South Asia Investor Review

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 be hosted by DESY in Hamburg, Germany. Beamline for Schools Competition Sponsored by CERN, Switzerland and DESY, Germany This year's winning teams have been picked by a committee of CERN and DESY scientists from a shortlist of 27 particularly promising experiments. All the teams in the shortlist will be awarded special prizes. In addition, one team will be recognized for the most creative video and 10 teams for the quality of physics outreach activities they are organizing in their local communi

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.  EU Scholarships. Source: EU Pakistan Among 2,835 students from 143 countries selected for the Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters program, Pakistani students rank at the top with 192 scholarships, followed by India 174, Bangladesh 140, Mexico 118, and Nigeria 109, according to an  EU tweet .  Within the EU, Germany is hosting 7,114 Pakistani students, according to  Erudera . Among the major countries of origin of foreign students in Germany are: China 40,055, India 33,753, Syria 16,712,  Iran 11,625, Russia 10,739, Italy 9,887, Cameroon 7,692 and Egypt 7,214.   The Fulbright scholarship program of

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 2014.  Narendra Modi (Left), Sabrina Siddiqui (R) Sabrina Siddiqui asked the Indian leader about rights groups’ assessments that his government is discriminating against religious minority groups and quashing dissent. She asked," What steps are you and your government willing to take to improve the rights of Muslims and other minorities in your country and to uphold free speech?"  The Islmophobic Indian prime minister feigned “surprise” at the question and said democracy is core to India. He t

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 in 2019: “It’s the duty of every American politician of Hindu faith to stand for pluralism, reject  Hindutva , and speak for equal rights for Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhist & Christians.”   L to R: Narendra Modi, JOe Biden, Ro Khanna What caused this change of heart?  Is it the donation of $110,000 to his campaign by Hindu Nationalist donors in the United States, as reported by The Nation?  Fellow Indian-American Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal has also supported Modi's invitation. She will be among members of Congress who will escort Modi to the podium. Ro Khanna and Pramila Jayapal are both supposedly "liberal" Democrats.    While Khanna says that he “strongly opposes any form of caste discrimination”, he has

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 by The Economic Times where Altman answered a question by Rajan Anandan, a former Vice President of Google in India and South East Asia and current venture capitalist.   OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in India Altman in Delhi:  Sam Altman, the young CEO of OpenAI, the company that recently launched its revolutionary Generative AI app ChatGPT, was in India as part of a six-nation tour to discuss AI regulation.  ChatGPT has been trained on massive amounts of data and text from the internet, textbooks, newspapers, magazines and academic journals. It can write computer code and carry on sophisticated co

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.  Higher Education Enrollment of Muslims in India, Pakistan While enrollment of Indian Muslims has fallen by 8%, the enrollment of Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs in higher education has increased by 4.2%, 11.9% and 4% respectively compared to 2019-20.  The  upper caste  Hindus have seen the highest jump of  13.6%  in enrollment in colleges and universities.  Labor Force Education Status of Indian Muslims Worst of all Groups. Source: HT   These results are consistent with a 2018 study by three researchers which reported that "Muslims (in India) now have considerably worse upward mobility (29) today than both Scheduled Castes (37.4–