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Ranging from pre-school and kindergarten kids dancing and prancing on the stage in forest animal costumes to high school students reciting long dialogues and tunes as the principal characters, the California-based Mount Madonna School's annual production Ramayana as its culmination event is a feast of a sort.

The 46th-year production is a beloved and cherished tradition by the students of the school as well as the teachers, parents, non-teaching staff, and alumni who lend their services voluntarily at the school's annual production.

The longest-running Broadway-style production in the western hemisphere, adapted from the ancient epic, was this year held at the Mexican Heritage Plaza in San Jose from 5 June to 8 June. A blend of different skills of the students, from ballet steps, classical dancing in Indian tradition and acrobatics to singing and acting, was all put on display through creatively blended dance choreographies, songs and other elements. The school show changes every year, blending the old elements with the new.

A large number of the senior high school students who have been involved in the production for years attain their peak in acting and singing as the principal characters of Lord Rama, Lord Shiva, Goddess Sita, Goddess Parvati and others. The production started with nearly 200 students taking part in the invocation to Goddess Saraswati with Jai Ma-Jai Jai Ma chanting.

"We learn more and more about the epic as we perform Ramayana each year. Our senior class of six attended India and had time in Himachal Pradesh and Haridwar at Sri Ram Ashram, which is a sister school to Mount Madonna School," adds Director Chelsea Otterness. "The seniors learned more about the character that they were playing and were immersed in the colorfulness of the Indian culture of acceptance of other cultures."

Otterness brings the depth and the learning more about the depth of the story and how Ramayana is a well, and it is possible to learn so much, including the learning of the evolution of consciousness.

I never thought that 10,000 miles away from India, I'd be able to see a play on Ramayana. Like most Indians, I too have been raised on the tales of the ancient epic, and I recall arguing and discussing with family members and friends some of the doings and judgments of the heroes of the story. I also have very fond memories attached to the stories of the scripture. I recall countless summer vacation evenings, sleeping under the refreshing night sky at my paternal grandmother's residence in Chandigarh, when my cousins and I would gather around our grandfather to listen and re-listen the innumerable stories from Ramayana. Our Pitaji's portrayal in exact details of Sitaji in her diverse jewels was so that we were transported to another world.

The eagerness with which school students in the US have embraced the Orient's ancient scripture as a topic for its performing arts program and the ultimate triumph of the exercise are fascinating. While the artistic value of the production can be improved in many ways, the presentation of the long and arduous story within less than four hours felt like a Herculean feat in itself.

On the field of set grandeur and costume sparkle, the production wanted nothing further. All the ingredients of children's entertainment had been brought together, and adults benefited from the labor and resulting delight of the juvenile artists.

The showcase of the production on the holy scripture was started by the members of the Hanuman Fellowship Centre, a non-profit organisation founded by the students of Baba Hari Dass and Mount Madonna School (an affiliation of the Hanuman Fellowship Centre).

Ramayana was introduced by teacher and Yoga Master, Baba Hari Dass. In 1972, students of the Hanuman Fellowship performed at yoga retreats and then at various venues, including universities. Initially, some children were members of the predominantly adult cast, but in 1979, the Mount Madonna School commenced a production with the students and other children making up the cast. After running parallel productions for several years, the school show evolved into an exclusive program.

The number of out-of-school people worldwide is currently estimated at 272 million, more than 21 million higher than the previous estimate, UNESCO's Global Education Monitoring Team (GEM) said.According to the team, in its recent report, it has noted that by 2025, nations will be behind by 75 million compared to their national targets.

"Two reasons underlie this rise. First, new enrollment and attendance figures explain eight million, or 38 per cent, of the increase. The prohibition on girls going to secondary school age in Afghanistan in 2021 is also responsible for this increase," the report added.

"Second, revised UN population projections cover 13 million, or the other 62 per cent, of the growth. Relative to the projections most recently used in the out-of-school model, the 2024 World Population Prospects have the number of 6- to 17-year-olds in 2025 (a proxy for the school-age group) up by 49 million (or by 3.1 per cent)," it said.

The report further added that the effects of conflicts on out-of-school population are hard to measure as conflicts impede data gathering.

The revision of the estimates of global population affects out-of-school rate and population estimates, but the size of the effect varies with the source of the data on enrolment and attendance.

"If the source is administrative data, then the entire growth of the population is transmitted to the out-of-school population since there is no new information on enrolment.".

"But if the source is survey data, then the growth of population is transmitted to the in-school and out-of-school populations proportionately. Since the model is based on survey data for the majority of countries with out-of-school populations that are large, only a portion of the added school-age population is being estimated to be out of school," it added.

Overall, approximately 11 per cent of the children of primary school age (78 million), 15 per cent of the adolescents of lower secondary school age (64 million) and 31 per cent of the young people of upper secondary school age (130 million) are not in school.

The model drew on multiple data sources (administrative, survey and census) to produce internally consistent trends of regional and global averages.

"The country-level model reconciles disparate sources, imputes values on years with no data, and uses short-term projections.

"They are thus not identical to countries' official values of out-of-school based on a single source for a particular year. It is these latter values, on which countries' out-of-school rate targets for 2025 and 2030 are based," the report added.

"Individually, as the SDG 4 Scorecard indicates, nations will cut their out-of-school number by 165 million by 2030 if targets are met.".

"Yet, it is estimated that by 2025 nations will be four percentage points off track for those of primary and lower secondary school age and six percentage points off track for those of upper secondary school age. Overall, this results in countries being already off-track by 75 million compared to their country-specific targets in 2025," it stated.

The report indicated that the contribution of conflict to out-of-school populations is underestimating.

"The out-of-school model estimates rely on assuming stable patterns of school-age population flow through the education system. This methodological rigour is turned against us in the context of emergencies and crises when school attendance shifts abruptly.".

"Not only is it impossible to assume that long-term trends will keep on going, but there is generally no data or not enough data to know how crises will affect short- and medium-term outcomes," it stated.

Conflict will make it difficult to gather data on school enrolment and hence is likely to result in an underestimate of the out-of-school groups, it added.

Meta Platforms is acquiring a 49% stake in data-labeling company Scale AI for $15 billion, valuing the company at $29 billion. The transaction, announced by both companies on Thursday, is a strategic investment for Meta as it desperately tries to catch up with artificial intelligence.

Scale AI CEO and MIT dropout Alexandr Wang, aged 28, will travel to Meta to head up its newly-established superintelligence team. This department creates systems beyond current levels of artificial intelligence—to artificial superintelligence (ASI).

"We'll expand the work we do together generating data for AI models and Alexandr Wang will come to Meta to assist our superintelligence efforts," Meta stated in a release, according to Reuters.

Though Meta won't get a board seat at Scale AI, the deal will involve some of Scale's 1,500 employees come to Meta under Wang. Wang will remain a board member at Scale.

Who is Alexandr Wang? The man Meta is putting its hopes on

Wang's own background is unconventional. Born and raised in Los Alamos, New Mexico, by Chinese immigrant physicists, Wang entered the technology world at a young age. He once worked at Quora prior to dropping out of MIT in his first year. In 2016, together with Lucy Guo, he co-founded Scale AI via startup accelerator Y Combinator.

"Long-term, we want to power any human-process-driven business for any company," Wang said to the YC blog in 2016.

Only then 24 years old and the world's youngest self-made billionaire, he was just beginning. Guo left the startup a couple of years later, but Wang founded Scale AI as a data stack for much of the world's top AI systems.

He's raised more than $680 million, including $100 million from Founders Fund co-founder Peter Thiel. Forbes now estimates his net worth at $3.6 billion.

"Focus on making the business and then all the other stuff will just kind of work itself out," he said to Business Insider in 2020.

Wang has become a familiar presence in Washington, frequently meeting with lawmakers about the national security implications of AI. A 2018 trip to China convinced him that America's future warfare would be dependent upon AI leadership.

"AI leadership globally is already in full swing, and the ability of our country to adopt and leverage AI effectively will shape the future of warfare," Wang testified at a public hearing.

Scale AI, established in 2016, assists in training edge AI models by providing large volumes of labeled data. Remotasks and Outlier, its two platforms, employ gig workers to label giant datasets. Labeled data of this nature is essential to train AI models such as ChatGPT.

It started by backing autonomous vehicle customers like Toyota, Honda, and Waymo. It has added backing for OpenAI, Microsoft, and even the US government, which uses it to process satellite imagery from Ukraine.

Scale's 2024 revenues came in at $870 million and will double more than double to reach $2 billion in 2025. Bloomberg says this would value it at $25 billion.

However, the meteoric rise of the startup hasn't all been smooth sailing. There have been reports of substandard working conditions for its offshore gig workers who earn as little as $1 per hour. They are predominantly based in nations such as Kenya, the Philippines, and India.

Meta's AI gamble: Wang bucks research wisdom

This is not just an investment—it's a statement. By doing this, Meta is making the statement that it is giving up on the antiquated research-driven strategy that it used to promote.

Internal battles, such as high-profile departures of talent and model-latency issues, have sapped Meta's AI momentum. Its open-source LLaMA models were meant to shake up the sector, but poor liftoff and talent flight have silenced momentum.

Meta's seasoned AI head Yann LeCun is back in charge. But his skepticism regarding large language models (LLMs) as a paBy hiring Wang— who scaled Scale up to a billion-dollar company without research credentials—CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now wagering on another type of leadership. A business brain like Sam Altman's, and not that of a research purist.

Meta is said to be poaching Google and OpenAI employees with seven- to nine-figure offers to man its 50-person superintelligence lab.

"This was a deeply unique moment": Wang takes new role

In an email to employees, Wang acknowledged the emotional significance of departing Scale.

"Being not a Scalien was, in short, unthinkable. But the more time I had to actually think about it, the more I came to see that this was a very idiosyncratic moment for me, but indeed for Scale," he wrote.

He promised Scale's employees that proceeds of the investment by Meta would go to shareholders and vested equity holders.

Wang will oversee a bold initiative at Meta: creating AI that not only catches up to its competitors, but surpasses them. Superintelligence is still in theory—but with Wang at the helm of the project, Meta is making a $15 billion bet that it can become a reality.to artificial general intelligence (AGI) seems to have gone out of step with traditional Silicon Valley dogma.

A State Department-halted suspension of new student visa interviews in the United States is now in its third week, with no end in sight. The move happens at a sensitive period for international students, since the May–August period includes 70% of all US student visas issued per annum.

NAFSA CEO Fanta Aw penned on LinkedIn this week, "This suspension occurs at the worst possible time when at least 50% of new international students still have to make visa interview appointments in an effort to arrive on time for the fall semester."

The delays in student visas are part of a larger change in US policy. On June 4, President Trump rolled out a new travel ban impacting 12 countries. Twelve countries—Iran, Libya, and Somalia—are subject to a complete entry ban.These restrictions entail prohibitions on granting F, M, and J category student visas to citizens of the targeted countries who are not inside the US on June 9 with a valid visa.

The White House insists that valid visas already issued will remain intact. Yet the action is being read around the world as an indication that the US is becoming more closed to international students. Malaysia, for example, has countered by suspending scholarship programmes to send its students to the US.

In the meantime, there have been escalating legal conflicts between the Trump administration and Harvard University. On May 22, Harvard's SEVP certification was revoked by the Department of Homeland Security. That ruling was overruled in court the following day. Yet on June 4, President Trump released a proclamation denying entry to foreign students into the US to attend Harvard.

Double rate hike has been initiated in Dubai, and parents are either accepting the hike in fee or a different education. While others are accepting hikes of up to Dh5,000 a year per pupil, others are accepting small hikes of handful of hundreds of dirhams. With fees increasing on all fronts, there are many parents struggling to keep up, from paying an up-front fee of a year's fee to price comparison at budget schools.

In May 2025, the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) of Dubai approved a 2.35% Education Cost Index (ECI) increase for private for-profit schools for 2025-2026. This move enables the schools to revise their fees according to individual school grades based on the performance of the Dubai School Inspection Bureau (DSIB) and the ECI. The move affects families in Dubai, who have begun receiving communications for the fee hike.

The hike is only one of a wide array of across-the-board measures to counteract inflation, operating cost increases, and other cost pressures that plague schools. While record increases are being awarded to some parents, others are being provided relief at small increases.

Economic reality has already got most parents struggling to keep up with fee increases on the issue, anyway. Take the case of Dubai resident Manal, whose kids study in an Indian syllabus school at Al Quoz. "The overall increase in the fee of my kids will be Dh400 annually," she also stated. "I am more than relieved that the increase is not a humongous sum and something which all of us can gulp down," Manal also added. "We had anticipated a hike this year and hence we were not surprised," commented Khaleej Times.

Others are experiencing much bigger rises. There are some families who are experiencing much bigger hikes. Vivek, an Indian expatriate with two kids in a high school, told us that the school fees for his kids now cost between Dh87,000 and Dh92,000 annually. The second hike will be Dh10,000 each for both the kids annually. "But my school charges one year's school fee in advance," Vivek explained. "This has deprived me of a bulk discount and hence total fee hike for me has been about Dh3,000 each year for the two children."

Even mothers like German expatriate Greta, whose three children are enrolled at a British syllabus school in Jumeirah, are not exempted. "I got the letter last Wednesday that my school rate increases by Dh2,000 a year a child," Greta said. "Gobsmackingly Dh6,000 a year in school fees. And don't even get me started on the books, the uniform, and the rest of the course material." Greta goes on to say that she can even think about switching schools because her eldest will be repeating Year 11 next year. She and her husband are reducing, though, by reducing some of their school-related costs in an attempt to offset the additional cost. The increasing demand for the cheaper alternatives

Others find hikes to be too costly to swallow, and so are already considering sending their kids to cheaper schools. Mohammed Iqbal, who sends his kids to a school that imparts the British curriculum in Qusais, was relieved in that his school hike was relatively modest, Dh1,200 annually. "I was kind of expecting more than that, so I am completely over the moon," he said.

Or mother R.M., whose children attend another British syllabus school, has also noticed fees increasing in the past two years.

"Last year their fees increased by 4.55%, and this year their fees increased by 2.35%," said R.M. "Of course, there is a time when it costs to do business but costing the parents too because, by the way, unfortunately, the salary does not rise that quickly as the cost. I went shopping around schools the very minute I learned of the fee hike, then fell back behind feeling stuck because it would have issues too. So we remained with the one we are already in." Umm Mohammed, Dubai parent, shifted her child to a less costly school prior to the announcement of the fee hike.

"We were already paying over Dh55,000 a year in school fees at our previous school," she explained. "It was already as much as we could afford. So we'd made that choice last year and transferred her to another school. Now we pay Dh30,000 with fees, uniform, and books." We all heaved a sigh of relief when school fee news broke. At my previous school, it would have been very tough for us to afford such a fee increase. Now the increase is merely Dh1,000 a year. It is completely fine with us. It was the correct decision to relocate her, I believe," she said. The Bigger Picture: Dubai's Expanding Private School Market

The private sector of education in Dubai has been on boom, recording 12% growth among students during the financial year 2023-2024. Out of the latest available statistics, Dubai now has 227 private schools with 387,441 students from 185 countries. Student number growth may have contributed to demand for the increasing need for private education and the subsequent increased fees.

While there have been issues, there are also decent-sized numbers of parents who feel there is value in the Dubai private school system and some schools actually provide some flexibility in payment terms to soften the cost burden. The variation of school programs, ranging from international curricula to specialist courses, also provides parents with improved alternatives, even if frugality is an issue in this situation.

IIT Kharagpur has set a significant benchmark with the continuous placement season 2024-25 as it received more than 1,800 job offers comprising 409 Pre-Placement Offers (PPOs) and 25 international offers. This fact remains true even with an internationally challenging job scenario, confirming the robust reputation of the institute with industries.

The season kicked off on a high, with over 800 offers extended in the first two days alone.

By Day 3, the figure had reached beyond 1,000, reflecting robust demand for institute alumni in different sectors. Remarkably, nine students have been offered packages above 1 crore, with the highest reaching 2.14 crore per annum.

These headhunting offers were from leading multinational companies and indicated robust employer confidence in the quality of training, innovation culture, and students at the institute.

Professor Rajib Maity, Career Development Centre Chairperson, said, "The outcomes are a testament to our teamwork and support specific to ensuring that students achieve their potential. Our readiness and resilience focus is enabling graduates to land purposeful jobs."

Over 400 companies have taken part in the ongoing placement drive thus far, including students in software, analytics, finance, consulting, core engineering, and other functions.

The institute extended its appreciation to all recruiters for their persistent faith and interest in more extensive future cooperation.

Professor Amit Patra, IIT Kharagpur Director, referred to the record-high number of offers as a milestone. "As technology advances, we are enriching our curriculum to lead the way. Our inter-disciplinary approach, powerful alumni base, and hands-on training make students industry-ready leaders," he maintained.

IIT Kharagpur with its academic excellence remains a recruiters' as well as students' first choice.

Its success in placing highlights not just robust institutional leadership but also the growing pertinence of its programmes in an ever-changing job market.