The Press: Ties for Pakistan

To Karachi's Sind Observer, the whole matter was outrageous. The U.S., said the English-language paper, was helping Pakistan's railroads by sending more than $650,000 worth of neckties to dress up the road's uniformed employees. The country needed wheat, cried the Observer, not neckties. What the paper itself apparently needed was a sharper translator: the U.S. was sending wooden railroad ties, which in Pakistan are known only by the British name, "sleepers."