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Xi Jinping: Cave dweller or princeling?   Will Xi Jinping be China's next leader? Damian Grammaticas reports on what we know of the man in line to steer China through the coming years Who is Xi Jinping? It's not an easy question to answer. The man the Communist Party is busy grooming to be China's next leader can be read in so many ways. He is a communist "princeling," the equivalent of royalty in the Party, born into power and privilege but who then lived in a cave. He is a man who has spent his life in the Communist Party but who knows what it is like to be outcast. He has convinced businessmen he is their champion, while overseeing a system where the state controls huge chunks of the economy. He has shown himself to be irritated with foreign criticism of China but has sent his daughter to study at Harvard under a false name to hide her identity. His wife, Peng Liyuan, a singer, has, for m

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10 things we didn't know last week Friday, 10 February 2012   Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience. 1. The last chocolate in the box really does taste better. 2. Diogenes extended his middle finger as a gesture of contempt in 4th Century BC Athens. 3. A severed head was a Valentine's gift in 19th Century Taiwan. 4. Hitler was embarrassed about a photograph showing him wearing lederhosen. 5. Cabbages can talk to each other. 6. Lizards can survive a spin in the washing machine. 7. A source in an FBI report described Steve Jobs as a "deceptive individual who is not completely forthright and honest". 8. David Beckham has only three close friends. 9. Seagrass is the oldest living thing on earth. 10. Having an easy-to-say name makes you more likely to get promoted.   With Courtesy of  BBC

امریکہ میں بلوچ بازگشت حسن مجتبیٰ بی بی سی اردو ڈاٹ کام، نیویارک کتاب ’بلوچستان ان شیڈو آف افغانستان‘ بلوچ قوم پرستی اور بلوچ سرکشی کی تاریخ پر ایک بائیبل سجھی جاتی ہے ’ہم لوگ آزادی لینے جارہے ہیں، آپ لوگ ہمارا ساتھ دیتے ہیں تو تھینک یو ویری مچ ۔ اگر نہیں تو تب بھی ہم اپنی آزادی لے کر رہیں گے۔‘ یہ الفاظ کہنہ مشق بلوچ دانشور اور شاعر و قوم پرست نظریات کے حامل ڈاکٹر ملک ٹوگی نے کوئی آٹھ برس قبل امریکی سینیٹ کی اسی عمارت میں ایک سماعت کے دوران کہے تھے جہاں اب گزشتہ بدھ کو بلوچستان پر عوامی سماعت ہوئی جس میں کئی امریکی سینیٹرز اور دانشور و تجزیہ کار کسی نہ کسی طرح ڈاکٹر ملک ٹوگی جیسوں کے خیالات و جذبات کی عکاسی کرتے لگے۔ لفظ بلوچ، بلوچستان، اور بلوچستان کے ساتھ زیادتیوں کی باز گشت امریکی ایوانوں تک کوئی ایک دن یا چند برسوں میں نہیں پہنچی، ان کے پہنچانے میں کئي برس، عشرے اور بلوچ اور بلوچوں کے ہمدرد و دوست امریکیوں کی عمریں لگی ہیں۔ بلوچ دردِ دل کا بیج بونے والوں کا یہ درخت اسے لگانے والوں کو ابھی سایہ تو نہیں دے رہا لیکن تناور اور

Surge in anti-China sentiment in Hong Kong By Juliana Liu BBC News, Hong Kong   A recent advert has brought simmering tensions to the fore The full-page colour advertisement depicting a giant locust overlooking Hong Kong's skyline is a striking representation of the recent surge in anti-China feeling here. A group of Hong Kong residents raised money online to fund the advert, which was published in the popular Apple Daily newspaper. It depicted mainland visitors as locusts, amid growing tension over an influx of visitors. Fifteen years after Hong Kong rejoined China, the gulf separating citizens in the former British colony and those on the mainland appears to be widening. The two groups share a common written language and culture. But differences in the spoken dialect, politics, economic standing and even personal hygiene have ignited a series of very public disagreements. These have ranged from who gets prefer

Stand-up comedy Qatari-style By Kevin Connolly BBC News   Qataris have a great deal to smile about, with enormous wealth and increasing diplomatic clout Here is a sophisticated comedy research tool which will help to identify your location anywhere on the planet as surely as any tracking of your IP address or triangulation of your nearest 3G masts. Why did the chicken cross the road ? If you answered "to get to the other side" you are in Britain - and were given away by the gentle subversion of expectation which is the hallmark of a good joke there. If your reply was "to see Gregory Peck" you're probably an American - and given the trajectory of his career you're likely to be more than 60 years old. If your answer was "because in his wisdom and kindness the Emir has decided to provide poultry-friendly pedestrian crossings" then I'd say there's a good chance that you're

Spying on Europe’s farms with satellites and drones By Laurence Peter BBC News   Farmers who claim more EU subsidies than they should, or who break Common Agricultural Policy rules, are now more likely to be caught out by a camera in the sky than an inspector calling with a clipboard. How do they feel about being watched from above? Imagine a perfect walk in the country, a few years from now - tranquillity, clean air, birdsong in the trees and hedgerows, growing crops swaying in the breeze. Suddenly a model plane swoops overhead. But there is no-one around manipulating radio controls. This is not a toy, but a drone on a photographic mission. Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometres up in space, the same patch of land is being photographed by a satellite, which clearly pinpoints individual trees and animals. What is there to spy on here? No secret military installations, just farmland. “They thought we had an additional build

Asma al-Assad and the tricky role of the autocrat's wife By Tom Geoghegan BBC News Magazine     Should Mrs Assad disown her husband? Asma al-Assad has been condemned for supporting her husband, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as the bombardment of her family's home city, Homs, goes on. But do autocrats' wives ever rein in their husbands? The first public intervention of British-born Asma al-Assad, 36, since the uprising began in Syria nearly a year ago was an email from her office to the Times newspaper in London . In it she expressed her support for her husband, the president, while stating that she "comforts" the "victims of the violence". It's estimated by human rights groups and activists that more than 7,000 people - 2,000 members of the security services, and 5,000 others - have been killed in the unrest, and Syrian opposition supporters promptly condemned Mrs Assad's &qu

’دلت ملکہ‘ مایاوتی کا مستقبل مایاوتی گذشتہ سات سالوں سے یوپی کی وزیر اعلی ہیں۔ سیتاپور کے ریاستی انٹر کالج کے احاطے سے یوپی کی وزیراعلٰی مایاوتی نے اپنی انتخابی ریلی کی شروعات کی جس میں لگ بھگ دس ہزار لوگ شامل ہوئے۔ یہ جگہ اتر پردیش کے دارالحکومت لکھنؤ سے قریب سو کیلو میٹر کے فاصلے پر ہے۔ جوں ہی یوپی کی وزیر اعلٰی مایاوتی کے ہیلی کاپٹر کی آواز ہزاروں منتظر لوگوں کے کانوں میں پڑتی ہے وہ بہوجن سماج پارٹی کی اپنی رہنما کے لیے ’مایاوتی زندہ باد‘ کا نعرہ لگانے لگتے ہیں۔ آگے سامنے کی نششتیں خواتین کے لیے مختص ہیں جن میں ایک خاتون مہا جنا بیٹھی ہیں۔ وہ دلت برادری سے تعلق رکھتی ہیں جنہیں پہلے اچھوت کہا جاتا تھا۔ " وہ لکھنؤ کو لندن بنانا چاہتی ہیں۔ دنیا بھر سے لوگ اسے دیکھنے لکھنؤ آئیں گے " سونو ورما مایاوتی بذات خود دلت ہیں اور اپنی ذات کے لاکھوں لوگوں کے لیے طاقت کی علامت کا درجہ رکھتی ہیں۔ وہ پہلے اسکول میں استانی کے فرائض انجام دے رہی تھیں۔ مایاوتی کی آمد سے ذرا قبل مہاجنا نے روتے ہوئے اپنی درد بھری کہانی سنائی۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ ’میں ست

بلوچستان میں لاوا پک رہا ہے: جکھرانی اعجاز مہر بی بی سی اردو ڈاٹ کام، اسلام آباد قومی اسمبلی میں منگل کو نجی کارروائی کا دن ہوتا ہے قومی اسمبلی میں منگل کو نجی کارروائی کا دن ہوتا ہے اور اٹھائیس نکاتی ایجنڈے کے بجائے سب سے زیادہ وقت نکتہ اعتراضات پر صرف ہوا۔ جیئے سندھ کے سابق لیڈر اور پیپلز پارٹی کے کشمور سے منتخب رکن گل محمد جکھرانی نے قومی اسمبلی میں بلوچستان کے حالات پر جذباتی تقریر کی اور کہا کہ وہاں بنگال جیسی صورتحال ہے۔ ان کے بقول صوبے میں فرنٹیئر کور کا راج ہے اور’ آئی جی ایف سی انتظام چلا رہے ہیں‘۔ایف سی والے ہم پارلیامینٹیرینز کو شودر سمجھتے ہیں‘۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ وہ بلوچستان سے ہوکر آئے ہیں اور وہاں لاوا پک رہا ہے اور اگر صورتحال کا نوٹس نہیں لیا گیا تو بلوچستان ہاتھ سے نکل جائے گا۔انہوں نے کہا کہ صدرِ پاکستان آصف علی زرداری بلوچستان کے حالات بہتر کرنا چاہتے ہیں لیکن ایسا لگتا ہے کہ کچھ ادارے ایسا نہیں کرنے دیتے۔ منگل کو ایوان میں چوہدری اعجاز ورک نے جب انکشاف کیا کہ دو اراکین قومی اسمبلی اسلحہ لے کر ایوان میں آ

Kirdar Rasool Bux Palijo With COurtesy of KTN NEWS CHANNEL

rasool bux palijo FERANTIYAR POST LAHoOR

A Point of View: Mourning the loss of the written word   The modernist writer Virginia Woolf called letter writing "the human art, which owes its origins in the love of friends". In our frenetic world of electronic communication, we must remember to write with thought and consideration, says historian Lisa Jardine. In these days of email, texts and instant messaging, I am not alone, I feel sure, in mourning the demise of the old-fashioned handwritten letter. Exchanges of letters capture nuances of shared thought and feeling to which their electronic replacements simply cannot do justice. Here's an example. In July 1940, with the country at war, Virginia Woolf published a biography of the artist, Roger Fry - champion of post-impressionism and leading member of the Bloomsbury Group. The timing could hardly have been worse. Fry's reputation was as an ivory tower liberal who believed that art inhabits a self-contained formal space remote from the vulgar

Healing rituals and bad spirits on a Philippine island By Kate McGeown BBC News, Philippines     Islanders gather earth and dust to use in rituals to protect their homes Siquijor is one of more than 7,000 islands in the Philippines - it has tropical sun, white sand and an azure sea, but it is also famous for witchcraft. How do you go about looking for a witch? It is not a question I had ever thought to ask before, so I rang the Siquijor tourism department to see if they were able to help. "We don't have any witches," was the first reply, which did not seem all that promising. But after a bit more discussion, it seems that Siquijor's witches - well, the good ones anyway - have recently undergone a rebranding exercise. They are now called traditional healers. But what about the bad witches, I asked? "Oh we don't promote them," came the rather sensible answer.

The dark web: Guns and drugs for sale on the internet's secret black market By Adrian Goldberg Presenter, 5 live Investigates Out of reach of regular internet searches is the secretive online world known as the 'dark web' - anonymous, virtually untraceable global networks used by political activists and criminals alike. "You have the availability of multiple dealers so you can compare products - and customers can review the dealer's product, too." American student, David - not his real name - explains why he chooses to buy illegal drugs on the so-called 'dark web'. "You don't have to go in front of a street dealer, where there might be a risk of violence," he adds. And it is not just drugs which are available on this online black market. Fake passports, guns - even child pornography. Anonymous drug dealers The dark web is facilitated by a global network of