Erdogan risks US ties with provocations

Source: Asia Times: The current corruption scandal in Turkey has the potential to diminish hard-earned gains that the United States has recently made in the Middle East from the Iranian nuclear and Syria chemical weapons deal. It could also derail one of the most important partnerships the United States has […]

Same old mistakes

Source: ET: It seems that bad ideas never truly die in Islamabad. There is a notion among both politicians and bureaucrats that the economy can simply be forced by fiat to behave the way the government wants it to. The latest example of this mode of thinking is the government’s decision […]

Getting Older

Subject: GETTING OLDER A distraught senior citizen phoned her doctor’s office. “Is it true,” she wanted to know, “that the medication you prescribed has to be taken for the rest of my life?” “‘Yes, I’m afraid so,”‘ the doctor told her. There was a moment of silence before the senior […]

Orya Maqbool Jan’s attack on Jinnah

Daily Times: Jinnah’s idea of Islam was of social justice and equality and never of narrow-minded interpretations by the orthodoxy Yasser Latif Hamdani January 13, 2014 Comment  Famous civil-servant columnist Orya Maqbool Jan continues to claim — like a broken record — in column after column that Jinnah’s August 11 […]

Up to 24 injured in school blast

Inquirer.net: by Edwin Fernandez, Williamor Magbanua — KIDAPAWAN CITY, North Cotabato – Twenty-four persons were wounded, 17 of them in critical condition, when an improvised explosive device went off inside a state-run college in Arakan, North Cotabato on Sunday night. Senior Inspector Rolly Oranza, police chief of Arakan, said the […]

Everything was political

Source: The Economist:   ALWAYS keep an eye on the quiet ones. Robert Gates, a Washington veteran who served as George W. Bush’s final defence secretary and stayed on as Barack Obama’s first, has written an incendiary memoir that belies his reputation as an inscrutable, unflappable team player (Team Obama […]

Religion on campus

Source: The Economist: Theology is losing ground in higher education across western Europe. But in certain specific ways, religion and religious culture have become a very hot campus topic, at British universities in particular. We’re not talking here about religion as a subject for academic study, but about faith as […]