Word: mirza
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...control room of Azerbaijan's sprawling oil terminal near the capital, Baku, Bala Mirza sits peering at a fuzzy map on a computer monitor. The outline of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey looks like little more than a jumble of hills and farming towns. But for the engineer, 41, what lies underground has rocked his world: a new 1,100-mile oil pipeline, which in recent months has tied this tiny country on the edge of the Caspian Sea to the huge Western market. "There is a lot of oil and a lot of money," says Mirza, who spent 14 years...
...FREED. Mirza Tahir Hussain, 36, Pakistani-born British Muslim sentenced to be hanged for the 1988 killing of taxi driver Jamshed Khan; after Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf commuted his sentence; in Rawalpindi. Hussain, who said Khan had died after a gun went off during a struggle as the driver tried to sexually assault him, became a cause célèbre among Britain's Pakistani community and earned an appeal for clemency from Prince Charles during a visit to Pakistan last month. "At last," said Hussain's brother Amjad upon his release, "these 18 years of nightmare appear...
...Since Osama bin Laden is no Islamic scholar, many deny his right to issue a fatwa. The sway that fatwas hold over Muslims is also not as great as many outsiders think. Last year, a Muslim cleric issued a fatwa stating that it was un-Islamic for Sania Mirza, India's most famous tennis player and a Muslim, to wear sleeveless tops or short skirts on court. Mirza simply dismissed the ruling; indeed, many, if not most, urban Indian Muslims do not take fatwas seriously. However, in rural communities, a well-respected mufti's fatwa - on issues ranging from marriage...
...Despite their turbo-charged race up the rankings, China's tennis prodigies haven't become celebrities across Asia like India's Sania Mirza or Thailand's Paradorn Srichaphan. Unlike other top athletes who use international competitions to hone their skills and raise their profiles, Chinese stars have a habit of emerging almost fully formed from the country's secretive sports system. In China, athletics are viewed as a tool for national glory, not individual accomplishment. During mandatory national-team training, such as the session in Jiangmen last month, China's tennis stars must sweat through seven hours of practice...
...Illusory Heroes? I was disappointed that TIME's 2005 list of "Asia's Heroes" [Oct. 10] included athletes (tennis star Sania Mirza and footballer Park Ji Sung) as well as entertainers (actors Ken Watanabe and Zhang Jingchu). Asians, especially South Asians, glorify sports personalities and film stars as a way of elevating their own fragile egos and showing a more affluent and successful image abroad. Bombay, despite its Bollywood stars and millionaires, remains a Third World hellhole for the unsuspecting visitor. Bollywood sells dreams, the only thing the poor can afford. Spending vast sums of money in promoting sporting events...