Did the U.S. make it clear to Pakistan in 2022 that Imran Khan was not acceptable as the prime minister of the South Asian country? Did the Pakistani military then use the Opposition parties led by Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari to remove Imran Khan from power through a successful No-Confidence vote in the parliament? The answer to both of these questions appears to be a resounding "yes" based on the leaked contents of a secret diplomatic cable, the actions of the Opposition politicians…

Dependency ratio, defined as the percentage of children and retirees to the working age population, is rapidly declining in Pakistan (current dependency ratio is 69.03%) and the rest of the developing nations of Asia and Africa. This demographic shift means that the world's richest and most powerful nations…

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is forecasting bumper harvest of all major crops in Pakistan for 2023/24. Major crops in the country include wheat, rice, sugarcane, corn and cotton. These offer welcome relief for Pakistani farmers who suffered devastating losses in the epic floods of…

A Singapore-based cybersecurity firm Group-IB discovered in June that over 100,000 ChatGPT user accounts were compromised and their credentials found on the Dark Web. Among the accounts reported compromised, India topped with 12,632, followed by Pakistan with 9,217 and Brazil with 6,531. Bangladesh witnessed the fewest instances with 2,463. This report gave a glimpse of the high interest level of Indians and Pakistanis in generative AI.  Another …

The extensive news coverage of the loss of Pakistani migrants' lives in the recent Greece boat tragedy has linked it to "hunger" in Pakistan. The essence of these news stories is captured by a quote in a CNN headline: "We'll die of hunger anyway". It is attributed to a young man from the Pakistani town of Gujarat who is unfortunately believed to have drowned in the Mediterranean on his way to Greece.  These stories beg the following questions: Is it really true that Pakistani migrants are…

Interest in studying in Europe  is growing in certain key markets like Pakistan and Bangladesh in particular, according to a recent report on foreign students coming to Europe. Although India generates the largest share of relative demand, this fluctuates drastically and has gradually declined overall in recent years, the report adds.  …

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently opened a new parliament building in New Delhi. Prominently displayed in this new building is a provocative map of "Akhand Bharat" (Greater India) that includes neighboring nations of Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka as part of India. After the inauguration, Modi's parliamentary affairs minister Pralhad Joshi  …

Bollywood star Kajol has said at a recent event that Indian political leaders are uneducated. Though she did not name anyone, she is facing vicious attacks by Modi Bhakts, a label embraced by the staunch supporters of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Here's what she said, "Change especially in a country like India is slow. It’s very very slow because for one we are steeped in our tradition, steeped in our thought process and, of course, it has to be with tradition. You have political…

Top European Research Labs have announced the selection of three teams of high school students-- one each from Pakistan, the Netherlands and the United States-- to conduct accelerator beam experiments at CERN and DESY.  They won the Beamline for Schools (BL4S), a physics competition open to secondary school pupils (Grade 9 to 12) from all around the world. Pakistani and US teams will travel to CERN, Geneva, in September 2023 to perform the experiments that they proposed. The Dutch team will…

Pakistani students have received more EU-funded Erasmus scholarships and US-sponsored Fulbright scholarships this year than students from any other country in the world. These are fully-funded scholarships for recipients to study at universities in the European Union and the United States. Pakistan has also seen a post-pandemic surge  of student visas to study in Australia, the US and UK this year. …

Wall Street Journal's White House Correspondent Sabrina Siddiqui, a Pakistani-American Muslim journalist, got to ask the only question posed by an American journalist to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his recent visit to the White House in Washington, DC. This was the first time in 14 years that Mr. Modi took an unscripted question from any journalist anywhere in the world. In fact, it was his first press conference since taking office as the prime minister of India in…

Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna has been instrumental in inviting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to address the joint session of US Congress on June 22, 2023. This came as a surprise to many of his constituents who voted for him after he declared…

Responding candidly to a question in the Indian capital New Delhi, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said: "The way this works is we're going to tell you, it's totally hopeless to compete with us on training foundation models you shouldn't try, and it's your job to like try anyway. And I believe both of those things. I think it is pretty hopeless." This occurred at an event organized…

Number of Indian Muslims attending colleges and universities has declined by 8% to 1.9 million in 2020-21, from 2.1 million in 2019-20, according to Indian government data. In the same period, the higher education enrollment in Pakistan has risen about 12%, from 2.7 million to over 3 million. Both India and Pakistan have about the same population of Muslims. …

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's campaign to show normalcy in the Indian occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir has backfired.  Three member countries of the G20 boycotted the tourism event in Srinagar. The rest of them sent local embassy staff to attend. The event also drew negative worldwide media coverage of the brutality of India's "settler colonialism" in the disputed territory. It elicited strong condemnation from the United Nations. Prior to the event, India’s tourism secretary, Arvind…

What good is a currency in global trade if it can not be used to buy products and services from other nations that a country needs?  The answer to this question came when Russia said it has accumulated billions of rupees in Indian banks which it can not use. “This is a problem”,  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in India’s Western state of Goa on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting.  “We need to use this money. But for this, these rupees must…

Pakistan is experiencing one of the darkest periods of its history. Political instability is eroding confidence in the nation's future. Declining economic growth and high inflation are hurting the people of all strata of society, particularly the poor whose numbers are rapidly rising. Is there any hope left for the country? Is it a case of the "darkest before dawn"? How do…

The story of the padlocked grave has gone viral, thanks to the mainstream Indian news media ranging from the Times of India  to NDTV. The story links the image of a padlocked grave to rising necrophilia cases in Pakistan, with the claim that the image is an example of how parents lock their daughters’ graves in Pakistan in order to prevent rape. Alt News, a fact-check site run by…

Top Chinese officials have committed to “further deepen and expand” ties with Pakistan at meetings at the highest levels between the military and civilian leaderships of the two nations.  Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang assured  Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of his country's support for Pakistan's "financial stability".  Also in the news this week is a Chinese government commission report recommending the construction of a 3,000 kilometer long …

Growing access to smartphones and Internet connectivity is transforming the lives of women in rural Pakistan. They are acquiring knowledge, accessing healthcare and finding economic opportunities.  A recent UNDP report  titled "DigitAll: What happens when women of Pakistan get access to digital and tech…