Pakistan's 152 billion text messages and Rs. 40 billion in texting revenue in 2009-10 put it among the top-ranking nations for sms traffic, says a report produced by Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA).

The main driver for growth of texting in Pakistan has been its low cost compared with voice…

"Righteousness is not that ye turn your faces towards the east or the west, but righteousness is, one who believes in God, and the last day, and the angels, and the Book, and the prophets, and who gives wealth for His love to kindred, and orphans, and the poor, and the son of the road, beggars, and those in captivity; and who is steadfast in prayers, and gives alms." Quran 2:177

Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand.

“I use the solar light for cooking at night. We save money because we had to buy candles and kerosene before. We also use it to charge our mobile phones.” Marvi, Yousaf Babar Village in Sindh, Pakistan

About 250 schools and 12,000 homes in Pakistani villages have so far been lit by solar lights. The program is funded by the UK's Department for International Development (DfID) to help flood-affected people in …

Cambridge University's Judge Business School and Karachi Education Initiative are launching Karachi School for Business & Leadership (KSBL) in 2012.

Karachi Education Initiative, which is providing the initial core funding for KSBL, is a non-profit group of leading industrialists and businessmen of Karachi. The group has committed to raising a permanent endowment fund to support the education of deserving students at KSBL, as well as for the provision of resources, facilities and…

“You tend to hear the worst 5% of the Pakistan story 95% of the time.” Pakistani Entrepreneur Monis Rahman

Most of the reviews of Pakistan's Year 2011 fit the above description of how Pakistan's story is told by foreign and domestic media engaged in the 24X7 news cycle.

So let me get the worst 5% of the story out of the way before telling you the rest of the 95% of…

Indian students rank near the bottom on PISA, a global test of learning standards conducted in 74 nations this year. TIMSS, another standardized international test, produced similar results earlier in 2003.

This is the first time that Indian students participated in PISA. Students from Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu took the…

A recent report by the Center for Entrepreneurial Development (CED) of the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) finds that Pakistanis are less entrepreneurial than their counterparts in the majority of 59 member nations of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), according to Express Tribune newspaper. The…

Pakistani-American Mansoor Ijaz's confidential memo to retired US Admiral Mike Mullen on behalf of former Ambassador Hussain Haqqani makes a reference to the 1971 war where it says "this is a 1971 moment in Pakistan’s history". What does it really mean? Does it mean there is another India-Pakistan war in the offing? Or an expansion of US Afghan war into Pakistan? Or further splintering of…

NFL owners are the oldest and whitest of old white guy clubs. Drew Magary

For at least two years in a row, BRIC has, in the words of SGS's Albert Edwards, stood for Bloody Ridiculous Investment Concept, not an acronym for populous emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China as Goldman Sachs' Jim O'Neill saw it ten years ago.

In fact, O'Neill has himself expressed disappointment in India, one of the BRICs, a designation that has boosted…

Pakistani actress Veena Malik (Urdu: ويتا ملک, born Zahida Malik), who raised eyebrows last year for her provocative on-screen behavior in a reality show, is in the midst of yet another controversy after posing in the nude for the December 2011 cover of the Indian edition of international For Him men's Magazine(FHM). The ISI…

Asif Farooqui is making millions of dollars by turning thousands of tons of waste in Lahore into liquefied petroleum products and fertilizer for farmlands.

Words like "clean" and "green" are not usually associated with the streets of major South Asian cities, but Farooqui's Waste Busters, a successful waste management business, is slowly changing the image of the Pakistani city of Lahore, according to an…

“It’s one of the best community-based health systems in the world,” said Dr. Donald Thea, a Boston University researcher about Pakistan's Lady Health Workers Program. Thea is one of the authors of a recent Lancet study on child pneumonia treatment in Pakistan. He talked with the New York Times about the study.

Published in British medical journal "The Lancet" this month, the…

The recent killings of 24 Pakistani soldiers by US forces have confirmed yet again that the US military tactics continue to undermine the overall strategy that leaders of both countries share. Professor Vali Nasr, former advisor to US State Dept, put it best when he told the New York Times, “It’s a case of the tail wagging the dog. U.S. commanders on the ground…

Pakistan figured as the only Muslim majority country as a potential superpower in 2011 Arab Public Opinion Poll survey conducted by Professor Shibli Telhami, senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institution. The poll surveyed 3,000 people in Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates in October…

Still reeling from a cheating scandal in the cricket world and overshadowed by a freshly brewing Memogate political crisis at home, Pakistan's national cricket team bounced back strongly with ODI and Test series wins against Sri Lanka in UAE.

In the One Day…

The US state of Alaska has a small population of only 680,000 people and vast territory measuring 1.5 million square kilometers. The state is endowed with tremendous mineral wealth--particularly oil and gas. Alaska Permanent Fund was set up in 1976 to ensure that ordinary Alaskans get a share of this natural wealth. Currently the fund has assets of over $38 billion and each Alaskan will receive $1,174.00 in cash from it for…

The story of how India acquired nuclear weapons gets almost no attention in the Western media as they continue to focus on nuclear proliferation by Pakistan's AQ Khan.

The nuclear proliferation narrative in the mainstream American and European media begins with A.Q. Khan's network rather than the actors in North America and Europe as the original proliferators of nuclear weapons equipment, materials and technology to India in 1960s and 1970s. These nuclear exports from US to India…

While Pakistan's HDI of 0.504 (2011) ranks it among UNDP's low human development countries, its largest city Karachi's HDI of 0.7885 (2005) is closer to the group of nations given high human development rankings.

In a…