Owais Mughal

A collection of five Nazia Hasan songs is presented here. It is always a difficult choice to pick best of the best, therefore I’ve tried to pick only those songs which have better audio quality on youtube. Choosing only 5 songs is like ‘darya ko koozay mein band karna’ but the idea is to pay tribute to one of the trend setter singers of Pakistan –Nazia Hasan.

(1) dhundlee raat ke

Adil Najam

Update: India wins against Pakistan 8-0 in the semi-finals. Details here.

The Pakistan Women’s football team is set to meet India on Monday in the semi-finals of the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) tournament being played in Bangladesh.

On the way to the semi-finals the Pakistan women’s football team scored its first ever goals in an international match when Mehwish Khan scored in the group match against the Maldives (in 44th minute) and then Malaika Noor in the 89th minute from a penalty. The 2-1 victory against the Maldives was Pakistan’s first international victory even in women’s football. This was followed by a 3-0 victory against Afghanistan which gave Pakistan a slot in the semi-finals.

Playing against Nepal (photo above) – one of the two tournament favorites, the other being India – Pakistan women got a major drubbing losing 12-0, including a stint of 6 minutes in which four goals were scored against Pakistan. However, reaching the semi-finals remains a major achievement. Although they are now pitted against the tournament favorites India, they are still in the medal run and we wish the Pakistan women’s football team the very best.

Adil Najam

A good picture, they say, can be worth a thousand words. A good number can be worth millions. Even billions. In this case, 15 billion. And that is counting dollars, not words.

The number, of course, is the value of business deals being finalized during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to Pakistan. There are many versions of the numbers out there. Some think the number is $20 billion, others maybe more, and this being Pakistan media some are adding all the different estimates together. But none of that matters much, what is a billion here or there between friends!

But the real point is that no matter how you look at it, even the lowest estimate – US$15 billion – is one very impressive number. The even bigger point is that this is a number coming from someone who is clearly seen as a friend and therefore is seen so very different from how gifts borne by those who one does not trust are viewed.