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It is with utmost sadness that we have learned that Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan has taken his last breath on 12th May 2003in Boston. The Prince had been United Nations' High Commissioner for Refugees for many years and was a champion in the defense of environmental issues.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- An international consortium began testing a new cellular network in the Afghan capital on Thursday and will soon launch commercial services that will break a telecommunications monopoly. The government awarded the new wireless network contract in October. The consortium is led by the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, which controls 51 percent. Other investors include Monaco Telecom International (35 percent), the U.S.-based MCT Corp. (9 percent) and France's Alcatel (5 percent).

Radio Liberty - Central Asia is to become the site of the world's first internationally chartered university. The University of Central Asia will have three campuses in the mountain regions of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.

Dawn the Internet Edition - Karachi: The federal government is learnt to have allowed Aga Khan University to establish its own board of intermediate and secondary education, first-ever in the private sector in the country.

CHINA: Xinjiang's Ismailis cut off from international Ismaili community. The tens of thousands of Ismaili Muslims of the Tajik Autonomous District in China's north western Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region are isolated from their fellow-Ismailis across the border in Tajikistan and elsewhere in the world, Forum 18 News Service found on a visit to Xinjiang between 8 and 10 September. There is only one Ismaili mosque functioning in the Tajik Autonomous District, in the district capital Tashkurgan, whose imam was appointed by the Chinese secular authorities.

KARACHI: The Aga Khan University is establishing a faculty of arts and sciences on a new 550-acre campus in the outskirts of Karachi. This was stated by Dr Shams Kassim Lakha, President Aga Khan University, during a meeting with Riaz Ahmed Tata, President Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI).

Ismailis flock towards Chitral to catch a glimpse (Deedar) of their spiritual leader Prince Karim Agha Khan, Ismailis from down country have started moving towards Chitral where the Agha Khan is expected to be on the 4th Dec.

AKU seminar on higher education addresses the fact that the rapid spread of English language as a means for global communication was becoming a necessity and the government fully realised the challenge.

Toronto.Recent global events have been framed as a ''clash of civilizations'' -- between the Muslim world and the Judeo-Christian West. This thesis is constructed on a faulty premise, one that sees ''Islam'' and ''the West'' as somehow having developed in isolation. To talk about a such a clash is to make the fundamental mistake of forgetting the common bases of Western and Muslim civilizations. Ottawa's new inquiry into relations with the Muslim world is an opportunity to study that world's diversity, and offer our own ideas on pluralism, says NAZEER AZIZ LADHAN

KARACHI: Genetic researchers of the Aga Khan University (AKU) have pinpointed a gene involved in the modulation of high blood pressure. The new finding will allow prediction with regard to an individual

Letter of condolence from

KARACHI - Shamsh Kassim-Lakha, the President of AKU, signed an agreement on behalf of The Aga Khan University (AKU) for a grant of $4.5 million to AKU for establishing the country's first private examination board.

In the last two years, friends and acquaintances have asked Rafiq Ghaswala about the difference between the two main branches of Islam, the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the origins of the Koran, Islam's holy book. But few people have asked him about the Ismaili sect of Shiite Islam to which he belongs, a minority within a minority among the world's 1 billion Muslims. Few, in fact, have heard of Ismailis, or their spiritual leader, the Aga Khan.

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Alamshar won the Irish Derby by half-a-length from favorite Dalakhani at The Curragh on Sunday to end the French Derby winner's unbeaten record and deliver a home victory for jockey Johnny Murtagh and trainer John Oxx...Alamshar's victory gave the Aga his fifth Irish Derby, after Shergar, Shahrastani, Kahyasi and Sinndar, enabling him to equal the tally of his grandfather. It was appropriate that Alamshar carried the chocolate and green hoops, the old Aga's colours, with Dalakhani sporting the modern green and red.

The construction of the second of five bridges to be built across the Panj river [to link Tajikistan and Afghanistan] has started in keeping with a tripartite agreement between the Tajik and Afghan governments and the Aga Khan foundation. The bridge is being built in [eastern Tajikistan's] Darvoz District's village of Ruzba.

Alitalia's board of directors is to discuss the possibility of acquiring a partial or controlling stake in Meridiana, the Sardinia-based airline owned by the Aga Khan, at a board meeting on Tuesday. The Aga Khan established Meridiana in 1963 with the aim of encouraging tourism on the Costa Smeralda, Sardinia's upmarket coastal area.

OTTAWA, CNW/ - Aga Khan Foundation Canada (AKFC) has established a partnership with Northwater Capital Management Inc. to help finance an expansion of a program that sends young professionals to developing countries to gain experience in the field of microfinance and microenterprise. Over the next three years, the Northwater Foundation will sponsor an increasing number of internships in the Fellowship in International Microfinance and Microenterprise (IMM program).

Noting that 'much more needs to be done for your children and grandchildren,' the Aga Khan spoke during short visits to Garam Chashma and Booni, of the need to improve the quality and quantity of agricultural production, to improve access to quality health and education and to diversify the economy.

- HIS Royal Highness the Aga Khan and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) plan to pay for a new hydro-electric dam in western Uganda. IFC is the private lending arm of the World Bank. Syda Bbumba, the energy minister, said the Government wants people in Bushenyi, Rukungiri and Kanungu districts to become minority shareholders in the project.

ISLAMABAD: Nestled amid the towering Himalaya, Hindukush and Karakoram ranges, communities in Pakistan