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Showing posts from September, 2013

Pakistani-American Tops Richest Americans of South Asian Origin

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With a net worth of $3.8 billion, Shahid Khan tops the Forbes list of the richest Americans of South Asian origin. Overall, Khan ranks 122nd on Forbes 400 list for 2013 , up from 179th in 2012. Born in Pakistani city of Lahore, 63 year old Shahid Khan is a mechanical engineer and a self-made billionaire who built his fortune as a top supplier of bumpers to the auto industry. Khan made history in 2011 by becoming the first non-white owner of a National Football League team when he bought Jacksonville Jaguars. Recently, he acquired an English soccer team Fullham for $300 million. There are four Indian-Americans on Forbes 400 this year: Syntel chairman and co-founder Bharat Desai and his family, Symphony Technology Group founder and chairman Romesh T. Wadhwani, Google investor Kavitrak Ram Shriram and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, according to India West  newspaper.  Desai, 60, who lives in Fisher Island, Fla., is in 252nd place with a $2.2 billion net worth. He was in 239th

Pakistan Quake Triggers Massive Offshore Gas Release

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Pakistan is known to have significant natural gas deposits trapped in the form of methane hydrates in sedimentary rocks off the coast of Baluchistan . Tragic as yesterday's earthquake is in terms of loss of human life, it may also have triggered the release of substantial amount of gas which pushed up a new island in the Arabian sea. A team of scientists from the National Institute of Oceanography in Karachi will visit the site this week to investigate it. In a study published online in the journal Nature Geoscience and reported recently by New York Times , European researchers said that an underwater quake off Pakistan nearly 70 years ago likely fractured seafloor sediments and created pathways for the release of methane gas which still continues to bubble up from below. The researchers say the phenomenon may be widespread enough that climate scientists should take it into account when estimating the amounts of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. Dr. David Fischer, th

Silicon Valley's Pakistani-American Founder Makes it Big in Technology IPO

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NASDAQ IPO of Silicon Valley's cyber security firm Fire-eye has made its Pakistani-American founder Ashar Aziz worth $430 million at the market close on Friday, according an estimate by Forbes magazine . The high-tech company priced its initial public offering of 15.2 million shares at $20 per share late Thursday, raising about $304 million after increasing its expected price range to $15 to $17 per share. Shares of FEYE were trading up by more than 100% during the day before closing up $16 or 80% to $36.00 on the Nasdaq Friday. FEYE closed up another 4% to $37.45 on Monday. Aziz owns about 10.91 million shares in the Milipitas, Calif.-based security company; that 9.3% stake after the offering alone is now worth more than $392 million. Fireeye Founder and CTO Ashar Aziz FireEye, founded in 2004, has a virtualization engine which protects its customers' infrastructure from attacks that may come through the web and email. Its dynamic virtual cloud analyzes incoming

PM Nawaz Sharif's First 100 Days Report Card

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FDI is up and load-shedding is down during Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government's first 100 days. However, there has been little progress on resolving fundamental issues such as lack of security, growing budget deficits, high current account deficits and continuing heavy subsidies to the power sector and various public sector enterprises like Pakistan Steel Mills, PIA, Railways, etc. Foreign Inflows Jump:  Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's first 100 days in office have seen a significant increase in foreign capital inflows. Pakistan has $105.4 million foreign direct investment (FDI) in the first two month of the current fiscal year 2013/14 compared to $52.4 million received during the same month of the previous year, according to a Reuters' report . This is a continuation of the trend from the PPP government's last year in office which saw 76% year-over-year jump to reach nearly $1.5 billion foreign investment in fiscal year 2012-13. Foreign remittances f

Russia's Putin Vs American Exceptionalism

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"My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different,but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal." Russian President Vladimir Putin's Op Ed in New York Times Clearly, Mr. Putin does not like the fact that the United States considers itself exceptional. But what does "exceptional" mean? To me,  "exceptional" is just another