A British Council’s report has shockingly revealed that an overwhelming three quarters of people in Pakistan consider themselves as Muslims first and Pakistani’s second. “Only 10% have faith in national or local government, the courts or police, while three quarters see themselves as Muslims first, Pakistani second, compared to just 14% who see themselves as primarily a citizen of Pakistan,” the Daily Times quoted the report, as saying.

Pakistan has more productive youths than dependents, yet is has done nothing to tap this favourable ratio, the report said. According to the British Council’s Next Generation Report on Pakistan, the country is going through a favourable ratio of productive young to old, but it has done nothing to address this demographic dividend over the past two decades.

The report highlighted that this “window of opportunity”, which opened in 1990, would close in 2045, which gives the country “little over 35 years to change course and reap the economic and social potential attached to such an opportunity”. The report also pointed out that only 15% of the country’s youth believe that the country is headed in the right direction. It said that over 92% youth considered education an important issue which must be addressed soon.

It, however, noted that there is a widespread discontent with regard to democracy among the youth of the country. Only one third of country’s youth considered democracy best for the country, while another third preferred Sharia. “Pakistan is at a crossroads. It can harness the energy of that generation and collect a demographic dividend. But if they fail to get jobs and are poorly educated, it faces a demographic disaster,” said David Steven, an academic, who helped write the report.

Maupiti Island

Spanning less than 10 kilometers (6 miles), Maupiti Island sits in the South Pacific Ocean, about 46 kilometers (29 miles) west of Bora Bora. The remote island lies 5,800 kilometers (3,600 miles) from Australia, and about 3,800 kilometers (2,400 miles) from New Zealand. Maupiti consists of a central island poking 213 meters (700 feet) above the sea surface, framed by low-profile serpentine islands and coral reefs that enclose a lagoon.

The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured this true-color image of Maupiti Island on August 8, 2009. The water inside the lagoon glows electric blue, surrounded by much paler blues of fringing coral reefs. Waves breaking on Maupiti’s southwestern shores appear brilliant white. Above the water line, forests carpet the islands. Only on the central island does the land rise high enough to cast a discernible shadow, and because this island sits in the Southern Hemisphere, the shadow falls to the south at this time of year. On the northeastern fringing island, the landing strip of a tiny airport cuts a long east-west line across vegetated land and coral reef.

AIRS Produces CO2 Snapshot

Above image was created with data acquired by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument (AIRS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite during July 2009. The image shows large-scale patterns of carbon dioxide concentrations that are transported around Earth by the general circulation of the atmosphere. Dark blue corresponds to a concentration of 382 parts per million and dark red corresponds to a concentration of almost 390 parts per million.

The northern hemisphere mid-latitude jet stream effectively sets the northern limit of enhanced carbon dioxide. A belt of enhanced carbon dioxide girdles the globe in the southern hemisphere, following the zonal flow of the southern hemisphere mid-latitude jet stream. This belt of carbon dioxide is fed by biogenesis activity in South America (carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere through the respiration and decomposition of vegetation), forest fires in both South America and Central Africa, and clusters of gasification plants in South Africa and power generation plants in south eastern Australia.

The AIRS instrument flies on NASA’s Aqua satellite and is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, under contract to NASA. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.