Word: sharif
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...Islam. Never mind that not once since Pakistan became a nation 51 years ago has this noisy brandishing of faith ever worked to bolster the leader's popularity. Now, with Pakistan ostracized after its nuclear tests and on the edge of economic collapse, Prime Minister Mian Mohammed Nawaz Sharif is reviving the old custom of trying to make the Islamic Republic of Pakistan even more Islamic than it already...
...Shari'a, or Islamic law, led to quarreling among the country's 72 Muslim sects and subsects over the "pure" interpretation of the law. And this could be the worst of times for Pakistan to try to revive fundamentalist laws. Everything seems to be going wrong for Nawaz Sharif. His support of the Taliban militia in neighboring Afghanistan has drawn enmity from Iran and the Central Asian republics (see following story). India and Pakistan have intensified their cross-border artillery fire in disputed Kashmir. Nearly bankrupt, Pakistan may run out of foreign exchange by the end of the month...
Will a stronger dose of religion cure Pakistan's ills? Many of Nawaz Sharif's countrymen think it could send Pakistan into terminal decline. According to the well-respected Karachi newspaper Dawn, people "just want a little improvement in their lives from the tyranny and callousness of Pakistani officialdom." Political opponents, including, of course, ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, say the new Islamic bill is likely to increase that tyranny. One interpretation holds that this amendment will anoint Nawaz Sharif as a religious dictator, a supreme arbiter of what is considered good and evil under Islam. Nawaz Sharif, though, contends...
...moment though, Nawaz Sharif is hoping for a more earthly kind of intervention: he is in New York City this week at the United Nations, where he will appeal to Bill Clinton to lift economic sanctions--imposed after the nuclear tests--and push the International Monetary Fund into mounting a rescue. As part of the trade-off, Clinton wants him to sign the nuclear test-ban treaty. This may help him get the money he urgently needs, but would anger fundamentalists at home who would see this as capitulation and surrender...
...felicitously monikered Goren In a Box (GIB) bridge software will take on the world's best bridge players at the 1998 World Bridge Championships in Lille, France. Is this Deep Blue redux? Or simply bridge too far? Will this be the end of mankind's bridge superiority? Only Omar Sharif knows for sure...