Moborate

Run for your lives, art vultures! Picasso 's still alive, he's cloned himself into a small army, and all of them are mighty pissed at how much money you've been making off them! From Dawn 's ' International Pages ': Page 11 of Dawn today In case you have difficulty reading from the image, the story - about a cache of hitherto unknown works by the master painter discovered at an electrician's home - is headlined "Horde of Picassos discovered in Paris." Shall we give this the "I Work for an English Paper But Find the Language Really Confusing" Award in today's Bizarre Newspaper Headline Contest ?

Whatever else the merits of the Wikileaks expose may be, one thing is for sure: it is a DISASTER for some of Pakistan's media. The huge information dump has resulted, annoyingly for our journos, in having to actually read things properly and double check facts, and far, far too much temptation to make laughing stocks of themselves. Thanks to @sohaibgulbadan who pointed this out, here is The News ' version of one on the released cables . Breathlessly, The News' reporter Umar Cheema  tells us on the paper's front page : Pakistan, a private nightmare for Obama Tuesday, November 30, 2010 By Umar Cheema "ISLAMABAD: US President Barack Obama considers Pakistan as his “private nightmare”, a front-line ally in the war against terrorism that could surprise the whole world waking up one morning to hear that the country had been taken over by the extremists. A diplomatic cable leaked by Wikileaks reveals that Pakistan is one of the major causes behind the US decision of no...

Hmmmm. Does the Guardian know something we don't? A screen-grab off the Guardian 's Wikileaks database... Thanks to Missing Romance for sending it on to us: Ayatollah Ali Zardari?!? First it was the New York Times and BBC Urdu Service leading the world (and the gullible Pakistani media) to believe Saudi King Abdullah said Asif Zardari was "the biggest obstacle to Pakistan's progress", when he actually only said that Zardari was "the primary obstacle to the government's ability to move unequivocally to end terrorist safe havens" in Pakistan (okay, so the actual phrasing is far more baffling than the misquote). Now we have the Guardian trying to imply stronger links with Iran than anyone knew. Just doesn't pay to be Zardari does it? Oh wait, that came out all wrong...

Isn't is quite remarkable that almost none of the major newspapers in Pakistan thought that the 'leader of the Muslim Ummah' King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia , and the 'brotherly Muslim countries' of UAE and Qatar egging on the United States to bomb their supposed sibling in faith, the Islamic Republic of Iran - as revealed by Wikileaks - was worthy of any major headline? Without fail, all of them buried that bit in the secondary 'catch-lines', if at all, with possibly only the Express Tribune  and Nawai Waqt attaching it some real significance. Most focused on Abdullah's views on Asif Ali Zardari , while Dawn  and the Urdu Express decided that the American plan to take enriched uranium fuel out of Pakistan was the most newsworthy. Here's how some of the main newspapers' front pages looked today: Dawn : Jang: The News: The Nation: Nawai Waqt: Express: Express Tribune: Pakistan Today: (Apologies for not having The Daily Times up here but t...

So, after quite a while, I was once again checking out the website of The Dawn because somebody asked me about it. And no, I don't mean Dawn as in the newspaper; in fact, I think the Dawn Media Group once even threatened, or at least contemplated threatening, them with legal action (I have no idea what became of it). And suddenly, something caught my eye that made bells go off in my mind. It was quite a Eureka! moment. "The prophetic Sunrise in the East"? But before I tell you what my Eureka! moment was, let's all just take a moment to understand what The Dawn really is. Its flowery tagline proclaims it as a "News digest of the prophetic Sunrise in the East." If that's not enough to impress you, in its 'Why The Dawn News?' section, it clearly implies that the Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah was somehow involved in its founding (even though it exists only as a web-paper and the web didn't actually come into being until about 46 years a...

Enough of such onanistic celebrations! (Thanks for @jhaque_ for pointing this out.) Original story in all its glory, here .

A notice posted on a door in the all-women Kinnaird College Lahore (via @BushraS on Twitpic): Um...I don't think I will actually translate this.