2005 December - 3

The Alcan Prize Adjudication Panel received the AKPBS‘ entry in March and over the course of its assessment was impressed by the organization’s grassroots approach and sustainable impact on environmental, economic, social and cultural issues and the global relevance of its work. Founded in 1980, AKPBS works to alleviate poverty in a sustainable manner, by [...]

Emanating from a city that was mostly destroyed by October’s magnitude 7.6 earthquake, which killed an estimated 87,000 people and left 3.2 million homeless, Radio Muzaffarabad has provided victims with a vital link to the outside world and informed them of the availability of critical services. ”It’s 5 p.m., and this is Radio Muzaffarabad,” began [...]

The skyline of Mirpur, in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, once boasted nothing more than two-storey brick houses and mud huts. All that has changed since British Pakistanis returned to invest money earned in the UK in their ancestral town. Now soaring doric columns jostle with gilded porticos at the entrances of huge houses. A construction boom fuelled [...]

There remains a huge potential for Broadband expansion for Pakistan’s 160 million population. Recent growth in the mobile market has created an optimistic outlook for Pakistan’s communications industry. Mobile subscriber numbers have surged from less than 2 million at end-2002, to over 11 million by mid-2005. Trimax Corporation, through its wholly owned subsidiary, announced today [...]

Shamshad Akhtar, an Asian Development Bank official, was named the first woman to run Pakistan’s central bank. Akhtar has an M.S. in economics from Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, an M.A. in development economics from England’s University of Sussex and a Ph.D. in economics from Scotland’s Paisley College of Technology. She studied at Harvard University in [...]

For years, the slightly built Khan, who worked as a cabbie in Washington, D.C., had regularly played the lottery. He sometimes slept in his cab, but Khan never gave up hope. He kept a fortune cookie prediction that read, “Among winners, you are the chosen one.” He played numbers that came to him in a [...]

A legend back home in Pakistan, the 53-year-old has won his country’s National title an amazing 16 times. Sadly, the enormous talent was never put to good use. He never turned pro. He was not allowed to. His father resorted to emotional blackmail to keep his older son from seeking greener pastures on the greens [...]

This, in itself, is a cultural and even political event in Pakistan, a country where dance was officially banned for many years and the opposition coalition, the MMA, is dominated by extremist clerics who would like the same to happen to music. For Lahore, the 10-day festival was a huge, at times startling cultural event. [...]

Born in Karachi, 42-year old Asim Abdullah made his fortune from hi-tech investments, notably the sale of his company Veo Systems, to Commerce One, the business-to-business internet marketplace. Last summer, the entrepreneur was spotted in Paris at Ungaro’s fashion show, the first clue that the Silicon valley millionaire was to become a fashion sugar daddy. [...]

The festival runs until December 11 and will feature 150 films from 30 countries, including India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Iran, Canada, the United States, Germany, France, Britain, Poland, Italy, Chile and Brazil. Pooja Bhatt and Irfan Khan are among the actors, actresses, producers and directors who will take part, Zaidi said. The festival will see [...]