Pakistan's illicit nuclear liaison with Pyongyang has long been suspect. But now it's in the open. A classified report by the US Central Intelligence Agency (cia) has nailed Pakistan's complicity in sharing sophisticated technology, information on warhead design and arms-testing data with North Korea to build a nuclear bomb.

A report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in the January 27, 2003 issue of the New Yorker quotes from the document known as the National Intelligence Estimate and classified as "Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information".

The story maintains that the relationship between the two countries was struck in 1997 when "Pakistan began paying for missile systems from North Korea in part by sharing nuclear-weapons secrets". The CIA report also states that in the just concluded decade, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, A.Q. Khan, made 13 visits to North Korea.

Quoting from the CIA report, Hersh writes that Pakistan also provided data on how to build and test a uranium-triggered nuclear weapon. More damaging is the fact that Pakistan also advised the North Koreans on how to duck the US surveillance satellites.

Quoting American disarmament experts, Hersh maintains that there were close ties between scientists working for the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and radical Islamist groups. He then quotes an official as saying, "Right now, the most dangerous country in the world is Pakistan. If we are incinerated next week, it will be because of highly enriched uranium that was given to Al-Qaida by Pakistan." Quite a damaging report for the key US ally in its war against terrorism, and one it cannot blame on Indian propaganda. But then Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf has weathered many such reports and survived to tell the tale.

-Anil Padmanabhan

For the second week running, the US bourses fell. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 455.73 points last week to close at 8,131.01. The uncertainty around the war on Iraq is one of the central reasons, point out trade analysts. The war clouds hint at a disruption in global oil supplies, especially at a time when Venezuela-a major oil supplier to the US-is engulfed in internal strife.

The stock markets are acting like the bellwether on the Iraq crisis-plumbing new lows as the George W. Bush Administration plans war against Saddam Hussein.

It's enough for a collective "Hai Ram". American irreverence-and ignorance-knows no boundaries. Nothing else explains the tasteless Gandhi-bashing indulged in by two symbols of American cultural influence: music channel MTV and Maxim, a magazine that focuses mainly on sex and sports.

Maxim's article titled "Maxim's Kick-ass Workout" depicts a muscle-bound hunk beating up an image of Gandhi. To add insult to injury, it had another piece titled "Oh! Calcutta" which lists "Three reasons to Hate Gandhi" (he was a lousy husband, a rotten father and a poor role model).

MTV, not widely known for its taste either, followed with G-Man, a clone of the Mahatma who wears earrings, eats junk food and whose favourite phrase is "yo man".

Groups of American PIO's have shot off angry protests while Tushar Gandhi, the Mahatma's grandson, has written to Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee seeking "strict action" against the erring media outlets.

MTV India, meanwhile, professes ignorance about the series put out by its American unit, while Maxim is yet to react.

The last word hasn't been heard yet on the issue but Gandhian Nirmala Deshpande came close when she declared, "Gandhi is so great that such pygmies who try to ridicule him only expose themselves."