ARTICLE (March 10, 2010): There is a likelihood of the curtain finally dropping on the issue of a new nomenclature for NWFP, a dispute that has continued to hang fire for the last many decades. When Abdul Ghaffar Khan, called Bacha Khan by his followers, suggested the name Pushtunistan in the newly created and insecure Pakistan, his opponents accused him of working for carving out a separate state out of the country.

ARTICLE (March 10, 2010): A former English-language newspaper editor, Sultan Ahmed, passed away in Karachi on 2nd March 2010, bringing to culmination a formidable and rather fascinating career. He was 87 - and gave as many as almost 65 years to print media - and wrote prolifically with sustained passion, compassion and insight into an amazing variety of themes, engaging them with the seriousness and profundity that was warranted.

ARTICLE (March 10, 2010): Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki wasn't running for office in last years provincial council elections. Yet he seemed so strong, and so popular, that his party used his image everywhere on posters ahead of the polls. His face still looked down from banners and posters across the country ahead of Sunday's parliamentary polls, but a series of bombings and sectarian disputes have bruised his image as the champion of post-war unity and security.

ARTICLE (March 10, 2010): "The PCB in its infinite wisdom has decided to fine Shahid Afridi and Kamran Akmal 3 million rupees and ban them from playing cricket for one year."

ARTICLE (March 09, 2010): It is wrong to suggest that I have blocked a proposal by the Karachi Stock Exchange regarding Margin Financing, and Borrowing and Lending of Securities, and that the letter to the Chairman Policy Board ie Finance Secretary was written to clarify my position vis-à-vis this allegation.

ARTICLE (March 09, 2010): March 9, 2007 was, undoubtedly, a tragic day in our history - the Chief Justice of Pakistan was barred to perform his functions on the pretext of filing of reference against him under Article 209 of the Constitution of Pakistan. What happened on that sad day and thereafter is now well documented in the judgement of the apex court reported as Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry v President of Pakistan PLD 2010 SC 61.

ARTICLE (March 09, 2010): The Parliamentary Comm-ittee for Constitutional Reforms (PCCR) is about to deliver the much delayed reforms to purge the Constitution of the dross attached to it by the 17th Amendment, while also attempting to resolve some other issues of long standing like the quantum of provincial autonomy and changes to the concurrent list. Main features of the changes needed were already outlined in the Charter of Democracy (CoD) drawn up by ML-N's Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto of PPP in May 2006.

ARTICLE (March 09, 2010): South Korea, which has spent decades developing nuclear power to make up for its lack of oil, now hopes to become a global leader in atomic energy as the world turns away from fossil fuels. A Seoul-led consortium, triumphing over more experienced competitors, won a 20.4 billion dollar contract last December to build four nuclear plants in the United Arab Emirates.

ARTICLE (March 09, 2010): "Rehman Malik has given the abductors of the five-year-old British boy 48 hours to return the boy."

ARTICLE (March 08, 2010): The Pakistani media has been almost unanimous in singing a dirge after the decision of Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin to resign was rather clumsily made public by the Prime Minister of this country - in an aside seconds prior to the commencement of the post-breakfast press briefing with the PML (N) leadership as a mike, unbeknown to him, was turned on.