The United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have recently assessed American travelers' risk of COVID19 infection in Pakistan being among the lowest in the world. The Economist magazine has ranked Pakistan second in the world for return to the normalcy of pre-pandemic life. These assessments stand in sharp contrast to Pakistan's low ranking for pandemic preparedness by the Global Health Index (GHI). GHS has also continued to rank India higher than its neighbors in spite of Prime…

The United Nations has declared February 10 as World Pulses Day to recognize the importance of pulses or daal as global food. This recognition is driven as part of the effort to feed the global population in an environmentally sustainable way. Pulse crops have a lower carbon footprint than most foods because they require a small amount of fertilizer to grow, according to the United Nations. Pulses are protein and fiber rich food grown with a low carbon and water footprint as they are adapted…

Our Next Energy (ONE), a two-year-old Michigan startup founded by Pakistani-American Mujeeb Ijaz, has received $25 million in initial investment from Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures and German automaker BMW. Storage battery technology is a key area of innovation to bring about clean energy revolution.   Mujeeb Ijaz has engineered a way to achieve longer ranges for electric vehicles from…

Dr Saiba Varma, Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of California in San Diego (UCSD), has recently been under fire for hiding her familial ties to to a top RAW official while working on her book "The Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir".  “As an upper-caste and upper-class Indian citizen and subject, I have actively and passively internalized anti-Muslim racism my entire…

TikTok is not coming any slow when it comes to breaking records. Just five years after its launch on the international market, the famous Chinese short-video social network has managed to become an almost unprecedented meteoric technological phenomenon. Now, TikTok has managed to unseat two giants…

On November 9, 2021, the United States, the world's most vocal supporter of human rights, voted against a United Nations committee's draft on the right to food which passed by 180 votes in favor to 2 against (Israel, United States). The UN committee expressed alarm that in 2020, "the number of people lacking access to adequate food rose by 320 million ‑ to 2.4 billion ‑ amounting to nearly a third of the world’s population, and that between 720 million and 811 million people…

In a long investigative report titled "The Battle for the World’s Most Powerful Cyberweapon" published today, the New York Times has revealed that the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi bought the Pegasus spyware as part of a 2017 $2 billion deal he signed with then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. …

In 1999, President Pervez Musharraf inherited a massive debt of over 100% of GDP run up by the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) governments in 1990s. Musharraf's policies not only revived the bankrupt economy but also brought down debt to 52% of GDP by 2007. …

Nuclear power plants in Pakistan generated 15,540 GWH of electricity in 2021, a jump of 66% over 2020. Overall, Pakistan's power plants produced 136,572 GWH of power, an increase of 10.6% over 2020, indicating robust economic recovery amid the COVID19 pandemic. …

Pakistani-American economist Atif Mian has recently analyzed Pakistan's economy in a series of tweets. He has said "Pakistan's economy is not in a good place", adding that the nation's "per capita income has not risen in 3 years (in fact down slightly)". He has particularly mentioned the country's "exaggerated external demand driven by its rentier economy", "flawed energy policy" and "a broken…

Pakistan's PTI government has built South Asia’s first digital National Socio-Economic Registry (NSER) as a part of its ambitious effort to build a basic social safety net. The Ehsaas (also known as BISP- Benazir Income Support)) program's socio-economic registry includes household information by  geography, age, income, education, health, disability, employment, energy consumption, land and livestock holdings etc. …

Pakistani-American heart surgeon Dr. Mohammad Mansoor Mohiuddin and Dr. Bartley Griffith performed the first successful genetically-modified pig heart transplant into a human patient today at University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) hospital in Baltimore, according to the University's press release. Considered one of the world’s foremost experts on transplanting animal organs, known as…

Judge Ayesha Malik has been confirmed as Pakistan's first woman Supreme Court judge in the face of strong opposition by the majority of sitting judges of the top court and Pakistan Bar Council. It was two  affirmative votes by the PTI government representatives that helped her win 5-4 confirmation in the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC). Only two of the five sitting Supreme Court judges who are members of the SJC supported her confirmation. …

Oil consumption in Pakistan jumped 19% to 20.8 million tons in 2021, a strong indication of the country's economic recovery from the COVID-impacted 2020. In addition to oil, Pakistanis also consumed nearly 4 billion cubic foot of natural gas every day. Energy is fundamental to the functioning of any economy. …

The Covid19 pandemic that started in late 2019 continued to ravage the world in 2021. Europe, India and the United States were among the most impacted by it. Pakistan was able to control it better than its large eastern neighbor but it, too, was hit by double digit global inflation. Pakistan's economic recovery began in earnest with higher GDP growth, record exports and remittances from the…

India is one of the most unequal countries in the world, according to the World Inequality Report 2022. There is rising poverty and hunger. Nearly 230 million middle class Indians have slipped below the poverty line, constituting a 15 to 20% increase in poverty. India ranks 94th among 107 nations ranked by…

Is Bangladesh's officially reported GDP figure credible? Do consumption figures support Bangladesh's claim of higher per capita income than India and Pakistan?  Is it the recent rebasing of GDP that boosted Bangladesh's per capita income above India's and Pakistan's? If Bangladesh has higher GDP per capita,…

Luma Health, co-founded by Adnan Iqbal, a second generation Pakistani American, raised $130 million in series C funding. Adnan's fellow co-funders include Dr. Tashfeen Ekram, a Pakistani-American and Aditya Bansod, an Indian-American. The latest round has brought Luma's total funding to $160 million.  "I have had a life of privilege. I have been to the right institutions. I have played…

India lost 6.8 million salaried jobs and 3.5 million entrepreneurs in November alone. Many among the unemployed can no longer afford to buy food, causing a significant spike in hunger. The country's economy is finding it hard to recover from COVID waves and lockdowns, according to data from multiple sources. At the same time, the Indian government has reported an 8.4% jump…

Prime Minister Imran Khan launched Sehat Card in Punjab, Pakistan 's largest province, on International Universal Healthcare Day 2021. This is essentially a government-funded health insurance program run by insurance companies to cover up to one million rupees worth of care each year at government certified public and private clinics and hospitals.  It represents a major expansion of this program which was first introduced in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.  It is now available to residents of…