Pakistani power sector is continuing its march toward cheap indigenous sources of electricity. Hydropower component has increased 22%, coal 57% and nuclear 8% while oil is down 54% and natural gas and LNG are down 32% and 15% respectively, according to Bloomberg. These…

Intel has recently fired its Indian-American chief engineer Venkata Murthy Renduchintala, who also served as Group President of the Technology, Systems Architecture and Client Group (TSCG), for failure to deliver 7 nanometer semiconductor technology on schedule, according to Reuters. …

Pakistan has seen a rapid decline in its COVID19 test positivity rates over the last several weeks. The country has seen a fall in positivity rate from over 22% in June to below 10% now, and excluding Sindh, near 5% for the rest of the country. Neighboring India has positivity rate at 12.1% and rising.  There has been significant decline in hospitalizations and fewer patients in critical…

Guest Post by Dr. Wajiha Javed

Head of Public Health and Research

Getz Pharma, Pakistan.

Key Findings:

• Survey revealed that 90% of the population who tested COVID-19 positive (screened via serologic test kits) were asymptomatic carriers of the disease, who would have otherwise not presented at a government-approved PCR testing facility.

• If the results of this study are extrapolated to the rest of…

Percentage of people in Pakistan testing positive for coronavirus is going down along with declining deaths, according to data from multiple independent sources. The effective transmission rate Rt continues to be less than one, indicating that each infected person is infecting fewer than one person, according to data from London's Imperial College. However, this is no time to relax. Pakistanis need to continue to take all precautions, including wearing face masks, to ensure that COVID19…

Over two-thirds of low caste Indian-Americans are discriminated against by upper caste Indian-Americans in Silicon Valley, according to a report by Equality Labs, an organization of Dalits in America. Dalits also report hearing derogatory comments about Muslim job applicants at tech companies. These revelations have recently surfaced in a California state lawsuit against Silicon…

A JIT (Joint Investigation Team) report recently released by Sindh government in Pakistan has revealed that the infamous Karachi gangster Uzair Baloch worked for Iranian intelligence. Apparently, Uzair Baloch was also in contact with Indian intelligence agents working in Iran, according to Indian media reports. Baloch's interrogation led to the discovery and arrest of Indian undercover agent Kulbhushan Jadhav in Balochistan shortly after Baloch's arrest. Kulbhushan …

London's Imperial College estimates that COVID19 pandemic in Pakistan is "on course to fade out", a testimony to Prime Minister Imran Khan's government's effective handling of the the ongoing global health crisis.  At just 0.74, the effective coronavirus reproduction rate (Rt) in Pakistan is among the lowest in the world. An Rt of less than 1 indicates each infected person is infecting fewer than one person.  Only Italy (0.63), Netherlands (0.62), Canada (0.50) and Spain (0.02) have lower…

Pakistan pharmaceutical industry and market are among the world's top 3 fastest growing, according to IQVIA health market research firm based in the United States. Pakistan’s domestic pharmaceutical firms sales have grown 13.1% compounded annually in the last 4 years, outperforming multinational companies (MNCs), which saw global growth of 9.34% CAGR. Pakistan's pharma sector is growing faster than in other emerging markets like Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Russia and…

Karachi-born Pakistani-American actor Kumail Nanjiani plays Kingo,  one of the title characters in "The Eternals", Marvel's new movie scheduled for release in 2021. Kingo is a 16th century Japanese master swordsman and a film star and producer. The Eternals are a race of immortal superheroes. The movie also stars Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Richard Madden, and Kit Harington.…

Did the pandemic surveillance system fail in early detection of the Coronavirus in US and Pakistan? What are the problems in this system? What needs to be done to correct the problems?…

Dr. John Nath Kapoor, Indian-American CEO of Insys Therapeutics, has been found guilty of conspiring to recklessly and illegally boost profits from the opioid painkiller Subsys, a fentanyl spray designed to be absorbed under the tongue, according to multiple media reports.…

What is the global impact of COVID19 pandemic? How has it affected the United States? How is Prime Minister Imran Khan handling the coronavirus crisis in Pakistan? Are …

Top two international medical journals, New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and The Lancet, were recently forced to retract two papers on COVID-19 due to obvious fraud committed by the coauthor Sapan Desai, Chicago-based Indian-American surgeon and businessman, whose analytics company Surgisphere claimed to have stored clinical data from thousands of patients of hundreds of hospitals as part of…

Is the killing of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis Police Officer symptomatic of a deeper problem in American society? Is the Trump phenomenon the result of ingrained racism in America? Is racism rooted in America's original sin of slavery?  Is it time to openly acknowledge and address it? Is it time for greater social change beyond the emancipation proclamation of 1860s and…

Pakistan has so far had just over 100,000 confirmed cases of COVID19. About 5,000 are currently in hospitals, including 1,000 in critical condition and 278 on ventilators, according to the World Heath Organization representative in Pakistan. Over 32,000 have recovered and 2,000 have died. Data from multiple countries shows that only a few of those who go on the ventilators survive. It takes highly skilled pulmonologists to insert the ventilator, a skill that is not widely available.…

Antibodies testing of 7,000 adults in Karachi reveals that as many as 15% of them have already been exposed to COVID19 without experiencing symptoms, according to a study by Dr. Wajiha Javed, an epidemiologist and head of public health and research at Getz Pharma in Pakistan. This data raises the possibility that millions of Pakistanis may have already been exposed to coronavirus. It takes at least 40% of the…

Many countries have imposed strict lockdowns to control the spread of coronavirus.  Marko Kolanovic of JP Morgan claims that numbers had declined because the virus "likely has its own dynamics" that are "unrelated to and often inconsistent lockdown measures".  He cites as evidence a number of places whose infection rates, or "R" values, have continued to fall despite restrictions being lifted.…

"Believe me when I tell you that my heart is with you. I appreciate and would even privately agree with what you're advising us to do (abandon nuclear tests)", said Pakistan's Ex Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to US …

Pakistan's computer services exports soared 26% in March, 2020 over the same month last year. This growth occurred in spite of the coronavirus lockdown that began on March 23, 2020. The nation's total services exports fell 17% in the same month.…