By Dr Tariq Rahman

By Dr Shershah Syed

WHAT started a few years ago as a favour to some friends has ended up pushing medical education in the country into a deep crisis.

It all began when after seizing power General Pervez Musharraf assigned the task of running the Sindh health department to a retired lieutenant-general. Being a graduate of Liaquat Medical College at Jamshoro, the health minister saw this as an opportunity to revive old friendships.

Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmada

The 58th Jalsa Salana of the Nigerian Jama’at of Ahmedia Muslim Community, an annual occasion ended recently. The ceremony was featured by the pragmatic and spiritual discourse of the leader of the community Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmadat. The following is an extract from his speech on the occasion. ---------

Fakrul Alam

It was during the Cold War that some Americans academics began to construct the category of “South Asia Studies”. Subsequently, the influx of South Asian students in western universities boosted the demand for courses in South Asian culture as well as politics. A new generation of scholars then took over the term coined by the Cold War intellectuals working with an “Area Studies” outlook in mind adopted earlier to give it a new currency dependent on the value that would be accruing to it because of the large number of South Asians living and working in North America from the seventies onward.

James F Moriarty

Why should Bangladesh care about protecting intellectual property rights? Intellectual property rights (IPR) are the legal mechanisms—copyrights, patents and trademarks—that ensure that the products we buy are genuine. Dangerous and defective counterfeit products, from counterfeit medication, to toothpaste, to auto parts, put the lives of consumers at risk. A strong IPR system ensures that inventors and innovators are rewarded for their ideas. IPR protections foster an environment in which creative and innovative industries can thrive and contribute to economic development worldwide.

By Dr Shahid Siddiqui

‘Schools reproduce class relations by reinforcing rather than reducing class-based differential access to social and cultural capital’ — Pierre Bourdieu HUMAN history is replete with the struggles of different interest groups with each other. Marx views history as a constant class struggle where different classes are engaged in tactics to acquire, sustain and resist power.

A more recent interpretation is offered by Bourdieu, a French thinker, who believes that the constant human struggle is for social distinction which establishes itself through culture and education.

By Aqil Shah

THE conventional wisdom of the day is that the army is beating a retreat to the barracks. The prime minister keeps thanking the generals for withdrawing army officers from civilian institutions, a process he reportedly considers conducive to creating a ‘balanced’ civil-military relationship.

But recalibrating civil-military relations would take more than recalling military officers seconded to the civil bureaucracy. It would require that the two spheres be made impervious to undue interference from each other.

By Masud Mufti

PEOPLE are aghast at the dramatic turns regarding the restoration of the judges. But I am not. They are seeing for the first time what I am for the second.

In 1971, I first saw, on the soil of East Pakistan, a confrontation between the same protagonists with the same mindset over the same issue that the residual Pakistan is seeing today.

To eradicate poverty is in the heart of trade union agenda but the situation is worsening Md Mojibur Rahman Bhuiyan

Trade unions all over the world are celebrating the May Day this year in a globalized economy with a call to eradicate poverty from the world and to create decent jobs. Globalisation continuous to be the number one challenge facing the trade union movement Worldwide.

By PAUL KRUGMAN

During Barack Obama’s Sunday appearance on Fox News, the interviewer asked him for an example of “a hot-button issue where you would be willing to buck the Democratic Party line” and say that Republicans have the better idea.
Mr. Obama’s answer was puzzling because he gave credit where it isn’t due — and thereby undermined what could be a very effective Democratic line of argument.

Maureen Dowd

Barack Obama has spent his life, and campaign, trying not to be the Angry Black Man.

Early on, he wrote in “Dreams From My Father,” he discerned the benefits of playing against the ’60s stereotype of black militancy.

Lin’s appointment thus marks a major break with political tradition. Hitherto there have been hardly any appointments of Chinese to senior positions in the major international Organizations Martin Jacques IN June, Justin Lin Yifu, a Beijing professor, will take up the post of chief economist at the World Bank. Nothing could be a clearer sign of the times.

This is the number two job in one of the two major international economic institutions, the other being the International Monetary Fund. Earlier, incumbents have included the Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, the former US treasury secretary Lawrence Summers and the UK’s Nicholas Stern.

Twenty thousand desperate textile workers in Bangladesh went on the rampage, giving rise to fears of wider instability,
since the garment industry accounts for three-fourths of the country''s exports, writes Kaushik Basu, Professor of Economics, Cornell University

The world economy has many problems but none more pressing than what is happening to food prices. There have been food riots in Haiti, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Indonesia and several other nations.

JS Raman

There was a time when evenings witnessed repetition of the same routine in every Indian middle-class home. The family would settle down to watch its favourite soap on television or the weekend feature films or any of those programmes on the forthcoming elections.

By Tion Kwa

High energy prices pose a monumental challenge to economic growth. Everyone knows this. But high food prices stir more visceral fears. The concern today is that the world faces a serious crisis as a result of accelerating prices of food staples.

Dr Manzur Ejaz

Rising commodity prices have left fragile developing economies neither here nor there. Developing countries pressured or advised by the World Bank, IMF and the US, opened their markets to attract foreign investments. For most of them, real foreign investments have remained illusive because it was a zero sum game to start with. However, global speculative capitalist forces, unhindered by national restrictions, have started destroying them at an accelerated speed.

Praveen Swami

With its spectacular high-rise buildings, magnificent museums and art galleries, Philadelphia represents the finest face of the United States. Another America is hidden less than an hour’s walk away. Polished glass and steel give way to run-down homes, and the silence on the streets is punctuated, every so often, by the wail of police sirens.

Dr HA Rizvi

Lack of clarity on the status of Musharraf and the judges issue, as well as indecision on economic and security policies raises doubts about whether or not societal forces will continue to maintain a friendly posture towards the government in the next six months