You’ve spent a few years in the domestic workforce, hip to the ever-globalizing economy, and now your culture-savvy professional interests (inclinations?) make the idea of pursuing an MBA abroad particularly enticing.

Well, start researching schools and try not to let high tuition prices and poor currency conversion rates give you pause. With a few calculations and hearty, equal doses of research and realism, you too can join the discerning 2% of U.S. MBA students pursuing their degrees internationally (see BusinessWeek.com, 03/02/06, ). Think of your financial aid hunt—and the ensuing computations—as a refresher course in decision science. Virtual Beginnings

Start with the Internet. International schools’ Web sites often have a wealth of information applicants can frequent for valuable financial aid opportunities unique to their institutions. These sites usually have information about scholarships, fellowships, and grants available to foreign students, as well as loan information for international students.

Though it can be difficult for international students to secure loans at some institutions, this financial obstacle seems to be dissolving. In an attempt to provide more-flexible aid options to MBA students, MBA programs now make concerted efforts to enlist domestic banks and other international institutions as partners to provide U.S. students with internationally available loan schemes.

Begin your funding research immediately. As soon as possible, fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)—so you can apply for Stafford and alternative loans, which some lenders now allow domestic students to borrow while studying internationally—and your chosen institution’s forms as well, especially if they’re available before you even apply to the B-school. Best-Case Scenario

International loan programs aside, every student wants money that does not have to be paid back following a costly MBA program. No matter how much you’re making as a newly minted chief executive officer, you’ll sigh with relief at the absence of monthly student loan payments.

The International Education Financial Aid Web site features a comprehensive database chock-full of domestic and international scholarship opportunities and detailed grant listings.

Individual institutions also offer scholarships for entering and current students. INSEAD, with the original campus located in Fontainebleau, France, and a newer campus in Singapore, provides scholarships for diverse, qualified applicants who fit criteria such as Italian, Jewish, Iraqi, female, Sub-Saharan African, the best and the brightest, and fluency in Arabic.

Similarly, Oxford’s Said School of Business, an 11-year old school with 225 full-time MBA students (as opposed to INSEAD’s 882), provides extensive, internal scholarship information on its Web site. Additionally the site provides links to external scholarship information, in particular to the renowned, British government-sponsored Marshall Scholarship, designated for U.S. students studying in Britain.

Furthermore, though the 152-student International Institute for Management Development , or IMD, in Lausanne, Switzerland carried a price tag of $60,700 for the 2006 academic year and the majority (70%) of its students did not receive financial aid in 2006, the worldly school still provides unique financial aid opportunities. An affluent alumni board doles out scholarship and loan monies from a fund; the pool, backed and run entirely by IMD grads, dished out $900,000 for needy students in the 2006 academic year alone.

ALEX Salmond hinted yesterday that the new SNP government might have to legislate to reform right-to-roam laws following Ann Gloag’s success this week in preventing the public from entering a large section of her land.

The First Minister told MSPs that new legislation might be needed to correct “deficiencies” in the law. But he stressed this would only happen if there was clear evidence from the courts that the current legislation was not working.

Mrs Gloag, the Stagecoach founder and one of Scotland’s richest people with an estimated fortune of 395 million, was the first landowner in Scotland to seek exemption from the right-to-roam laws.

This week, in a landmark judgment, she was given permission by a sheriff to prevent the public from entering a sizeable chunk of land around Kinfauns Castle in Perthshire.

Her victory focused attention on the Land Reform Act, the legislation enshrining the right-to-roam laws, which featured a presumption of public access to all land in Scotland unless there was a good and clear reason for people to be barred.

Mrs Gloag’s victory prompted calls from ramblers and other countryside campaigners for the law to be tightened to protect the rights of walkers and to prevent landowners from closing off their land to the public.

Yesterday Mr Salmond was asked about his views on Mrs Gloag’s court victory during First Minister’s Questions.

The First Minister said he had read a summary of the sheriff’s opinion and urged other MSPs to do the same.

“What we have at the moment is a sheriff’s opinion,” he said. “There’s an indication from the local council that they’re going to take the matter to appeal and then we’ll get a determination.”

Another case was ongoing at Stirling Sheriff Court which affected the same issues, he added.

“What I suggest we do is at least wait until the case gets to the court of appeal and look at whether this judgment points to serious deficiencies in the structure of the previous act.

“If it does, and if that builds up with case evidence, then and only then should the parliament look to see if there are any further legislative changes required to repair the deficiencies which may exist in an act passed by the previous administration.”

The First Minister made it clear he was not looking to bring in new legislation unless it was necessary but he also signalled his support for a new act if that was what was required to protect the interests of walkers.

A senior Executive source said that ministers wanted to see what happened to the Gloag appeal and also wanted to hear the results of other court cases.

Ian McCall, campaign and policy co- ordinator for Ramblers Association Scotland, said he hoped the Executive would take action, if it was necessary.

“If we were finding that the courts were making decisions that were undermining the intent which the parliament had when it passed the act, then the parliament would want to step in and change that,” he said.

Mr McCall said the Executive might not have to amend the entire act. It might be possible to tighten the provisions by amending the Executive’s guidance, which is attached to the act - and this would not need primary legislation.

He said: “This is one decision by one sheriff and each case is obviously going to be slightly different. There is another case going forward which might have a different outcome.”

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The sense of crisis gripping Pakistan swelled today as a bloody mosque siege stretched into its fourth day, suspected militants targeted President Pervez Musharraf’s plane and a suicide bomber killed six soldiers near the Afghan border.

Gunfire rang out in a congested district of Rawalpindi in the morning, shortly after a plane carrying Gen Musharraf took off. The aircraft was not hit and police traced the shots to a nearby house where they found a rifle and an anti-aircraft gun on the roof.

Security officials described it as a failed assassination attempt but the main military spokesman, Major General Waheed Arshad, said that only the AK-47 rifle had been discharged, suggesting the president was in only limited danger.

Gen Musharraf’s plane landed safely in western Baluchistan province, where recent floods killed 200 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless. The military leader has already survived two assassination attempts, a fact that has burnished his reputation as a warrior against militancy amongst western allies.

The degree to which extremism has taken root during Gen Musharraf’s eight-year rule of Pakistan was clear in nearby Islamabad, however, where his troops continued their siege of the Red Mosque complex.

Bursts of heavy gunfire coupled with deafening explosions erupted from the mosque throughout the day, interspersed with loudhailer appeals from officers calling on the militants inside to give themselves up.

An estimated 400-500 students were inside the mosque, 60 of them heavily armed with automatic weapons, grenades and petrol bombs, according to the interior minister. The remainder are said to be mostly children, about half of them girls. Their leader, the radical cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi, declared he would rather die than surrender.

“We can be martyred but we will not court arrest,” he said in a defiant interview with a local television station. “We are more determined now.”

The minister of state for information, Tariq Azim, dismissed the talk of martyrdom as a bluff, noting that Ghazi’s brother Abdul Aziz had already been captured trying to flee the mosque under the disguise of a burka.

Ghazi denied he was forcing students as young as five to remain inside the bullet-marked mosque, but worried parents waiting outside told a different story.

At lunchtime his militants opened fired on a group of relatives as they approached the mosque, shooting one man in the foot. He limped back to army lines and was sent to hospital.

“They say they are Islamic but they go outside in a burka,” raged Babar Khan, who was waiting for his two teenage cousins. “Meanwhile poor children are going to die.”

The siege has traumatized Islamabad, a carefully planned and often lethargic city where residents like to joke about the dullness of life. The Red Mosque is in the heart of G-6, a tree-lined neighbourhood popular with Pakistani bureaucrats and foreign diplomats.

Since Tuesday G-6 has been cut off from the outside world by barbed wire and troops with orders to shoot on sight. Residents have been roused from sleep by barrages of gunfire and explosion. “It’s been absolutely terrifying,” said one.

An indefinite curfew was briefly lifted today to allow residents to seek food or escape to a safer sector.

The rise of violent extremism was also highlighted in Dir, a remote town in North West Frontier province, where a suicide bomber flung himself at an army convoy. Six soldiers were killed and three injured, Reuters reported.