Study Kit

By: Wali Zahid Pakistan, along with India, has been admitted as a Full Member by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) at its AstanaSummit in Kazakhstan. Existing SCO leaders have hailed Pakistan’s entry as carrying‘historic significance’. All stakeholders are excited at Pakistan’s entry into SCO. Pakistan is happy because, the SCO membership allows it to deal with issues with India and …

By: Khalid Bhatti The Punjab government has decided to continue the policy of handing over public schools to the Punjab Education Foundation (PEF), the Danish school authority and various NGOs. It wants to get rid of public schools. The planned handover of 5,000 schools in the province last year was met with fierce resistance from teachers. The provincial government has …

NATIONAL May 16: The Senate of Pakistan approved the draft of Companies Act 2017, replacing 33-year-old Companies Ordinance, 1984. May 16: Pakistan signed an MoU with the Alibaba Group to promote country’s worldwide exports by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through e-commerce. May 16: MSCI, a New York-based company, announced the upgrade of Pakistan’s status to the emerging market (EM) …

By: Eduardo Porter Could the entire American economy run on renewable energy alone? This may seem like an irrelevant question, given that both the White House and Congress are controlled by a party that rejects the scientific consensus about human-driven climate change. But the proposition that it could, long a dream of an environmental movement as wary of nuclear energy …

BY: DR QAISAR RASHID Revising our stance is a necessity Every year unfolds its own intricacies. The year 2017 seems to have ensnared Pakistan into six main foreign policy challenges. First, Pakistan is a victim of the illusion that by joining the 41-nation Islamic Military Alliance (IMA) formed in the Middle East (ME) against terrorism, not only would Pakistan’s international …

By: Sean Mcmeekin On April 16, 1917, Vladimir Ulyanov, the Russian exile better known by his revolutionary alias, Lenin, arrived at St. Petersburg’s Finland Station following a roundabout journey from Switzerland, after spending nearly two decades abroad. Lenin made an immediate splash with a fiery speech and a radical political program known as the “April Theses.” Russian, and world, politics …

By: Abdul Sattar In a country that houses more than 40 million people who live below the poverty line, the cost of living is rising with each passing day. But no political party seems to be interested in addressing this important issue. Around 67 percent of the population does not have a roof over their heads, more than 34 percent …

By: Walter Sim The United Nations (UN) has imposed six sets of sanctions against North Korea since its first nuclear test in 2006, but these have failed to stop the isolated state from pursuing its missile weapons programme. Last Tuesday, Pyongyang raised the stakes when it test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) for the first time that places Alaska within …

By: Andrew Ross Sorkin Retailing is dead. Sales clerks are losing their jobs by the thousands. The employment picture for young people with only a high school education is going to get even worse. And all this is happening because of Amazon and its ilk, which are driving the shift among consumers toward e-commerce. We’ve heard this story over and …

By: Antony J. Blinken Tweeting first and asking questions later is not a good way to make policy — especially in the Middle East. In a recent salvo, President Donald J. Trump took credit for a decision by one set of American partners — Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates — to sever relations with another, Qatar. It …