Khadija Niazi, a 12-year old from Lahore, Pakistan, is taking online courses offered by a new wave of cyber-based educational platforms like Coursera and Udacity.  She was recently interviewed by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman at World Economic Forum 2013 at Davos, Switzerland.…

Latest funding of Ashar Aziz's FireEye and Zia Yusuf's Streetline rank #1 and #4 among top 5 VC deals in Silicon Valley announced in January 2013, according to Silicon Valley Business Journal.…

Karachi Fashion Week 2013 is yet another illustration of the fact that life goes on in Pakistan in spite of the terror and violence that makes daily headlines. It's a testament to Pakistanis' extraordinary resilience and great capacity to take it all stride. Here are a few pictures of…

In spite of setbacks from the US CIA's fake vaccination scheme in 2011 and the killing of polio workers by the Taliban in 2012, the WHO says Pakistan is on track to be declared polio free in April this year.…

Deadly skirmishes started between Indian and Pakistani forces along LoC in the disputed territory of Kashmir in early January 2013, barely weeks after Pakistan Army doctrine acknowledged domestic militancy as the biggest threat to national security.…

What has caused a sudden and tragic jump in mass casualty attacks in Pakistan with over 200 deaths, mostly of Hazara Shias, in a single day on January 10, 2013? Is it just impunity or blow back from intensified US drone attacks early in 2013 as President Barack Obama accelerates US pull-out from Afghanistan? Or is it lack of national political consensus in…

The year 2012 was a mixed bag. Economy continued its modest recovery with the stock market hitting new records but it was marred by rising civilian casualties and the worsening energy crisis. The coalition government led by the Pakistan Peoples' Party is nearing its full term with a new prime minister and the political parties have begun campaigning for general elections in the first half of 2013.…

Whether it was the bloody Civil War to abolish slavery in America or the Meiji Restoration that transformed feudal Japan into an industrial giant, history tells us that violent conflict has been an integral part of the process of social change.  Pakistan, too, is experiencing a similar violent social revolution. It started well before the terrorist attacks  of 911 and the subsequent US invasions of…

Eclipse of Feudalism in Pakistan

By Arif Hasan

Mechanisation and middlemen: A customised tractor with a trailer full of harvested sugarcane, in Pakistan.…

A 2012 study of 22 nations conducted by Prof Miles Corak for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and

Development (OECD) has found income

heritability to be greater in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, China and 5 other countries than in Pakistan.



The study's findings, presented by the author in testimony to the US Senate Finance Committee on July 6, 2012, rely on the…

Even with the run-up (in KSE-100), Andrew Brudenell, manager of the HSBC Frontier

Markets fund (HSFAX) in London, says Pakistan is one of the cheapest

markets he follows, at about seven times earnings. He notes that

earnings growth has kept pace with the market. The firms, he adds, are

typically cash-rich, boast strong return on…

Renewed construction boom in Pakistan has helped the nation's cement producers significantly increase their sales and profits. Year-over-year, income at Lucky Cement, Pakistan's largest producer of building materials,  is up 33% while DG Khan Cement, second largest…

"We will rid the country of corruption within the first 90 days in office...I condemned the attack on Malala within 48 hours and was the first to visit her in the hospital...Taliban have killed hundreds of ANP workers...If I condemn the Taliban, they'll kill my workers too." PTI Chief Imran Khan in San Jose, CA. Oct 28, 2012

 …

Media coverage of Pakistan's brisk Eid-ul-Azha livestock sales are a reminder that the nation is among the world's top ten consumers of goat meat and beef based on USDA data.…

Pakistan ranks 16th among 151 countries of the world on the Happy Planet Index (HPI) 2012, slightly behind Bangladesh in 11th place but well ahead of India in 32nd spot.

US is providing $80 million to create multiple VC and PE funds in Pakistan. These funds will be run by professional fund managers who will be required to manage and raise additional money from other sources to start multiple funds. US Embassy in Islamabad told Express Tribune that they expect that "there will be substantial interest from local, regional and international investors”.



Polish Model:…

Negative stereotyping of Prophet Mohammad has been the preoccupation of generations of Western writers from the time of the Crusades to the

present day. Among those who have engaged in highly offensive portrayal of Islam's prophet are Italian poet-philosopher Dante Aligheri (1265-1321), Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos (1325-1450) and European "Enlightenment" leader François-Marie Arouet Voltaire (1694-1778).

More recently, there have been attempts by Salman Rushdie…