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With over 13 years of experience in cloud computing, Sahana Ramesh specializes in program management, multi-cloud architecture, and regulatory compliance. Her contributions to cloud initiatives reflect a deep understanding of technical requirements and business needs, ensuring that organizations operate efficiently in a secure and scalable environment. Expertise in Multi-Cloud Architectures Sahana has worked extensively with cloud platforms, including AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, enabling organizations to adopt multi-cloud strategies tailored to their operational goals. Her work involves designing secure, PCI-compliant systems that address both regulatory and business requirements. One of her notable achievements includes integrating multi-cloud systems to optimize data security while maintaining accessibility for stakeholders. 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Expanding Cloud Systems Across Markets Sahana has contributed to the global expansion of cloud systems, including markets in India and the UK. Her role involved navigating complex regulatory environments and collaborating with vendors to implement cost-effective solutions. Her strategies focused on optimizing resource utilization, enabling organizations to scale efficiently while minimizing operational costs. Sahana's efforts ensured that the expansion met both technical and compliance requirements, creating a foundation for reliable and adaptable cloud infrastructure in new regions. Early Career Foundations Sahana began her career at Thomson Reuters, where she gained hands-on experience in IT infrastructure projects, including virtual storage solutions and SAN configurations. These roles provided her with a strong foundation in system stability and resilience, which later became essential in her cloud-focused work. As she advanced in her career, Sahana took on roles requiring program management expertise, overseeing Agile teams, disaster recovery programs, and revenue-generating projects. Her approach to managing technical and operational priorities ensured timely delivery of critical initiatives. Collaboration and Leadership Sahana's ability to foster collaboration across teams has been a key factor in her success. She has worked closely with design, operations, and compliance teams to ensure that cloud solutions align with organizational objectives. Her leadership extends to mentoring team members, providing guidance on cloud technologies, Agile practices, and project management methodologies. By encouraging continuous learning, Sahana has helped build teams capable of addressing complex challenges in cloud transformation projects. Certifications and Technical Proficiency Sahana's expertise is backed by certifications, including AWS Cloud Practitioner and Scaled Scrum Master (SSMC). These credentials reflect her commitment to staying updated on the latest advancements in cloud technologies and Agile practices. Her technical skills include tools like Terraform, Docker, and Splunk, which she utilizes to implement and maintain robust cloud systems. These tools play a critical role in ensuring infrastructure scalability, real-time monitoring, and efficient deployments. Vision for the Future of Cloud Technologies Sahana is interested in integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning into cloud systems to enhance predictive analytics and automate operations. She believes in leveraging AI-driven insights to build systems that are adaptable to dynamic business environments. Additionally, she sees potential in multi-cloud strategies, which allow organizations to benefit from the strengths of various cloud providers. By developing frameworks that optimize these integrations, Sahana aims to support organizations in building resilient and scalable infrastructures. 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Until now, Ms Weinstein has been the US firm’s vice president and managing director in the UK and Ireland, having previously worked at Unilever. She said her focus will be on “unlocking AI-powered growth for everyone”, calling the current AI boom a “pivotal” time for the tech giant. Google has joined many of its rivals in launching a string of high-profile generative AI products in recent times, led by the firm’s generative AI-powered assistant, Gemini. “Europe, the Middle East and Africa is an amazingly diverse and varied region, but the enormous growth opportunity that AI can create is universal,” she said. “My focus will be on unlocking that AI-powered growth for everyone – users, businesses, partners and governments across every part of the region. “I’m excited to be stepping into this role at a pivotal time, in a company where I’ve spent the last ten years and leading a region where I’ve spent much of my life.” Google employs more than 29,000 people across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with 56 offices across 35 countries in those regions working on many of the firm’s largest products, including its search engine, the Android mobile operating system and its Chrome web browser. Its AI research arm, at Google DeepMind, is also led from London. Philipp Schindler, Google senior vice president and chief business officer, said: “This is the AI era and we are only just beginning to see its transformative impact on business and society. “In such a pivotal moment for technology, I’m thrilled we’ve appointed a visionary leader to be our President of Google EMEA. “Debbie brings a track record of unlocking growth that benefits everyone, alongside the passion and focus needed to help our customers succeed, as we bring the best of Google’s Gemini-era to everyone across EMEA.”Thank you for reading Hyperallergic! Subscribe to our newsletter Privacy Policy Success! Your account was created and you’re signed in. Please visit My Account to verify and manage your account. An account was already registered with this email. Please check your inbox for an authentication link. Support Independent Arts Journalism As an independent publication, we rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, consider becoming a member today . Already a member? Sign in here. Support Hyperallergic’s independent arts journalism for as little as $8 per month. Become a Member I give different answers whenever people ask what my favorite novel is, but Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk’s My Name Is Red (1998) is probably my most frequent reply. The way Pamuk tells what is at the center of its atom a pulpy murder mystery inside the most pointillist, deliciously orbital structure; the way he joyfully insists upon the vital and complex interiority of every character, however peripheral (the dog’s chapters are among my favorite) feels instructive not just creatively, but also ethically. Taking in Pamuk’s 50-year bibliography feels like an extended fulfillment of this life-doubling promise of narrative art — you get to perceive the world robustly from myriad unprecedented subjectivities wholly separate from your own. To behold Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022 , Pamuk’s new book of selected journal entries and paintings translated by Ekin Oklap and published by Knopf, is to witness one of the great literary imaginations of the last 50 years at work. It turns out that making a novel is labor and nothing is inevitable — on one page, we see the Nobel Laureate working out plot details about A Strangeness in My Mind (2014) in the margins of a watercolor of his window view. On another, “This coconut green, the garden, the dogs, the yellow sand, the trees ...” The book is a treasure trove of beloved particulars for the Pamuk-obsessed like me, but it’s also an indispensable document for anyone interested in how art gets made, how inspiration has to find the artist working. It was my luck to be able to speak with Pamuk over Zoom on a sunny Iowa morning earlier this month. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. Get the latest art news, reviews and opinions from Hyperallergic. Daily Weekly Opportunities Kaveh Akbar: We are ostensibly met here to talk about your new Memories of Distant Mountains . This is a sort of Blakeian book of your journals over your watercolor paintings; it’s a beautiful, extraordinary art object to hold in your hands. Orhan Pamuk: I have been keeping diaries since the age of 10 in Ankara when my mother gave me as a birthday president a diary in which there was a lock, which told me that there is a habit called “keeping a diary.” I was only 10 years old. And then it is related to secret thoughts because there is a lock on it. I tried to write. It didn’t work, but I had an idea of what a journalist was. I am a, I wouldn’t say manic, but a journal reader, from Virginia Woolf to Tolstoy and Thomas Bond. So many people kept journals, and most of the time they’re edited. And I like these texts, but it’s a practicality. I’ve been keeping these Moleskines. I have 30 of these. So one day I said, “Why don’t I do a book with them?” So I picked up the best, say, 400 double pages with pictures — but all the pages are with pictures — from the notebooks that I’ve been keeping from 2009 to today, while I also had many others without pictures. I then tried to form a book, the logic being that the editing of the book, the sequence of the pages, is not chronological but thematical. The book starts with what I wrote in 2016 about landscape. We turn one page, then it continues to what I wrote about the landscape in 2012, then we turn a page. The book is designed by themes, but not, as in many journals or memoirs, by time. And it took a lot of time to compose and put them together. KA: For readers who haven’t picked up the book yet, could you provide some background? OP: The readers should know perhaps that I am a well-known novelist, but till the age of 22, as I wrote in my autobiographical Istanbul book, I wanted to be a painter. A screw was loose in my mind. I thought I killed the painter in me, but after 10 years, I began to paint more and more. As sometimes I jokingly say, I got out of the closet as a painter in the last 10 years. I even have a museum now. So the suppressed painterly side in me, which I thought was more authentic, more genuine ... because to live between the ages of seven and 22 in a family of engineers, civil engineers, I made them accept that I would go to the Istanbul Technical University, but since I like painting, I would also be an architect. And they all said yes. KA: You talk about killing the painter inside you, but now he’s back. OP: I couldn’t kill the painter in me. In fact, it resurrected. One day I entered a stationery shop, got out two big sets of art materials and notebooks, and from then on I was happily painting. But secretly, not proudly showing, and perhaps knowing that essentially I am a better writer while I can’t help it. KA: That’s my thing! I paint too. OP: Oh really? That’s so nice to hear. KA: I have a painting room, and a nice easel my spouse got me. OP: Wow! You’re like me. What is your hierarchy of writers who paint? KA: William Blake. Number one. OP: He’s the obvious one, because he was successful in an equal measure and he was thinking of the page as both painting and text. KA: That’s the obvious correlative with yours — his illuminations, Paradise Lost , working directly with a text. OP: But for me, I always think that August Strindberg, the Swedish playwright, is the best writer-painter. How do you measure that? John Updike studied painting art in Oxford and was interested in these subjects, but he did not paint himself, or he didn’t get out of the closet as a painter. KA: How about painters who are writers? OP: Yeah. Picasso wanted to be like that. KA: Yeah, of course. I love Paul Klee. OP: Oh, of course! Paul is important because I have an exhibition in Germany in Lenbachhaus where they have the best Paul Klee collections. Another Klee collection is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. KA: And his writing is extraordinary. I love his writing so much. OP: He went to North Africa, to Tunisia, in his 30s. And that also, some critics say, influenced his paintings. KA: It’s fun to think about writers who are secretly great painters, and painters who are secretly great writers. But I mentioned that I paint, too, to say that the reason that I write and don’t paint publicly is because I can write well enough to do it in a public way and can make a living at it. Painting, I am not talented. I just like doing it. OP: Okay, I’m embarrassed. I’m exactly like you, but shameless, perhaps. KA: No! No, I think that what you’ve made here is extraordinary. OP: Thank you. Don’t forget that I also have a museum. That is, I imagined a museum. So that was the first time that the dead painter, or the painter that I tried to kill that is inside me, publicly went out. KA: Of course, because you created the perfect museum for him. OP: Yes. I created a museum related to my novel, The Museum of Innocence . KA: Do you want to talk about the museum for the readers who might not know about it? OP: Perhaps because there is a painter in me who never died, one day I had an idea: “Why don’t I open a museum in which I exhibit objects, but the stories of these objects will be told in an annotated museum catalog in which the annotations are put in such a sequence that it may read like a novel without pictures?” Then, just as I was about to finish the novel, I decided — a conservative decision that I sometimes regret — to make the novel look like a normal 19th-century novel instead of an annotated catalog. KA: But this is one of the great geniuses moments in your work. OP: Oh, if you’re going to continue like that, I will be shy. KA: No, sorry. OP: And then you’ll say, “This guy is a maniac narcissist! He says genius!” KA: No, you don’t have to! I’m saying it. OP: Okay, I like it, continue saying it! KA: So many novels have a linear trajectory through which they move through these terminals of narrative, right? But, in The Museum of Innocence and My Name is Red , you move from a speaker to the dog, you know? It’s this orbital motion where all the propulsion is centripetal. OP: Yes, which comes to my idea that I like writing novels. But what I like more is imagining novels. That is, you’re just asleep, lying on your sofa with your dog, then you’re thinking, “This part will be told by this, then there will be a chapter which no one understands” — or they will understand, of course, when they’re doing a second reading or reading carefully — and then you plan this. Then I switch to this kind of composition of the novel. Before you begin to write, imagining your set composition is even more joyful than executing a novel. You compose, you know what you’re going to do, you’re going to write this, but sometimes you cannot. That’s the bad part. That’s what they call here “writer’s block.” And you imagine there’s no block. The imagination is boundless. A serious writer’s tragedy is his hands, his fingers, his pencils do not obey and listen to what’s in his or her mind. KA: What do you do to clear that synapse? OP: I advise: Just don’t insist too much because it will be frustrating. My advice to writers is, please develop your story a lot before executing to write it. Chapter it, then pile up notes about that chapter. And also don’t listen to the advice of a writer who is 70 years old! KA: That’s always my thing, whenever a student asks me anything, I always say, “I wouldn’t have listened to me.” I would’ve said, “I know what I’m doing. Leave me alone. I have my library to teach me. I don’t need you.” That brings me to the fact that it feels to me like you are in many ways this Borgesian writer for whom the physical book itself is the magic. You know how when you read Nabokov or Borges, you feel their profound affection for the book object itself? OP: For Nabokov, Borges, yes. In fact, in his novel Ada , Nabokov had also alluded to Borges. While, on the other hand, I admire Borges a lot, but he never understood the novels. He once said, “Henry James would have written a long novel about this, but let me tell you this in a short story.” KA: Exactly. He wrote extraordinary poetry, too. OP: Yeah. But on the other hand, he tells this story in three pages. So Henry James is, and is not unnecessarily, 597 pages. It’s just Borges doesn’t have the joy, or he maybe does, but he is a bit cynical. For Borges, a novel is not its story. It’s something else. KA: That’s true. But there’s a way in which he was a vacuum. He was just this voracious mouth that wanted to consume stories — the more efficient, the better, right? There’s this piece from him I love where he’s talking about the Qur’an as the supreme Arab text— OP: “There are no camels, there are no camels.” KA: Right! He says because there are no camels, the Qur’an is supremely Arab. “Mohammed, as an Arab, had no reason to know that camels were particularly Arab.” But in fact, there are camels everywhere in the Qur’an! It’s clear that Borges read two chapters that happened to not mention a camel. And so he says, “I got what I need there.” OP: It’s that he was talking to people who had never read the Qur’an. KA: Of course. So he can say there are no camels in the Qur’an. But I love this because it shows he got the idea and he moved on. OP: But it’s good to illustrate one idea and I like that. KA: Yeah, he kind of channels Schopenhauer to say that, though there are no nightingales in Argentina, Keats heard the nightingale for everyone. I say this to say that the utter joy in wringing out from the universe what would never exist had it not been for your being there in that moment — that is everywhere apparent in the pages of Memories of Distant Mountains . We are experiencing a process of live cognition. It’s like reading Klee’s journals, or Woolf’s, that sense of utter delight. And I don’t mean everything is about pink puppy tails and babies wagging their toes, but that delight in having created where otherwise there would be nothing, something I associate with Borges and Woolf, two of my favorite writers, and I very much associate with you as well. OP: Yes. Thank you so much ... I don’t know what to say! KA: No, I know! I’m sorry, I’m just barking like a happy walrus. So can you talk a little bit about how you curated these pages? OP: First, humanity invented journal keeping, as my mother’s gift to me at the age of 10 suggests, to write secret ideas. You bury your treasure. You write a note. You have some thoughts you want to write down, because they will be unacceptable by society. So you have to have a secret place. And a diary was, has always been, even there was nothing secret there, been a secret place. In the 1930s, French writer André Gide published parts of his diary, and suddenly he legitimized publishing your journal when you’re alive. I am a journal-keeper, and keeping journals is, I would say, easy. I fill a page like this, there are no pictures here in half an hour. And in this half an hour, most of the time, I’m waiting to go out with my wife. She’s late. I’m waiting for a taxi. I have some empty time. There are times I say to myself, “I haven’t written to my journal for five days. Why don’t I sit down and give two hours?” I carry these notebooks in which I draw and write. It feels like carrying my writing desk and my watercolors and painting materials with me. And I’m happy I am doing it. And I’m always saying to my friends, “Why don’t you keep a journal?” I go to my wife, I go to my friends, “You know what we did in three years, two months ago?” And I read it aloud. And, again, it’s partly related to self-importance, partly that this is an original idea that I may never develop. I have an idea. I write that down, that idea. At the beginning when I was keeping these notebooks, it was not for publication, but after a while I realized that I was also addressing some future readers, one day. KA: Of course. And you also now have control over it too, right? As opposed to some posthumous collection coming out. OP: Yes. After I go, they’d immediately publish the pages that I don’t want to be published. KA: Of course. I think about this. I also think about my generation for whom all of this is digital now. And no one is going to want to read our emails. OP: Why? There may be some people who are interested. We may be writing some of our best lines in an email. Italo Calvino called himself a graphomaniac. A graphomaniac is someone who is obsessively writing. And he never went down in his quality, the cloth was Calvino cloth, of course. KA: I associate that with Dickinson too, right? Where there’s the seamlessness between her letters and her poetry. OP: You produce that cloth all the time, but sometimes then the story, the composition, the total meaning is not clear. Diary or publication of diaries is about honoring these little fragments of pages that you understand will not form a whole by itself. And I decided that I would publish some of it, hoping that some people would be interested — some people like you would be interested. KA: So many of the paintings that we see in these pages are landscapes of sorts of the view out a window, or the city view. You write in the book about how painting starts with visualizing what you can’t remember, and so, functionally, what is being painted is time , instead of a landscape. OP: Yes. Let me clarify. If you paint the same landscape all the time — which I do from here, from my New York or Istanbul window, looking at Hudson or Bosphorus, or the landscape of your table — then you begin to write about, in a way, time. KA: Can you share a little bit about this experience? When we see Istanbul in your novels, we see it across time. We see you experiencing it as a young man and then as an older man. One of the things that I think about in relation to your work, and to being an Iranian writer situated in America, is that if I was in Iran today and I was writing the exact same stuff that I was writing, but in Farsi, I would feel excluded from a global conversation of letters. Whereas being an Iranian in America allows me to participate. OP: Good question. I think I am extremely lucky because after the age of 40, my books began to get translated into English, and they were relatively successful. Better publishers always wanted my work. I had a father who wanted to be a poet like you, who failed and ended up a businessman, who respected my decision to be a writer. When I was 24, he would say, “Well, it’s easy being a famous writer in Turkey. What about international, global recognition?” My father would challenge me with words like that. Unfortunately, he didn’t see my Nobel Prize! Either way, I would be so happy if he had seen it. But he would also say that I would get it before anyone else. I had a father like that, and he had a big library. I owe him a lot. I owe a lot to my mother, too. When they divorced, my mother raised us. KA: You write about this beautifully. What’s the difference between being a famous writer in Turkey and being an internationally famous Turkish writer with a Nobel Prize? OP: I’ll give you an example: What I write about should have global resonance. I have self-consciously thought about this, especially when I was writing A Strangeness In My Mind , which was about the making of a shantytown in Istanbul. At that time, I was, relatively speaking, famous and successful. So I went to Brazil and saw favelas of Rio de Janeiro. I went to Bombay and saw Dharavi, which is also a favela and a business place. And I researched and researched about Turkey’s shantytowns, which were relatively better, I would say, whatever “better” means, more comfortable. I said to myself that when I’m picking up details of Turkish shantytowns, I will also consider what is more — “universal” is a kitschy word — but what are the general problems? At that time when I was writing A Strangeness in My Mind , around 2012 to 2016, I was already thinking of my novel as a global novel, but not when I was young. When I was writing my Black Book or early novels, I was only addressing Turkish leadership. But the fire that my father put in me that I had to be internationally successful was there all the time. KA: And it’s cool to see the names of characters from A Strangeness in My Mind in your notes. We see you contemplating its main characters, Mevlut and Rayiha, presumably as you write them. OP: Yes. These are the parts of [ Memories of Distant Mountains ] that I really care about. The whole effort of a fiction writer, especially when writing a long novel like me, is forcing yourself to identify with your characters like a really naive person. They make fun. I have to be Mevlut. I have to be one of my characters. I have to see the world and the beauty — or not the beauty, but convincing power — the beauty of the sentence is something else — but the convincing truth. The authenticity of the subject matter really depends on the writer’s identification with the character. You write about places that you don’t belong to by culture and class, or by geography, or even sometimes by language. It gets harder and harder if there are these distances. While on the other hand, we don’t want to read about the middle-class writer’s personal life all the time. In fact, the joy of being a writer is, I am not this person . I’m not Mevlut. I’m a middle-class writer, but I’m doing so much to identify with him. First, I will respect this person as a humanist. Second is my capacity to see the world through my character’s point of view. Be that person. These are the most attractive, interesting, playful sides of being a novelist. Not only do you have to identify with the character so that you will think what he or she will do next, but you also — this is another part we may talk about — you also have to write it beautifully. KA: Of course. No one wants to just be hit on the head with a cudgel of narrative, right? You have to earn the reader’s attention. Horace says that language should delight and instruct. And we are in a time when many of the sociopolitical circumstances of our reality feel very dire and urgent. In America, I don’t know if this is the same in Turkish literature, but it feels like lots of writing is really galloping headfirst into instruction and perhaps neglecting the delight a little bit. OP: You think so? This is what they used to say about left-wing writing in Turkey in the 1970s: “You are always very pedagogical or propaganda. What about beauty?” In the non-Western world they expect you to be more didactic, educational, useful. Especially in my early time, I was always criticized for not being political enough. I was considered in the first two decades of my writing in Turkey a bourgeois writer, while other writers, more political, more leftist, more radical, consider themselves doing an ethical job. While I’m trying to defend the autonomy, the beauty of the sentences. It was very hard. KA: Snow becomes the riposte to those criticisms of you because it is more overtly — I don’t think that there’s such a thing as apolitical language — but it is more explicitly political in its narrative. But I also think it’s interesting because you talk about visiting the favelas and visiting Bombay, but when you talk about writing Snow ... it’s almost like in writing those characters, you are writing on the cusp of between provinciality and modernity. OP: Provinciality is a great subject of mine, and it’s deeply related to the fact that there was an Ottoman Empire which dissolved very fast on the edge of Europe. So Europe is very close, but as a Turk you’re also living a very poor life, you’re not important. You don’t have any power over history. Who cares about you? These are questions that you also ask. And you’re now talking about a global readership: Oh, I’m so lucky. I have to thank God many times. Yes, I have that privilege. But only 1% of the world is global, the rest is provincial and feels deeply so. Then you realize provinciality is also a great subject that addresses the hearts of the people. It’s also a very taboo subject. The provincial will never say, “I’m provincial.” KA: Exactly. OP: “I’m like you! My heart is like yours!” That is the most they can say: “I’m like you.” KA: It’s the cumulative exhausting effect of having to insist all the time, “We’re just like you. I’m just like you. I’m just like you.” It’s in contemporary Persian literature. Or right now you see all of these voices from Palestine saying, “We love our children just like you. That’s how we love our children. And look what you’re doing to them!” OP: Which they’re saying, unfortunately, so that they’re killed less. KA: Of course, because you have to impress that upon empire. Empire doesn’t understand. The interiority of someone that you can’t imagine is an interiority that you treat brusquely. You treat the security of that person with ambivalence. Which is why it is excruciating to have to continually say, “You know how you love your children? That’s how we love our children. You know how you love your husband? That’s how we fell in love.” So much of the world lives in this provinciality, illegible to empire. We hope you enjoyed this article! Before you keep reading, please consider supporting Hyperallergic ’s journalism during a time when independent, critical reporting is increasingly scarce. Unlike many in the art world, we are not beholden to large corporations or billionaires. Our journalism is funded by readers like you , ensuring integrity and independence in our coverage. We strive to offer trustworthy perspectives on everything from art history to contemporary art. We spotlight artist-led social movements, uncover overlooked stories, and challenge established norms to make art more inclusive and accessible. With your support, we can continue to provide global coverage without the elitism often found in art journalism. If you can, please join us as a member today . Millions rely on Hyperallergic for free, reliable information. By becoming a member, you help keep our journalism free, independent, and accessible to all. Thank you for reading. Share Copied to clipboard Mail Bluesky Threads LinkedIn Facebook
Soccer-Man United’s Amorim says he can be ruthless when requiredWomen investors in Indian mutual fund industry grow 2.5 times in 2024 NEW DELHI: Women investors in the Indian mutual fund (MF) industry, especially from the smaller cities and towns, have grown more than 2.5 times (year-on-year) on average amid the boom in the stock market, a report showed. Women’s financial inclusion is increasing across urban and emerging regions and tier 4 cities saw a whopping over 140 per cent growth in women’s participation in the MF market, according to data shared by online brokerage Groww. “While we had amazing growth across all segments in 2024, two segments stood out. Rise of women investors – number has doubled this year. And the number of portfolios with size greater than 1 crore tripled this year,” Lalit Keshre, Co-founder and CEO, Groww, posted on X on Saturday. The women’s participation in MFs saw more than 100 per cent growth in Metro, tier 1, 2 and 3 cities. Among the cities with the highest number of women MF investors are Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata (Metro) and Pune, Lucknow, Nagpur, Ahmedabad and Jaipur (Non-Metro). “Women’s SIP contributions are 25 per cent higher than men’s, and female SIP investors now make up one in four (compared to one in five last year),” the data showed. When it comes to monthly SIP contribution, the average ticket size is Rs 2,500 (indicating a focus on long-term wealth). Among the women SIP investors, 50 per cent are less than 30 years of age, followed by 33 per cent in the 30-40 year bracket and 17 per cent are age 40 and above. Meanwhile, the Indian mutual fund industry saw a meteoric rise in 2024, as the assets under management (AUM) of all MF schemes increased by more than Rs 17 lakh crore this year. According to data from the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI), the mutual fund industry’s AUM was Rs 68 lakh crore at the end of November 2024, which is Rs 17.22 lakh crore or 33 per cent more than the December 2023 figure of Rs 50.78 lakh crore. A record 42,76,207 investors joined the Indian stock market in November, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) data showed. As per a latest SBI Research report, the country is witnessing at least 30 million new demat accounts being opened every year since 2021. Agencies
Julie Appleby | KFF Health News Unauthorized switching of Affordable Care Act plans appears to have tapered off in recent weeks based on an almost one-third drop in casework associated with consumer complaints, say federal regulators . The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which oversees the ACA, credits steps taken to thwart enrollment and switching problems that triggered more than 274,000 complaints this year through August. Now, the annual ACA open enrollment period that began Nov. 1 poses a real-world test: Will the changes curb fraud by rogue agents or brokerages without unduly slowing the process of enrolling or reducing the total number of sign-ups for 2025 coverage? “They really have this tightrope to walk,” said Sabrina Corlette, co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University. “The more you tighten it up to prevent fraud, the more barriers there are that could inhibit enrollment among those who need the coverage.” CMS said in July that some types of policy changes — those in which the agent is not “affiliated” with the existing plan — will face more requirements, such as a three-way call with the consumer, broker, and a healthcare.gov call center representative. In August, the agency barred two of about a dozen private sector online-enrollment platforms from connecting with healthcare.gov over concerns related to improper switching. And CMS has suspended 850 agents suspected of being involved in unauthorized plan-switching from accessing the ACA marketplace. Still, the clampdown could add complexity to enrollment and slow the process. For example, a consumer might have to wait in a queue for a three-way call, or scramble to find a new agent because the one they previously worked with had been suspended. Given that phone lines with healthcare.gov staff already get busy — especially during mid-December — agents and policy analysts advise consumers not to dally this year. “Hit the ground running,” said Ronnell Nolan, president and CEO of Health Agents for America, a professional organization for brokers. Meanwhile, reports are emerging that some rogue entities are already figuring out workarounds that could undermine some of the anti-fraud protections CMS put in place, Nolan said. “Bottom line is: Fraud and abuse is still happening,” Nolan said. Brokers assist the majority of people actively enrolling in ACA plans and are paid a monthly commission by insurers for their efforts. Consumers can compare plans or enroll themselves online through federal or state marketplace websites. They can also seek help from people called assisters or navigators — certified helpers who are not paid commissions. Under a “find local help” button on the federal and state ACA websites , consumers can search for nearby brokers or navigators. CMS says it has “ramped up support operations” at its healthcare.gov marketplace call centers, which are open 24/7, in anticipation of increased demand for three-way calls, and it expects “minimal wait times,” said Jeff Wu, deputy director for policy of the CMS Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight. Wu said those three-way calls are necessary only when an agent or a broker not already associated with a consumer’s enrollment wants to change that consumer’s enrollment or end that consumer’s coverage. It does not apply to people seeking coverage for the first time. Organizations paid by the government to offer navigator services have a dedicated phone line to the federal marketplace, and callers are not currently experiencing long waits, said Xonjenese Jacobs, director of Florida Covering Kids & Families, a program based at the University of South Florida that coordinates enrollment across the state through its Covering Florida navigator program. Navigators can assist with the three-way calls if a consumer’s situation requires it. “Because we have our quick line in, there’s no increased wait time,” Jacobs said. The problem of unauthorized switches has been around for a while but took off during last year’s open enrollment season. Brokers generally blamed much of the problem on the ease with which rogue agents can access ACA information in the federal marketplace, needing only a person’s name, date of birth, and state of residence. Though federal regulators have worked to tighten that access with the three-way call requirement, they stopped short of instituting what some agent groups say is needed: two-factor authentication, which could involve a code accessed by a consumer through a smartphone. Unauthorized switches can lead to a host of problems for consumers, from higher deductibles to landing in new networks that do not include their preferred physicians or hospitals. Some people have received tax bills when unauthorized policies came with premium credits for which they did not qualify. Unauthorized switches posed a political liability for the Biden administration, a blemish on two years of record ACA enrollment. The practice drew criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle; Democrats demanded more oversight and punishment of rogue agents, while Republicans said fraud attempts were fueled by Biden administration moves that allowed for more generous premium subsidies and special enrollment periods. The fate of those enhanced subsidies, which are set to expire, will be decided by Congress next year as the Trump administration takes power. But the premiums and subsidies that come with 2025 plans that people are enrolling in now will remain in effect for the entire year. The actions taken this year to thwart the unauthorized enrollments apply to the federal marketplace, used by 31 states . The remaining states and the District of Columbia run their own websites, with many having in place additional layers of security. Related Articles Health | Feds suspend ACA marketplace access to companies accused of falsely promising ‘cash cards’ Health | More foods are making us sick: What to know as foodborne outbreaks hit Health | Which health insurance plan may be right for you? Health | Pay first, deliver later: Some women are being asked to prepay for their baby Health | Your cool black kitchenware could be slowly poisoning you, study says. Here’s what to do For its part, CMS says its efforts are working, pointing to the 30% drop in complaint casework. The agency also noted a 90% drop in the number of times an agent’s name was replaced by another’s, which it says indicates that it is tougher for rival agents to steal clients to gain the monthly commissions that insurers pay. Still, the move to suspend 850 agents has drawn pushback from agent groups that initially brought the problem to federal regulators’ attention. They say some of those accused were suspended before getting a chance to respond to the allegations. “There will be a certain number of agents and brokers who are going to be suspended without due process,” said Nolan, with the health agents’ group. She said that it has called for increased protections against unauthorized switching and that two-factor authentication, like that used in some state marketplaces or in the financial sector, would be more effective than what’s been done. “We now have to jump through so many hoops that I’m not sure we’re going to survive,” she said of agents in general. “They are just throwing things against the wall to see what sticks when they could just do two-factor.” The agency did not respond to questions asking for details about how the 850 agents suspended since July were selected, the states where they were located, or how many had their suspensions reversed after supplying additional information.Mumbai: For the first time, private sector banks as a group met priority sector lending targets, including sub-targets for major heads in 2023-24, particularly in agriculture, according to central bank data. Although all bank groups managed to achieve their stipulated overall targets and sub-targets, private sector banks did better than their public sector peers. ET Year-end Special Reads What kept India's stock market investors on toes in 2024? India's car race: How far EVs went in 2024 Investing in 2025: Six wealth management trends to watch out for For the public sector, private and foreign banks, the target is 40% of adjusted net bank credit or credit equivalent of off-balance sheet exposure, whichever is higher. For small finance banks, the target is higher at 75%. One of the reasons for the private sector banks to achieve their priority sector target is that they are now allowed to invest in priority sector lending certificates (PSLCs). These are issued against banks' priority sector loans under various sub-targets and general categories. Banks use PSLCs to guard against shortfalls. The total trading volume of PSLCs climbed 26% in FY24, primarily led by PSLC-General. Among the four PSLC categories, the small and marginal farmers category registered the highest trading volume, partly reflecting specialisation by a few banks in lending to this category of borrowers and the inability of other banks to meet sub-targets through direct lending, the RBI said in its report on Trends and Progress of Banking. 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View Program Data Science SQL for Data Science along with Data Analytics and Data Visualization By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program Artificial Intelligence(AI) AI and Analytics based Business Strategy By - Tanusree De, Managing Director- Accenture Technology Lead, Trustworthy AI Center of Excellence: ATCI View Program Web Development A Comprehensive ASP.NET Core MVC 6 Project Guide for 2024 By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program Marketing Digital Marketing Masterclass by Pam Moore By - Pam Moore, Digital Transformation and Social Media Expert View Program Artificial Intelligence(AI) AI-Powered Python Mastery with Tabnine: Boost Your Coding Skills By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program Office Productivity Mastering Microsoft Office: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and 365 By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program Marketing Digital marketing - Wordpress Website Development By - Shraddha Somani, Digital Marketing Trainer, Consultant, Strategiest and Subject Matter expert View Program Office Productivity Mastering Google Sheets: Unleash the Power of Excel and Advance Analysis By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program Web Development Mastering Full Stack Development: From Frontend to Backend Excellence By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program Finance Financial Literacy i.e Lets Crack the Billionaire Code By - CA Rahul Gupta, CA with 10+ years of experience and Accounting Educator View Program Data Science SQL Server Bootcamp 2024: Transform from Beginner to Pro By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program In the past five years, private sector banks have emerged as major sellers of PSLCs. In FY24, they accounted for 49% of total sales as compared with 21% in the case of public sector banks , the RBI said. Nominations for ET MSME Awards are now open. The last day to apply is December 31, 2024. Click here to submit your entry for any one or more of the 22 categories and stand a chance to win a prestigious award. (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel )
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Presentations include analytical validation of Myriad's high-definition tumor informed MRD assay for breast cancer and its Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool MyRisk® with RiskScore® SALT LAKE CITY, Dec. 09, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Myriad Genetics, Inc . (NASDAQ: MYGN), a leader in genetic testing and precision medicine, announced it will present new data at the 2024 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium ® (SABCS), including a spotlight presentation on a breast cancer risk assessment tool that combines a polygenic score for all ancestries. Additional new data will show how Myriad's second-generation tumor-informed molecular residual disease (MRD) assay demonstrated high sensitivity, specificity and measurement accuracy, which, together, will facilitate improved resolution in residual-disease detection and extend lead times in recurrence detection. "We are very excited to share validation data of our MRD assay. SABCS gives us the opportunity to showcase our clinical expertise in the prevention and treatment of early and advanced breast cancer,” said George Daneker, MD, President and Chief Clinical Officer, Oncology, Myriad Genetics. "Myriad is one of the only labs that can offer germline and tumor genomic testing, combined with customizable workflow solutions and point-of-care patient education sessions. Our test results are supported by treatment-focused reporting, concordance checks between germline and tumor genomic results, and a summary sheet designed to help oncologists and breast surgeons interpret actionable insights more effectively.” Myriad Genetics Data Presentations Spotlight Presentation: Session 16, PS16-01: Polygenic Risk Date: Thursday, Dec. 12, 2024, 5:30-7:00 pm (CST), Hemisfair Ballroom 3 Presenter: Timothy Simmons, PhD, Biostatistician III, Myriad Genetics The presentation will share longitudinal validation in the UK Biobank of a breast cancer risk assessment tool that combines a polygenic score for all ancestries with traditional risk factors. Rapid-Fire Presentation: RF1-06 Date: Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024, 12:00-12:50 pm (CST), Hall 1 Presenter: Katie Johansen Taber, PhD, Vice President, Clinical Product Research & Partnerships, Myriad Genetics Dr. Johansen Taber will share data detailing the association of polygenic-based breast cancer risk prediction with patient management. Poster Presentation: P2-04-23 Date: Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024, 5:30-7:00 pm (CST), Halls 2-3 Presenter: Ashley Acevedo, PhD, Staff Computational Scientist, Myriad Genetics This poster shares the analytical validation of a high-definition tumor-informed Molecular Residual Disease (MRD) assay to demonstrate robust detection at low-tumor fractions, which are common in breast cancer. Poster Presentation: P3-02-10 Date: Thursday, Dec. 12, 2024, 12:30-2:00 pm (CST), Halls 2-3 Presenter: Holly Pederson, MD, Cleveland Clinic Dr. Pederson will share her evaluation of a polygenic risk score as a predictor of breast cancer, triple-negative breast cancer, and early-onset disease in Hispanic women. In addition to data presentations, Myriad will welcome attendees to its booth (#1327) during exhibition hours. Among the Myriad products highlighted in the company's SABCS exhibit are: Myriad Genetics is a leading genetic testing and precision medicine company dedicated to advancing health and well-being for all. Myriad develops and offers genetic tests that help assess the risk of developing disease or disease progression and guide treatment decisions across medical specialties where genetic insights can significantly improve patient care and lower healthcare costs. For more information, visit www.myriad.com . Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains "forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including that the company will present new data at SABCS and that the company's new data that will be shared at SABCS will show how the company's second-generation tumor-informed MRD assay demonstrated high sensitivity, specificity and measurement accuracy, which, together, will facilitate improved resolution in residual-disease detection and extend lead times in recurrence detection. These "forward-looking statements” are management's expectations of future events as of the date hereof and are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, conditions, and events to differ materially and adversely from those anticipated. Such factors include those risks described in the company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on February 28, 2024, as well as any updates to those risk factors filed from time to time in the company's Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q or Current Reports on Form 8-K. Myriad is not under any obligation, and it expressly disclaims any obligation, to update or alter any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise except as required by law. Investor Contact Matt Scalo (801) 584-3532 [email protected] Media Contact Glenn Farrell (385) 318-3718 [email protected]Councillor reinstatedEarlier this week, Hodder & Stoughton released High and Rising: A Book About De La Soul by decorated writer and cultural custodian, Marcus J. Moore . Moving deliberately between reportage, personal memoir and wider social commentary, High And Risin g documents the non-linear journey of the era-defining hip-hop trio from Long Island, New York. De La Soul – Kelvin “Posdnuos” Mercer, David “Trugoy the Dove” Jolicoeur, and Vincent “Maseo” Mason – broke through with the release of their 1989 album, ‘ 3 Feet High & Rising ’. The biography covers this seminal release, but also their non-conformist spirit, their galvanizing storytelling and use of trippy, techicolour imagery, and their far-reaching influence on rappers all along the hip-hop continuum, including The Roots, Pharrell, Kid Cudi, Kanye West, and Kendrick Lamar. High And Rising digs deeper and excavates how the trio chafed under the pressures of an industry-in-flux, covering their legal battles around sampling: only last year, after a bitter legal fight, did their music become available on streaming services. Completed in the wake of Dave’s passing, Moore connects one of hip-hop’s greatest triumphs with a story of kinship and soulful self-discovery. In the below extract from the book, Moore reflects on De La’s effect on the culture and sense of self of his POC community: — Everyone from my aunts to my cousins understood De La, even if they couldn’t explain what it was they liked about the music. De La has always been around me and my family, soundtracking discovery. That De La was just there and I can’t exactly remember how they arrived pretty much speaks to why we’re here, right? Regardless, I’ve always felt that by the mid-’90s De La fans had to work a little harder to defend the group. In the late ’80s, when the goodwill was paramount, it was easy to categorize their work as buoyant and playful. But in the Stakes Is High era, when put up against actual dark records, it played like Onyx, Wu-lang, or Mobb Deep lite. Why listen to the so-called hippy dudes when you can play All We Got Iz Us or Hell on Earth? The community around De La was beginning to shrink, and the group almost came off as an underground act that only a few heads knew about. Don’t believe me? Listen to Pos. “I made girls’ brown eyes blue at will,” he said on “Wonce Again Long Island” from the album, “until my ass was no longer mass appeal.” To that end, I can’t help but fixate on Pos’s visceral reaction to his peers in the mid-’90s. The sheer frustration in his voice when talking to Rap City, the look of consternation on his face, the push and pull of honesty and diplomacy in the way he spoke. In one quote, told to Joe Clair in an interview, he expressed anger about the way he’s viewed as an MC. It was the first time I remember seeing Pos feel a way about being underrated. It’s not like he was wrong, but in years past—at least publicly—he would’ve shrugged it off and just kept making the music he’d always made. My ear fixates on the song “Long Island Degrees,” where Dave took aim at the Notorious B.I.G.’s mental state. “I got questions about your life if you’re so ready to die,” he said, referencing the Brooklyn MC’s debut album Ready to Die. What happened to the love, the excitement, the bliss? De La disappeared after the release of Stakes Is High and stayed out of sight until the turn of the millennium. There was no grand reason for why they left. It was just time to revisit the drawing board and start working on the next album. In their absence, hip-hop became even more commercialized, a lot chillier. It wasn’t until recently that some critics decided they pegged the album all wrong. Twenty years later, after the allure of the shiny-suit era wore off, they realized— as Slate put it—that the LP was one of “concern rather than conservatism, walking a tightrope between the productive uses of history and the simplistic allures of nostalgia. Even now as I revisit Stakes Is High, I wrestle with the same nostalgia referenced in the Slate review. In ’96, as I struggled with the passing of my grandfather and the gradual passing of my grandmother, there was something comforting about listening to three dudes trying to reconcile their emotions for public consumption. Even as I struggle with pronounced grief following the recent passing of my mother, the album feels like a balm in this time of uncertainty. Not that the group said anything on the LP directly related to death, but it reminds me of days gone by, when she would take interest in the music I liked, even if it didn’t speak to her. She encouraged me to listen to De La. She liked the bass line on Nas’s “Shootouts,” the timbre of Mos Def’s voice on his late-’90s work, the soul sample on Ghostface Killah’s “Camay.” She didn’t dig the lyrics, but she didn’t police my absorption of them. As I play Stakes Is High in 2023, the visions come rushing back. I see us in that old house in Landover, me in the back room hunched over a boombox. Most importantly, I see her. I hear her. I appreciate her willingness to let me rap, to let me run the streets with my friends and collaborators Troy and Thomas while still keeping a close eye on my movements. My love of hip-hop largely comes from her, simply because she let me explore records like Stakes. The album still feels like a private conversation in hushed tones. When my grandmother passed in ’97 and I had to navigate without one of my greatest protectors, I found myself listening to De La–adjacent rappers, reveling in the same poetry. A year later, Mos Def and the Brooklyn rapper Talib Kweli formed the duo Black Star and released their debut album, Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star, to decent fanfare. I went up for that record, not just because it was dope but because it was the closest thing to De La— and, in turn, my family—that I could hold on to at the time. In hindsight, it’s easy to look back and wonder why people didn’t like mid-’90s De La. But they meant something different to me. They helped me through the roughest parts of my life, connecting me to the past and reminding me to lean on love. In grief, sadness can quickly grow to anger. Tears turn to clenched fists and notions that you have nothing to lose. De La was medicinal, the reset I needed and still need. High and Rising: A Book About De La Soul is out now via Hodder & Stoughton. — Marcus J. Moore is a music journalist, editor, curator, pundit, professor, and author of The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America. He co-leads the jazz-focused ‘5 Minutes That Will Make You Love...’ series at The New York Times. His work has appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic, Bandcamp Daily (an editorial platform he helped launch), CLASH, NPR, Pitchfork, TIME, Entertainment Weekly, TIDAL, GQ, The Washington Post, and Rolling Stone.Government employees scored $150M in standby pay last year: Documents