| Khushhali bank Launches Scholarship Program for students of Tribal ...
ISLAMABAD, Apr 4 (APP): Khushhali Bank on Wednesday launched its scholarship programme for deserving students of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The event was organized at the Governor House Peshawar in the presence of Lt. Gen. ® Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai and a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between Khushhali Bank and the Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar. The Governor NWFP later distributed certificates of scholarship among 30 students belonging to Federally Administered Territories. President Khushhali Bank Ghalib Nishtar in his briefing to the Governor highlighted the bank’s contribution in terms of promoting economic growth at the grassroots level through provision of financial services to low income households for Income generating activities. Over the past six years the bank has extended over a million loans to low income households across Pakistan with particular focus on less developed regions of the country, he added.
Korea-US Trade Deal Jumps Big Hurdles
South Korea and the U.S. signed their free trade agreement just prior to the deadline for President George Bush to use his fast-track authority on trade, before it expires midyear.
The agreement, signed Monday, follows 10 months of hard bargaining, and will immediately lift some 85% of each nation's tariffs on industrial goods.
It is the U.S.'s first free trade agreement (FTA) with a major Asian economy, and its largest trade deal since the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993. South Korea is Washington's seventh-largest trade partner, and it is claimed that the agreement will boost bilateral trade by almost a quarter, to $90 billion.
For Seoul, a laggard on the trade pact front, this is by far its largest FTA, dwarfing those signed in recent years with Chile, Singapore, the European Free Trade Area and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
DJ UPDATE: Bernanke: Current Fed Stance Right For Growth, Prices
WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday that despite risks to both growth and inflation, the current stance of policy remains the right one to foster sustainable U.S. economic growth and a gradual easing of price pressures.
That suggests that despite recent signs of subpar economic growth, the Fed isn't inclined to lower rates anytime soon, especially with underlying inflation, in Bernanke's words, "uncomfortably high."
Bernanke also clarified recent confusion over the Fed's latest policy directive, telling a Congressional panel that "we have not shifted away from an inflation bias."
"To date, the incoming data have supported the view that the current stance of policy is likely to foster sustainable economic growth and a gradual ebbing of core inflation," Bernanke said in prepared testimony to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.
IS THE US ECONOMY STILL PICKING UP STEAM?
It seems that we have once again reached the point where pessimists and optimists are clashing over the direction of the US economy. Eight years ago I wrote that though the demand for labour had "started to fall in manufacturing while still expanding in consumer or consumer related industries. This sectional employment fall, I believe, is one of the danger signals". (The New Australian, Is the American boom beginning to crack?, No. 104, 25 January 1999). And crack it did. Now to some statistics. The Institute of Supply Management's (always a valuable source of information) manufacturing index recovered showed that US manufacturing index had jumped from 49.6 in January to 54.1 in February. (Anything above 50 indicates expansion). For the same period new orders went from 50.3 to 54.9 while the jobs index rose from 49.5 to 51.1.
Who is Evil? Terrorists or Us
Recently, with the additional effect of popularization, there has been almost countless number of terrorism definitions. The common point of all definitions was their description of terror as illegal, evil and an unwanted phenomenon. Its lawlessness and its merciless attacks without differentiating between innocent-criminal, civil-armed are listed as other characteristics of terrorism. Violence and blood-shedding Lurid acts The list of terrors characteristics may further be extended. .
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