Yesterday a huge riot broke outside the Karachi Stock Exchange, the protest was by a large number of small investors who were facing problems due to the decreasing stock prices. One such news report from The News

The small investors, who staged a violent protest on the KSE ground floor on Thursday, demanded closure of the bourse for two or three days and cancellation of all trading deals done in the last three sessions.

The protest was staged in the backdrop of persistent heavy declines on the KSE for the last three months, especially during the last three weeks.During the said period, the market lost nearly 35 per cent or 5,463 points from all-time high of 15,676 points on April 18. During the same period, over Rs 1,598 billion fund was also pulled out of the market.

At around 11 am on Thursday, a number of investors started agitating outside the KSE building. They expressed their anger by throwing stones at the building. Later, they entered the trading hall and the administration block and indulged in ransacking.

Your comments and reaction to this event and other economical pressures facing our country

Usually, in this series, we tend to pick up the topic discussed in other blogs that are relevant to Karachi and expand on them but the following description of the North Nazimabad Town by Owais Mughal in All Things Pakistan is worthy of being reproduced in full. Enjoy!

In April 2008, we had a post on Eight Bazaars of Faisalabad, and we presented it as one of the best examples of town planning in Pakistan. We would like to develop this topic into a whole new series about the best planned localities of Pakistan. Among many examples of fine town planning in Pakistan are North Nazimabad Karachi, Model Town Lahore, Faisalabad’s 8 bazaars, Federal-B-Area Karachi, Islamabad Master Plan, Wah Cantonment, and many more in other cities. In today’s post we will cover North Nazimabad, Karachi.

The satellite image below shows North Nazimabad’s 20 residential blocks bound in red polygon. East of NN is Federal-B-Area where as North of NN is North Karachi and Buffer Zone.

Whenever the aesthetics of Civil Engineering and Town Planning Projects is considered; it is an accpetable fact that curves and gradiants are considered more natural than squares or rectangles. Cities planned in rectangular grids, though easy to navigate, don’t have same aesthtics as brought out by circular roads and curves. If you look at North Nazimabad’s map above you can clearly see how aesthetically the curved roads and plots have been designed within mostly rectanguar grids. Atleast to me this is the town planning of highest aesthetic order.

Read more

On April 7, 2008 Siti Aisyah Hamid, a 42 year old woman from Perlis, Malaysia’s northernmost state, received an SMS giving her the good news that she had just just won an all expenses paid trip to Singapore. She is currently in the Karachi Jail since April 28th after the Customs officials found 950 grammes of heroin in the bottom compartment of a bag given to her by the an African man and woman who had picked her at the airport

The 42-year-old woman claimed she was the victim of a vicious syndicate that promised her a trip to Singapore but had in the end ferried her to Pakistan, locked her up for two weeks and made her a drug mule.

Jaafar Noor, her husband was blamed by his in-laws that he had sold his wife to a drug trafficking syndicate, an allegation he denies. Kijang Care, a welfare organization, started a fund to mobilize a team of lawyers to save Siti. According to them, there are currently 5 Malaysian women in Karachi Jail, all for drug-related offenses.

Source: Malay Mail

At the stroke of midnight, Pakistan was abuzz with the news to adjust their watches one hour ahead to comply with the new regulations of Day Light Savings. This was not entirely a new concept for the people of Pakistan who may recall a few years back when government had fumbled their last attempt to implement the DST, the experiment quickly fell flat on its face and was abandoned within a few days.

Today at the stroke of midnight there was a short announcement on almost all media outlets, but even then I heard some confusion, as to which way the clocks must be adjusted, so for those who might still find it difficult to remember the system, learn a simple cheat code Spring Forward - Fall Back. In April which is around the spring season you adjust your clocks one hour forward, while in October which is the fall season you adjust your clocks one hour backward. Hence Spring Forward & Fall Back

Do yourself and your family a favor, take round of your entire house and tweak all the clocks that you see, cell phones and also adjusting computer clocks, in the process ask others to also comply taking special care to assist any household help to comply with the new regulations, lets help conserve energy, its a start

To read more on the advantages & disadvantages of DST- check out the clouds / nodes explanation on Daylight Savings Time, or read up more on the Wikipedia article

The government has issued a notification to forward the clock one hour to get maximum benefit from day light. According to the official sources, the decision has been made in line with the Prime Minister’s direction regarding energy conservation in the country.

Similar moves to introduce daylight saving time in the country have failed previously. In 2002, the government decided to adopt daylight saving time, beginning from the first week of April, to maximize the use of daylight and to save energy. With power cuts and load shedding ranging from 12-16 hours I think we should forward our clocks to 5 hours so that we can export (smuggle) some power to neighbor Afghanistan like we did with wheat.

Despite repeated rhetoric by the authorities (March 31, 2007: No leniency in plastic bag ban says Sindh Minister for Environment and Alternative Energy, Dr Saghir Ahmed, April 30, 2007: Drive against plastic bags intensified, city district government claims, March 17, 2007:Plastic bag transportation in and out of the city to be checked says city nazim Mustafa Kamal), it has become increasingly apparent that the environment is the last thing on their agenda. Since the ban against plastic bags below the 30 micron weight limit was put into place last year, both the local city district and provincial governments have come out several times with tall claims about strict enforcement of the ban. Yet we see in practice that their claims couldn’t be further from the truth. Read more

The 18th annual Aalimi Mushaira organised by the Sakinan Shehr-i-Quaid will be held at the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology’s Gulshan campus on April 30 at 10pm.

A large number of well-known poets including six from India are scheduled to participate in the event.

The Indian poets include Waseem Barelvi, Munawwar Rana, Dr Naseem Nikhat, Dr Kunwar Bahadur Beychain, Mansoor Usmani and Rai Bastooi.

The poets from Karachi who will be presenting their poetry include Raghib Muradabadi, Himayat Ali Shaair, Anwar Shaoor, Mehmood Shaam, Saleem Kousar, Athar Shah Khan Jaidi, Tariq Sabzwari, Azm Bahzad, Ahmed Naveed, Mrs Zakia Ghazar, Saeed Agha and Mrs Sehar Ali.

Source : Dawn

From an email sent by Sabeen Mahmud:

Following the success of the previous Sufi festivals in Lahore and in Karachi, Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop (RPTW) is taking the 5th edition of the Festival on a national tour. With its main venue set in Multan for 2008, the festival will travel to Karachi, and Islamabad, with a three day showcase in Lahore. RPTW has generously offered to stage the Karachi event in aid of disabled persons of the earthquake-hit areas to benefit CHAL Network, a project of Murshid Hospital & Health Care Centre.

The four hour programme will be staged at the Beach View Garden of Carlton Hotel, DHA on 30th April 2008 at 8:00 pm.

You may obtain your Donor Invitations from Copper Kettle - Zamzama; The Second Floor (t2f); Aghas Supermarket, or by contacting CHAL Network Coordinators at 0300-269-2646 & 0321-242-1231 against a contribution of Rs 1,000 for the cause.

The Sufi Music Festival Features:

Hamid El Kasri (Morocco)

The Pakistani Chapter of Mensa, the worldwide high IQ society, held a General Body Meeting on Saturday, April 26, which was open to all members and non-members.

The event started at 3:00 with a screening of the movie Syrianna. After the screening, the attendees moved to a separate room for an open discussion session, where plans were discussed for how to create more visibility and awareness of Mensa in Pakistan. A session of Origami followed, where an origami expert taught the audience step-by-step how to make two different types of cranes from a single, uncut, square piece of paper. The meeting ended with certificate distribution for the people who had passed the previous test. All in all, it was an interesting evening for the attendees, who enjoyed it immensely.

DISCLAIMER: I am a member of the Managing Committee of Mensa Pakistan.

A blood camp is being set up in Gulshan-e-Iqbal for Thalassemic patients organized by the Thalassemia Foundation

DATE: Saturday 26th April
TIME: 3:00pm to 12:00am Midnight
LOCATION: Mynmar Drive, Rashid Minhas Road, Gulshan-e-Iqbal Block-10, Opposite Aladdin Water Park

Thalassemia is an inherited blood disorder that causes the body to produce less hemoglobin. Hemoglobin helps red blood cells spread oxygen all through your body. Low levels of hemoglobin may cause anemia, an illness that makes you feel weak and tired. Severe cases of anemia may damage organs and result in death.. Patients afflicted with this disease are dependent on blood transfusion throughout life and hence its important to schedule these blood donation centers to replenish the shortage. Which is why blood donation centers are setup.

Blood donation is a generally a healthy exercise for everyone to be done as frequent as every 8 weeks. If you are in good medical condition being at least 17 yrs old & weighing approximately 110 lbs then you care fit to donate blood, Step up for this noble cause, it is also considered as a Sadka Jaria

Read the Flyer HERE or download the MAP to the Blood Camp HERE