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Showing posts from May, 2016

Iran's Chabahar vs Pakistan's Gwadar

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Chabahar port in Iran is only about 100 miles from Gwadar port in Pakistan. Both are natural deep sea ports in the Arabian sea. Gwadar Extends into Deep Sea with East & West Bays Eastern Half of Gwadar Port  Gwadar port's planned capacity when it is completed will be 300 to 400 million tons of cargo annually.  It is comparable to the capacity of all of India's ports combined annual capacity of 500 million tons of cargo today.   It is far larger than the 10-12 million tons cargo handling capacity planned for Chabahar. Completed Gwadar Berths & Cranes To put Gwadar's scale in perspective, let's compare it with the largest US port of Long Beach which handles 80 million tons of cargo, about a quarter of what Gwadar will handle upon completion of the project. Gawadar port will be capable of handling the world's largest container ships and massive oil tankers. Gawadar port is being built in Pakistan by the Chinese as part of the

Upstream River Projects in India Threaten Bangladesh Water Security

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New Delhi is starting massive series of new projects to divert water from major rivers in the north and the east of the country to India's drought-stricken western and southern regions. This news has sounded alarm bells in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, according to the  UK's Guardian newspaper . The $400 billion project involves rerouting water from major rivers including the Ganga and Brahmaputra and creating canals to link the Ken and Batwa rivers in central India and Damanganga-Pinjal in the west. Its target is to help drought-hit India farmers who are  killing themselves at a rate on one every 30 minutes  for at least two decades. The Indo-Gangetic Plain, also known as Indus-Ganga and the North Indian River Plain, is a 255 million hectare (630 million acre) fertile plain encompassing most of northern and eastern India, the eastern parts of Pakistan, and virtually all of Bangladesh, according to a Wikipedia entry. India and Pakistan have a formal international

Pakistanis Are Largest Foreign-Born Muslim Group in Silicon Valley

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Pakistani-Americans are the largest foreign-born Muslim group in San Francisco Bay Area that includes Silicon Valley, according to a 2013 study. The study was commissioned by the One Nation Bay Area Project, a civic engagement program supported by Silicon Valley Community Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation, Marin Community Foundation and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy.  Overall, US-born Muslims make up the largest percentage at 34% of all Muslims in the Bay Area, followed by 14% born in Pakistan, 11% in Afghanistan, 10% in India, 3% in Egypt and 2% each in Iran, Jordan, Palestine and Yemen. Silicon Valley Pakistani-American by the Numbers: Bay Area Muslims by Country of Birth  There are 35,000 Pakistani-born Muslims in San Francisco Bay Area,  or 14% of the 250,000 Muslims who call the Bay Area home, according to  the study . Bay Area Muslim community constitutes 3.5 percent of the area’s total population and is one of the highest concentrations of Mu

OPEN Forum 2016: Pakistani-American Entrepreneurs Conference

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OPEN Forum 2016 in Silicon Valley drew over 700   Pakistani-American entrepreneurs , venture capitalists, bankers, accountants, lawyers and high-tech executives to Santa Clara Convention Center on Saturday, April 30, 216.  The forum  featured keynotes by  Qasar Younus , the Pakistani-American head of Silicon Valley's top incubator Y-Combinator, and  Atif Rafiq, Chief Digital Officer at fast food giant McDonald's Corp. OPEN Forum 2016 Agenda: The conference included presentations and discussions in four parallel tracks to inform and educate attendees on various aspects of starting and building businesses at different stages. In addition, there were panels on social entrepreneurship, women empowerment, inspiring Pakistani-American youth and dealing with the rise of Islamophobia in the United States. Also screened was a documentary  "K2 and the Invisible Footmen"  about the unsung mountaineering heroes of Pakistan's tallest and the world's second talle