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Five Indian-Americans in Forbes list of US' richest

[email protected] (PTI)
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.

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News Network
July 20,2020

Paris, Jul 20: Two coronavirus vaccine candidates have proven safe for humans and produced strong immune reactions among patients involved in separate clinical trials, doctors said on Monday.

The first trial among more than 1,000 adults in Britain found that the vaccine induced "strong antibody and T cell immune responses" against the novel coronavirus.

A separate trial in China involving more than 500 people showed most had developed widespread antibody immune response.

The studies, published in The Lancet medical journal, constitute a major step on the road towards a COVID-19 vaccine that is effective and safe for widespread use.

The authors of the studies said that they encountered few adverse side-effects from the vaccine candidates.

However, they cautioned that more research was needed, particularly among older adults, who are disproportionately at risk of dying of COVID-19.

Co-author Sarah Gilbert from the University of Oxford said the results "hold promise".

"If our vaccine is effective, it is a promising option as these types of vaccine can be manufactured at large scale."

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News Network
June 9,2020

Jun 9: The World Health Organization says it still believes the spread of the coronavirus from people without symptoms is “rare,” despite warnings from numerous experts worldwide that such transmission is more frequent and likely explains why the pandemic has been so hard to contain.

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO''s technical lead on COVID-19 said at a press briefing on Monday that many countries are reporting cases of spread from people who are asymptomatic, or those with no clinical symptoms.

But when questioned in more detail about these cases, Van Kerkhove said many of them turn out to have mild disease, or unusual symptoms.

Although health officials in countries including Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere have warned that COVID-19 is spreading from people without symptoms, WHO has maintained that this type of spread is not a driver of the pandemic and is probably accounts for about 6 per cent of spread, at most.

Numerous studies have suggested that the virus is spreading from people without symptoms, but many of those are either anecdotal reports or based on modeling.

Van Kerkhove said that based on data from countries, when people with no symptoms of COVID-19 are tracked over a long period to see if they spread the disease, there are very few cases of spread.

“We are constantly looking at this data and we''re trying to get more information from countries to truly answer this question,” she said. “It still appears to be rare that asymptomatic individuals actually transmit onward.”

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News Network
June 3,2020

Islamabad, Jun 3: Pakistan has reported a record 4,132 fresh cases of the coronavirus in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of infections to 80,463, the health ministry said on Wednesday.

The Ministry of National Health and Services said the new infections were detected after conducting a maximum of 17,370 tests in a day.

Of the total cases, Sindh has so far detected 31,086 patients of the coronavirus, Punjab 29,489, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 10,897, Balochistan 4,747, Islamabad 3,188, Gilgit-Baltistan 779 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir reported 289 patients of the viral disease.

"In total 67 patients died in the last 24 hours, taking the tally of deaths to 1,688. Another 28,923 people have fully recovered from the disease," the ministry said in a statement.

The authorities have so far carried out 595,344 tests in the country.

Officials said that Pakistan has more than 100 labs that can conduct over 30,000 tests per day and the number of daily tests will be gradually increased to the maximum level.

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