Broadening social protection
In my last article, ‘BISP and institutional reforms’, in these pages on September 25, I discussed some of the recently introduced institutional reforms to make BISP a merit-based and responsive…
Newly obtained documents show Huawei role in shipping prohibited US gear to Iran
China’s Huawei Technologies, which for years has denied violating American trade sanctions on Iran, produced internal company records in 2010 that show it was directly involved in sending prohibited US…
The great Russian oil game in Iraqi Kurdistan
Last October, at the height of a political crisis in Iraq's Kurdistan region, a letter arrived at the Iraqi oil ministry in Baghdad from Igor Sechin, head of Kremlin oil…
Right to humanity
Samer Arbeed, a 44-year-old Palestinian man, was violently arrested on September 25 by plain-clothed Israeli soldiers on suspicion of organising a deadly bombing in the occupied West Bank. After initially…
Automation of revenue collection – I
Pakistan, for the last many decades, has been grappling with the problem of raising adequate revenues, tax and non-tax, to meet needs of both the people and the state. The…
A fool’s world
Blindly driven by economic interests, four different US presidents over the last two decades have taken foolish decisions. Recent events suggest that Trump has followed in their footsteps and made…
A ticking time bomb
On Monday, September 25, hundreds of students at the University of Sargodha (Lahore campus) blocked the Canal Road to protest non-issuance of their degrees. While the protests disrupted the city’s…
A tale of true friendship
Paulo Coelho de Souza, the Brazilian lyricist, eminent literary figure and winner of several international awards, described friendship in the following words: “friendship is not about whom you know the…
17 goals to transform the world
They key to success for transforming our country is to follow the UN development goals as our indigenous development agenda On September 25, the 193 members of UN General Assembly…
Mozambique gas projects raise risk of resource ‘curse’
Carlos Candido has been fishing in Mozambican waters for three decades, unaware until recently of huge gas deposits beneath the ocean floor. Now the gas wealth is about to released,…
