What the world is reading

Nazia Hassan would’ve turned 48 last week. Thirteen years after her death,on April 3,Nazia’s fans celebrated the birthday of “the queen of Pakistani pop,Pakistan’s sweetheart,the one who was there before”,writes Hajrah Mumtaz. Pakistan’s music,popular and classical,has won over fans,domestically and globally. But about Nazia Hassan,says Mumtaz,there is a romance that has proved enduring. “She embodied a local version of pop sensations of the ‘80s like Madonna. She was 15 when she sang Aap Jaisa Koi from Qurbani in 1980. She debuted her album Disco Deewane in 1981. For the children of the Zia years,Nazia was a liberal sensation to which we could relate to,” she writes. More than anything,though,Nazia Hassan was a star that never faded away. “Nazia Hassan stands in a league of her own. Perhaps Billy Joel’s lyrics can,in a different context to the song,be applied to her—Only the good die young,” writes Mumtaz.

COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

Why did the CIA start killing?

In 2004,the CIA’s counterterrorism efforts moved from capturing suspected terrorists to killing them with armed drones. Mark Mazzetti’s report in The New York Times reveals that a May 2004 report by John Helgerson,the agency’s inspector general,was responsible for the shift. “Armed drones and targeted killings offered a new direction. Killing by remote control was the antithesis of the dirty,intimate work of interrogation,” writes Micah Zenko. “Before long,the CIA would go from being the jailer of America’s enemies to a military organisation that erased them. ”The CIA made this choice,not because they thought it was the best strategy,but reportedly because they could not trust themselves not to torture the detainees.

The New Yorker blog

The Three-Billion-Dollar Brain

Last week,writes Gary Marcus,the Human Connectome Project released a massive set of images of the brains of 68 adult volunteers. “If I were in the Obama administration,I’d be worried. (The administration) is about to submit a three-billion dollar request for something called Brain Activity Map.” The Brain Activity Map is more like an effort to figure out the economy by examining individual consumers. Their contributions are different,if complementary. “Still,although there is little risk of overlap between these two,the Obama Administration would do well to reflect on what Human Connectome has discovered so far: it is easier to collect massive amounts of data than to understand them,” says Marcus.