PTI chief Imran Khan at IBA

PTI chief tells IBA students he wants an Islamic welfare state
Karachi, Dec 24: Inside a jam-packed auditorium where students teemed out of the door like boiling water from a cauldron, and occupied every possible free space, from the aisle to the empty floor, Imran Khan addressed a young audience of the Institute of Business Administration, on Friday afternoon.

The success of his party lies in the fact that he has been able to mobilise the largely apolitical youth of private-sector universities, who before now considered politics a dirty street game. "But there is a difference between urban politics and rural politics, rightwing and leftwing politics. You do popular politics and dwindle in the middle," said one student.

"Right and leftwing politics are a thing of the 60s; the PTI will work for an Islamic welfare state, like the one which existed in Madina at the time of the Prophet [PBUH]," said Khan as he shared that his model region was Scandinavia where the state took care of employment, health and education of the public.

"My model is not the United States. It is not Britain which is failing to provide its public welfare," he said. He promised to bring forward a "unique manifesto" which would focus on human development and a uniform education system. "There will be no parallel education system" and "the lowest 50 percent of social stratum will be benefited the most", he said.

"How will rich politicians like Kasuri and Shah Mehmood Qureshi let you implement policies which will not benefit their class?" quipped another student from the audience. At this, Qureshi, who till now was a silent spectator, took the microphone.

"I will stand in a queue like a common man and declare all of my assets, and if the party is not satisfied with my asset declaration, I will resign," said Qureshi.

When a student accused him of being "an establishment's man", the cricketer-cum-politician quoted researches from You-Gov Cambridge, a UK-based pollster which called the PTI the most popular political party in urban Pakistan, and another one by PEW, which, he claimed, quoted similar results. "When old diehard fans of the PPP join the PTI, is that the establishment's doing, or when 250,000 people gather at a PTI rally, is it the establishment changing hearts? It can only be the establishment in the skies above who could be doing that," he said.

Khan claimed that he would make endeavours to increase GDP by 20 percent, and use natural resources of the country to rid the country of its debts. He also promised to give the "economically aware" students research papers describing his policies in detail - policies which had been made by "think tanks of the party in Lahore and Karachi".

But the politician who was so successful in generating the right 'oooos' and 'aaaas' from the audience because of his eloquence could at best misfield when a question about the next leadership of his party was asked.

"What happens if you die?" "Why be scared of death; when I die we'll see," came the reply after much coaxing and cajoling from the audience.

Jubilant PTI supporters trying to scale a gate of Quaid's Mazar after their party was granted permission to hold its rally at the mausoleum.

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KU Pharm-D admissions
Karachi: The University of Karachi (KU) announced on Friday the upgraded Pharm-D list and extended the date for admission fees for the academic session 2012. The director admissions announced the upgraded Pharm-D list for both the morning and evening programmes.

The successful candidates of the upgraded Pharm-D (Morning Programme) and successful candidates of the recently held aptitude test and Pharm-D (Morning Programme) who could not submit their admission fees for some reason may now deposit their fees at the Silver Jubilee Gate, University of Karachi, from December 23 to 26 between 9am to 1pm, he said.

Meanwhile, the successful candidates of the upgraded Pharm-D (Evening Programme) may also deposit their admission fees from December 23 to 30 at the directorate of the Evening Programme, KU, he said. The candidates were directed to bring their required documents to complete the admission formalities, he added. The news

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Karachi varsity's BCom annual examinations began
Karachi: The BCom Annual Examinations 2011 for the regular candidates will commence from Dec 24 (today). Spokesman of the University of Karachi (KU) stated this on Friday. He said that more than 40,000 candidates including over 14,000 females would appear in these examinations. The KU has established more than 58 examination centres for the purpose. app

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473 DIHE students conferred degrees
Karachi: As many as 473 graduating students were conferred higher education degrees and four gold medals were awarded in various disciplines at the fourth convocation of the Dadabhoy Institute of Higher Education (DIHE) held at the Karachi Golf Club on Friday.

Six MPhil degrees were awarded to graduates from the Faculty of Business Administration, 145 to MBA graduates, seven to Executive MBA students, 25 to BBA graduates, and 13 to BCom 13 graduates. Also awarded were 11 MCS degrees in the Faculty of Science, 11 MIT degrees, 22 BSCS, six BSFE, 28 BTech (Hons), 59 BTech (Pass), six LLB degrees in the Faculty of Law.

Those who received gold medals included Tauseef Hussain and Muhammad Abdullah Taqi from the Faculty of Management Media and Social Sciences, Warda Akbar from the Faculty of Science and Umair Ahmed from the Faculty of Science. However, the total number of absentia stood at 135 out of 473. Sindh Senior Minister for Education Pir Mazhar ul Haq was the chief guest on the occasion.

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SSUET's technical sessions
Karachi: A number of technical sessions were held on Friday during the ongoing three-day 14th International Institute of Industrial Electronics Engineering's (IEEE) International Multiple Conference.

The conference was attended by delegates from home and abroad at the Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology (SSUET).

After the inauguration on Thursday the conference schedule included two lectures and two tutorials on the first day. On Friday, the morning and afternoon sessions included three lectures and three tutorials. On the concluding day of the conference on Saturday, the day-long deliberations would include eight lectures and two tutorials.

The ICT Research and Development Fund will also give five demonstrations of various projects being financed by it. The scholarly lectures are being delivered by Ahmed E Kamal from Lowa State University on the topic of advances in the network coding-based self-healing in autonomic networks, Dr Faraz Zaidi from KIET Karachi on "Fuzzy sets and visual analysis", Qamarul Wahab from Linkoping University NEDUET on "Graphene, the Noble Prize for 2010", Dr Zia Amavul from SUNY Fredonia, NY, on "Block-sorting transformations with Pseudo-distance technique for lossless compression of colour-mapped images", Dr Syed Khaliqur Rehman from KIET Karachi on "WBAN Protocols", Professor B.S. Chowdhry from Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro on smart structural health monitoring WSN-based bridged monitoring as a example", Dr Junaid Zuberi from SUNy Fredonia, NY on "sensor network programming and applications", Dr Muhammed Moinuddin from Iqra University on "collaborative spectrum sensing for cognitive radio networks", Dr Jawwad Shamsi from SUNY Fredonia, NY on "understanding cyber security", Dr Rehan Qureshi from Iqra University on "ad hoc interconnected mobile networks", Dr Haroon Rasheed from Telecom Department SSUET Karachi on "next generation wireless technologies beyond 4 G.

Among the seven tutorials to be held during the course of conference deliberations, one tutorial of importance and interest would be given by Dr Raziq Yakub from the University of Tennessee on the topic of "applications of communication technologies and controls in the existing power grid in Pakistan for energy efficiencies".

Other tutorials will be given by Dr Kashif M Rajput from NUST, by Dr Jawwad Shamsi from FAST, by Dr Shoaib Zia Khan/Dr Khawaja Bilal Mahmood from NUST, Prof Dr Quratul Ain Tariq from NEDUET Karachi, Dr Syed Faraz Hasan from NED University.

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DUHS to establish dedicated research centre
Karachi: Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) is planning on establishing a research centre in the National Institute of Diabetes & Endocrinology – Ojha campus, to carry out research and gather epidemiological data of communicable and non-communicable diseases that are prevalent in the country.

It will be the first dedicated medical research centre in the country and will provide information that will shape the public health problems that afflict the country. These statements were made by the Vice Chancellor of DUHS, Dr. Masood Hameed, while he was presenting recommendations from the recent International Diabetes Conference at the Dow Medical College campus. Prof. Dr. Samad Shera and Dr. Zaman Shaikh were also present on the occasion.

Dr Masood Hameed said the country urgently required such a research centre as the epidemiological data that it will provide will be used by the administration to create future public health policies.

The objective of the research centre is to reduce the risk and mortality rates of illnesses such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity through effective and result based research.

DUHS Vice Chancellor also stated that the Pakistan Medical & Dental Council has approved 50 seats for the Dow International Dental College.

On the topic of diabetes, he said that there is an increasing prevalence of the disease in the country and that complications stemming from diabetes include blindness, kidney failure, gangrene, stroke and heart attacks, all of which are potentially fatal. Diabetes is also a huge and ever-increasing burden on public health-care.

Keeping in light the conference's recommendations Prof. Dr. Samad Shera said that their current goal is to drive change at the local and global level, to prevent diabetes by increasing general access to essential medicines and to develop and encourage the best practices in diabetes policy, management and education.

He stressed the need to develop tools for the dissemination of relevant information on diabetes treatment, management and prevention.

The conference also called for adopting measures that would increase awareness of the knowledge and skills needed for doctors and health care professionals who provide diabetes care. These measures included the creation of new district based diabetic centres and the establishment of specialized professional teams for management of Type 1 diabetes within existing pediatric units.

Furthermore, it also called for the provision of insulin and the means for its administration to those whose lives depend on it. Officials plan to achieve these goals by creating a cadre of specialist diabetes nurses and using a modern information system to document the prevalence of diabetes complication.

The Diabetes conference further recommended for reduction of heart attacks and angina by 25%, reducing of entry in to the end stage renal failure by 25%, reduction of new diabetic blindness by 50%, reduction of lower limb amputation by 50%, improvement of pregnancy outcome in diabetic mothers to approach the normal experience.

The DUHS vice-chancellor said that DUHS has undertaken a mobilization of all available resources in pursuit of the objectives and recommendations of the conference. The news

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