BOOK REVIEW The key to global British power GCHQ: The uncensored story of Britain’s most secret intelligence agency by Richard J Aldrich Reviewed by Mahan Abedin “GCHQ provides intelligence, protects information and informs relevant UK policy to keep our society safe and successful in the Internet Age“, so reads the headline message on the Government Communication Headquarters website. This is a classic example of British understatement, effortlessly disguising what is in fact the most strategic asset in British foreign policy formulation and implementation. If there is one single organization that explains the longevity of the United Kingdom’s global reach in … Continue reading GCHQ

India searches for techno nirvana By Raja Murthy “What an idea. What a mad, crazy, wonderful idea.” – Alice Kingsley, Alice in Wonderland It’s a riddle straight out of the Mad Hatter’s e-mail inbox: how does India manage to send a vehicle to the moon while having more illiterate people than any other country. India’s technocrats are now being challenged to pull out of their hats simple innovations to help tackle illiteracy and other big problems facing the country. “The Grand Challenges for Technologists in India” project, from Technology Review India, asks technocrats to find innovative ideas to deal with, … Continue reading India wants to go to the moon – will ET let it?

China backs Karachi refinery By Syed Fazl-e-Haider KARACHI – China is to invest US$535 million to restart a stalled refinery project in Pakistan, which foreign investors and contractors abandoned amid the political turmoil in the country following the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. The Indus Refinery Ltd (IRL) was a joint venture project between Middle East-based investors with an 86.7% shareholding and local sponsors with 13.3%, proposed in 2004. “The Chinese have been really helpful,” The News quoted IRL chairman Sohail Shamsi as saying. “I thought no one would come // <![CDATA[// <![CDATA[ //<![CDATA[ var … Continue reading China backs Karachi

By Sami Moubayed DAMASCUS – President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) Mahmoud Abbas heads off to the United States this week for dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama at the White House. Days later, Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, stalled for more than 10 years, begin in the US. No serious effort has been exerted in this direction – despite all the loud talk at the Annapolis conference by the former George W Bush administration. That conference in November 2007 brought Abbas together with then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and a host of Arab and … Continue reading Abbas faces a mission impossible

VIEW: Our cricket tsunami —Bilal Abbas No more presidential pardons, plea bargains, fines and partial bans please. It is time to set an example by awarding maximum penalties and jail terms to those found guilty of selling us down the river Just when we were getting over Afridi’s world infamous ball-biting episode comes the most translucent match fixing scandal in our cricket history. If cricket is a religion here, then the incident certainly amounts to blasphemy. Achievements in sports have always lifted the nation’s morale in times of crisis, especially in the recent past when Pakistan became synonymous with ‘suicide … Continue reading Cricket Tsunami