Five Indian-Americans in Forbes list of US' richest

September 30, 2014

New York, Sep 30: Five Indian-Americans have been named among the 400 richest people in the US by Forbes, a list topped by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for the 21st year in a row with a net worth of USD 81 billion.

Forbes listFounder of outsourcing firm Syntel Bharat Desai, entrepreneur John Kapoor, Symphony Technology founder Romesh Wadhwani, Silicon Valley angel investor Kavitark Ram Shriram and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla are among 'The Richest People In America 2014' list by Forbes.

Forbes said 2014 was another record year for American wealth, when the aggregate net worth of the richest 400 Americans was USD 2.29 trillion, up USD 270 billion from a year ago.

"Thanks to a buoyant stock market, the richest people in the US just keep getting richer," Forbes said.

Gates is the richest American for the 21st year in a row, with a net worth of US 81 billion. The Microsoft chairman's stake in the software company he cofounded accounts for just under 20 per cent of his total net worth. His friend Warren Buffett, chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, occupies the number two spot on the 400, a rank he has held since 2001 with a net worth of USD 67 billion.

Larry Ellison, who just announced that he was giving up the CEO role at Oracle, the software firm he founded, comes in at number three, with a net worth of 50 billion dollars.

Desai and his family rank 255 on the list, followed by Kapoor who is ranked 261, Wadhwani (264), Shriram (350) and Khosla (381).

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now the 11th richest person in the US, and the biggest dollar gainer on the list. His fortune soared to USD 34 billion, up USD 15 billion since last year, due to a sharp rise in the price of the social network's shares.

Desai, 61, and wife Neerja Sethi founded outsourcing firm Syntel in 1980 while studying at University of Michigan. The Indian Institute of Technology alumnus has a networth of USD 2.5 billion.

Kapoor, 71, debuts on The Forbes 400 as a serial entrepreneur who has founded two pharmaceutical companies that he has guided to exceptional success.

The bulk of his wealth is concentrated in shares of Akorn Pharmaceuticals, an Illinois-based generics manufacturer that Kapoor has been involved with since the early 1990s, and INSYS Therapeutics, a cancer-treatment maker that went public in May 2013.

Kapoor, whose net worth is USD 2.5 billion, also has a small chain of fast-casual Indian restaurants in Arizona called Bombay Spice, as well as Roka Akor Japanese eateries in Chicago, Scottsdale and San Francisco.

Wadhwani, 67, an Indian Institute of Technology Bombay alumnus has a net worth of USD 2.5 billion. Forbes said over the last decade, his galaxy of companies has expanded to 20 and is generating three billion dollars in revenues with 18,000 employees worldwide.

He is the recipient of the 2013 Forbes India 'Non-Resident Philanthropist Award' and sits on the boards of the Kennedy Center and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Wadhwani signed Bill Gates' and Warren Buffett's Giving Pledge last year.

Shriram, 57, has a net worth of USD 1.87 billion. He was an early Google backer and has been a Silicon Valley angel investor since 2000. Through his Sherpalo Ventures, he has backed early-stage tech firms such as Zazzle and Paperless Post, as well as the frozen yogurt retailer Pinkberry.

Shriram made most of his fortune through Google and has been on its board since the company was founded in 1998. In June 2014, Shriram and his wife donated $61 million to engineering initiatives at Stanford University, which both of his daughters attended and where he is a board trustee.

Khosla, 59, has a net worth of USD 1.67 Billion and has run his own venture capital firm, Khosla Ventures, since 2004, following nearly two decades at VC firm Kleiner Perkins. His highest-profile investments have lately been in clean tech: wood-based biofuel, new types of batteries and water purification.

All together, the 400 wealthiest Americans are worth a staggering USD 2.29 trillion, up USD 270 billion from a year ago.

The average net worth of list members is USD 5.7 billion, USD 700 million more than last year and a record high. An impressive 303 of the 400 saw the value of their fortunes rise compared to a year ago. Only 36 people from last year's list had lower net worths this year.

The list has 27 newcomers including Elizabeth Holmes the youngest woman on the list, and the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world. Just 30 years old, the Stanford University dropout has built blood testing company Theranos into a firm that venture capitalists have valued at USD 9 billion.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
January 8,2020

Sydney, Jan 8:  Authorities in Australia will begin five-day campaign to kill thousands of camels in the country as they drink too much water amid the wildfires.  The government will send helicopters to kill up to 10,000 camels in a five-day campaign starting Wednesday, The Hill reported citing The Australian.

Marita Baker, an Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) (large, sparsely-populated local government area for Aboriginal Australians) executive board member, said that the camels were causing problems in her community of Kanypi.

"We have been stuck in stinking hot and uncomfortable conditions, feeling unwell, because the camels are coming in and knocking down fences, getting in around the houses and trying to get to water through air conditioners,'' she said.

The planned killing of the camels comes at a time the country is ravaged by wildfires since November. The disaster has killed more than a dozen people and caused the displacement or deaths of 480 million animals, according to University of Sydney researchers.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
June 4,2020

Jun 4: A malaria drug President Donald Trump took to try to prevent COVID-19 proved ineffective for that in the first large, high-quality study to test it in people in close contact with someone with the disease.

Results published Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine show that hydroxychloroquine was no better than placebo pills at preventing illness from the coronavirus.

The drug did not seem to cause serious harm, though -- about 40% on it had side effects, mostly mild stomach problems.

 “We were disappointed. We would have liked for this to work,” said the study leader, Dr. David Boulware, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Minnesota.

“But our objective was to answer the question and to conduct a high-quality study,” because the evidence on the drug so far has been inconclusive, he said.

Hydroxychloroquine and a similar drug, chloroquine, have been the subject of much debate since Trump started promoting them in March.

Hydroxychloroquine has long been used for malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis, but no large studies have shown it or chloroquine to be safe or effective for much sicker patients with coronavirus, and some studies have suggested the drugs may do harm.

Trump took a two-week course of hydroxychloroquine, along with zinc and Vitamin D, after two staffers tested positive for COVID-19, and had no ill effects, according to results of his latest physical released by his doctor Wednesday.

Federal regulators have warned against hydroxychloroquine's use except in hospitals and formal studies because of the risk of side effects, especially heart rhythm problems.

Boulware's study involved 821 people in the United States and Canada living with someone diagnosed with COVID-19 or at high risk of getting it because of their job -- doctors, nurses, ambulance workers who had significant exposure to a sick patient while not wearing full protective gear.

They were randomly assigned to get either the nutrient folate as a placebo or hydroxychloroquine for five days, starting within four days of their exposure. Neither they nor others involved in the research knew who was getting which pills.

After 14 days in the study, 12 per cent on the drug developed COVID-19 symptoms versus 14 per cent in the placebo group, but the difference is so small it could have occurred by chance, Boulware said.

“There's basically no effect. It does not prevent infection,” he said of the drug. Even if it were to give some slim advantage, “we'd want a much larger effect” to justify its use and risk of side effects for preventing illness, he said.

Results were no different among a subgroup of participants who were taking zinc or vitamin C, which some people believe might help make hydroxychloroquine more effective or fight the coronavirus.

There are some big caveats: The study enrolled people through the Internet and social media, relying on them to report their own symptoms rather than having them tracked in a formal way by doctors.

Participants were not all tested for the coronavirus but were diagnosed as COVID-19 cases based on symptoms in many cases. And not all took their medicines as directed.

The results “are more provocative than definitive,” and the drug may yet have prevention benefits if tried sooner or in a different way, Dr. Myron Cohen of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill wrote in a commentary in the journal.

Others were glad to see a study that had a comparison group and good scientific methods after so many weaker reports on hydroxychloroquine.

“This fits with everything else we've seen so far which suggests that it's not beneficial," said Dr. Peter Bach, director of a health policy center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

This study was in younger relatively healthy people, but the results “would make me very discouraged about trying to use this in older people” who are most vulnerable to serious illness from the coronavirus, Bach said.

“If it does work, it doesn't work very well.” Dr. Dan Culver, a lung specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, said there's still a chance that giving the drug sooner than four days after someone's exposure to the virus may help prevent illness.

But the study “takes 'home run' off the table” as far as hopes for the drug, he said.

The study was mostly funded by David Baszucki, founder of Roblox, a California-based game software company, and other private donors and the Minnesota university.

Boulware also is leading a study testing hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19. The study is finished and results are being analyzed now.

On Tuesday, the journal Lancet posted an “expression of concern” about a study it published earlier this month of nearly 15,000 COVID-19 patients on the malaria drugs that tied their use to a higher risk of dying in the hospital or developing a heartbeat problem.

Scientists have raised serious questions about the database used for that study, and its authors have launched an independent audit.

That work had a big impact: the World Health Organization suspended use of hydroxychloroquine in a study it is leading, and French officials stopped the drug's use in hospitals. On Wednesday, the WHO said experts who reviewed safety information decided that its study could resume.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
April 18,2020

Washington, Apr 18: The United States on Friday passed 700,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, according to a tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University.

With the highest number of cases and deaths of any country in the world, the US had recorded 700,282 cases of COVID-19 and 36,773 deaths as of 8:30 pm (0030 GMT Friday), according to the Baltimore-based university.

That marked an increase of 3,856 deaths in the past 24 hours, but that figure likely includes "probable" virus-linked deaths, which had not previously been counted.

This week, New York City said it would add 3,778 "probable" virus deaths to its official count.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave a toll Friday night of 33,049 dead, including 4,226 probable virus-linked deaths.

The United States has seen the highest death toll in the world in the coronavirus pandemic, ahead of Italy (22,745 deaths) although its population is just a fifth of that of the US.

Spain has recorded 19,478 deaths, followed by France with 18,681.

Trump announces $19 billion relief for farmers amid COVID-19 epidemic

President Donald Trump on Friday announced a $19 billion financial rescue package to help the agriculture industry weather the staggering economic downturn sparked by measures to defeat the coronavirus.

Trump told a press conference the government "will be implementing a $19 billion relief program for our great farmers and ranchers as they cope with the fallout of the global pandemic."

The program will include direct payments to farmers, ranchers and producers who Trump said have experienced "unprecedented losses during this pandemic."

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said US farmers have been hit hard by a sharp shift in demand, as schools and restaurants close and more Americans eat at home.

That has disrupted the food supply chain, forcing farmers in many places to destroy dairy output and plow under crops that no longer have buyers.

"Having to dump milk and plow under vegetables ready to market is not only financially distressing, but it's heartbreaking as well to those who produce them," Perdue said.

Perdue said some $3 billion of the money would go to buying produce and milk from such farmers, and redistribute it to community food banks.

Millions of Americans have recently turned to food pantries for meals and groceries after losing their jobs.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.