressed with Gurgaon, the centre of Delhi’s high-tech economy; impressed with the way the Indian middle class was engaged in their country’s development.

He also liked what he saw of Indian art, Indian music, and the country’s film history. He asked me whether there was much in common between India and Pakistan; after all the two were once part of the same economic and political entity. When I said that the two countries had much in common and that what he had read and heard about Pakistan was not the Pakistani reality, he seemed very sceptical about my response. I am sure he attributed it to a misplaced sense of patriotism.

When I left Delhi and returned to Washington, my American friend and his wife went on a tour of the “golden triangle” — tourist sites in Delhi, Agra and Jaipur. They then saw a great more of the real India. Remembering the conversation we had he called me upon returning to the United States. He said that he had seen two Indias; one was well integrated into the global economy, the other was poor, extremely crowded, with poor infrastructure, poor housing, and an incredible number of street dwellers. The second India was not very different from Africa, a continent he knew well. He was now not very sure whether to see India as a success story or one still struggling very hard to succeed.

In India, youths party on - Newsday

2005-11-27T00:22:00.000-08:00

Where marriage has since ancient days been deemed a sacred duty, Yuvika Bader, a quick-tongued 20-year-old college student, rejects the very concept of matrimony. "If someone's going to live with someone, then I'd just do it," she said recently. "I don't need to get the marriage stamp on it."

Where not long ago few besides beggars and cows wandered after dark, the son of a leather exporter goes clubbing four nights a week. The long-haired 24-year-old, who requested anonymity, said he once downed a vial of LSD and became convinced he was the Hindu god Shiva. "I was over and done with," he said.

And where older generations view luxury spending as vulgar, Bhavdeep Mehta, 24, a retail manager, has splurged on three cars, a giant flat-screen TV and a $370 cell phone, his sixth upgrade in five years. "Phones go out of fashion very quickly," he said.