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[ad_1] By Sriram Natarajan Though the population of women in India has surpassed men still there are a lot of facets in life where women are struggling to achieve gender equality. Gender equality is understood to be that stage of human development at which the rights, responsibilities and opportunities of individuals are not to be determined by the fact of being born as a male or a female. One of the most important aspects, where gender equality is an absolute must, is women’s healthcare. According to a collaborative study conducted by the researchers at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), the Indian Statistical Institute, Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, and Harvard University, gender-based discrimination harms women’s health in India. The experts found that only 37% of women got access to health care, as compared to 67% of men. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the huge gaps in our healthcare infrastructure and the need for rapid and accurate diagnosis at all levels of society. Governments across the world have taken steps towards improving women’s health in line with commitments made in key international summits. In India, significant progress has been made in reducing maternal mortality. Women’s healthcare needs attention According to a report published in 2021 by the KFF organisation on “The Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic”, women represent over half (55%) of all adults (15-49 years) living with HIV worldwide, and HIV (along with problems related to pregnancy) is the resultant cause of death of women of reproductive age. Tuberculosis is often linked to HIV infection and is among the leading causes of death among women aged 20-59 years in low-income countries. Other than that Chlamydia, Gonorrhoea, and Trichomoniasis are major causes of pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) and infertility in women. Group B Streptococcus infection causes an approximate 150,000 preventable stillbirths and infant deaths per year, globally. The types of cancer affecting women, especially breast and cervical cancer, resulting in high rates of mortality and morbidity. Breast cancer, the leading cause of death from cancer in women, is diagnosed in low and middle-income countries mostly at advanced stages when palliative care is the only option. Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer affecting women and the third leading cause of death in most cases of women who have limited access to screening and treatment of precancerous lesions, with resultant late-stage identification. The major inequalities in access to early detection and screening lead to variations in clinical findings and survival after treatment. What solutions can be explored Investment in innovative solutions for low cost, high-quality self-testing and point-of-care testing devices is very crucial for universal access to diagnosis. Truenat® Real-Time PCR platform is one such solution that has gold-standard PCR technology and can be deployed anywhere in the world with minimal infrastructure. With a growing menu of assays for infectious diseases, this rapid, portable technology enables early and accurate diagnosis and initiation of accurate treatment right at the first point of contact. Truenat® facilitates the testing for STDs such as HPV, Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, Trichomonas and Mycobacterium genitalium and tests for Group B streptococcus is important for the child and maternal health. Conclusion The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the already existing inequalities in healthcare and the present situation calls for an urgent need in addressing the same and lack of access to healthcare for women. Timely testing and effective screening of women leading to an appropriate diagnosis will ensure a significant reduction in the infection and mortality rates resulting in universal access to healthcare. (The author is Founder, Director & CEO, Molbio Diagnostics. Views expressed are personal and do not reflect the official position or policy of FinancialExpress.com.) [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] In this HW+ Slack Q&A, HousingWire Lead Analyst Logan Mohtashami answers questions from our HW+ member community. One top question he addresses is how the industry is reacting to this savagely unhealthy housing market. As a member of HW+, you get access to 30-minute Slack Q&As, where we invite the HW Media newsroom to break down the hottest topics in the industry. This Q&A was hosted in the HW+ Slack channel, which is exclusively available to members. To get access to the next Q&A on June 8th, you can join HW+ here. The following Q&A has been lightly edited for length and clarity. This Q&A was originally hosted on June 1st. HW+ Member: What’s the number one question you are getting from the real estate agent community on the economy and housing market? Logan Mohtashami: The common questions are as follows: Are we going into a recession economy question, which I always refer to as my six-flag recession economic model? We have four flags raised so far; the last two are always the most important in a historical context. I have not raised either yet. The Leading Economic Index hasn’t fallen yet. The number one question I get on housing is the same question I get always: when are home prices going to fall? I always try to focus people on the total inventory data until we get inventory back into a range of 1.52-1.93 million; we are still in a savagely unhealthy housing market because the price growth we have seen since 2020 has more to do with supply than demand. HousingWire: To add to that, since housing is in an inventory shortage, the market has changed, so the good news is inventory is growing. What levels should we be hoping for? Logan Mohtashami: Regarding inventory, we had a slow train wreck happening for years, and I can explain in more detail. Since 2014 inventory has been falling slowly for years, then here come years 2020-2024, our most prominent housing demographic patch ever in history with low mortgage rates. So any uptick in demand can break us under 1.52 million. Once we get below this level, it creates forced bidding action. You don’t want to see involuntary bidding action for shelter because it eats into affordability so much. So we can see what happened. Unlike the housing bubble years, where credit pushed home prices with demand, we just had a raw inventory shortage with demand picking up for sure, but nothing like we saw from 2002-to 2005. Then this happened. I have kept with my same premise post-2020, we would like to see inventory get back into a range of 1.52-1.93 million; that market will provide enough homes so the days on the market will grow and give people choices and cool down price growth. As we can see, it’s been a struggle to get inventory back into this range post-2020. The big difference now than, let’s say, what we saw from 2002-2008. We will not know the credit forced selling of inventory like we saw back debt because credit profiles look much better now. HW+ Member: When (if at all) do you think the next recession flag will be raised? Can you recap the flags real quick too? Logan Mohtashami: 6 Recession flags are (Four that are raised): The unemployment rate got to 4%; this is a progression red flag, meaning the economic expansion is more mature. The Federal Reserve starts to raise rates, another progression red flag; expansion is more mature. The Inverted Yield Curve, This is more of a market drive bond yield red flag; I had been on an inverted yield curve watch since Thanksgiving of 2021. This is why the 2-year yield and 10-year yield slap high fives and say hi to each other: another progression red flag, the more mature stage of the economy. As you can see below, when yields are inverted, a recession isn’t that far off. It’s a bit more complicated than that for me, but I won’t bore you with my nerdy takes here This Red Flag is more critical to the economic cycle itself. We want to find the sector of the economy that is overheating where there is going to be a demand collapse and too much inventory. This is a reason why a company will lay off people. I use Peloton as my company example for this. Booming demand, collapse in demand, laid off a significant % of workers already. In this recovery, the Durable Good buying is off the charts, so that sector will cool down, and service sector spending will rise. Recession flag 5 and 6: Leading economic index falls 4-6 months into a recession; the chart is above. Also, housing starts, permits, and new home sales typically fall into a recession. We are not there yet on either two. The new home sales sector is vital to know; it has had a massive spike in supply recently 9.0 months. Many people look at this chart and think it’s for the existing home sales market; it isn’t. Stock traders have made this mistake for many years. The existing home monthly supply is 2.2 months. However, out of that nine months of supply for new homes: 6.0 of that are homes that haven’t started to build yet. Ghost Supply 2.2 Months are homes under construction 0.8 months are completed new homes So, the data needs context. While the new home sales sector is getting hit with higher rates, their inventory channels are much different than the supply levels of 2005-2011. Also, context is critical, we never had a credit boom in demand, so we can’t have a credit bust. The last new home sales data shows we are only at 1996 levels today. Have more questions for Logan? Share them in the comment section below. We will work to address them here or in the next Slack Q&A session. The post Logan Mohtashami unpacks the slow train wreck that’s been happening in housing inventory appeared first on HousingWire. [ad_2] Source link

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[ad_1] Republican pulls out his guns at U.S. gun-control hearing [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] Key Moments From the 2022 Scripps Spelling Bee  The New York Times Harini Logan is the 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion after a historic spell-off  CNN Harini Logan of Texas wins National Spelling Bee in first-ever spell-off  The Washington Post Harini Logan wins spelling bee in 1st-ever tiebreaker  New York Post National Spelling Bee 2022: Harini Logan wins in spell-off  USA TODAY View Full Coverage on Google News [ad_2]

[ad_1] Union Home Minister will chair a high-level meeting to discuss the security situation in Jammu and Kashmir, the second such exercise in less than a fortnight which comes at a time when terrorists have been carrying out targeted killings in the valley. Shah had met NSA Doval and RAW chief Samnat Goel on Thursday hours after the killing of a bank manager in Kulgam.   The meeting will be attended by NSA Ajit Doval, along with Jammu and Kashmir Lt Governor Manoj Sinha and senior functionaries of the central government and union territory.  Shah is also expected to take stock of the arrangements for the annual Amarnath yatra, being held after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  The security of Kashmiri Hindus and non-local migrants is expected to top the agenda of the meeting today, which comes amid the sharp spike in targeted killings since Mary 12.  In 2022 itself, the Valley has witnessed 18 targeted killings by terrorists, which include non-local government staff, police officials, teachers and sarpanches. Nine targeted killings have already taken place since May 1.  On Thursday, a migrant labourer was shot dead just hours after a Hindu bank employee was killed in Kashmir. 17-year-old Dilkhush Kumar, who worked at a brick kiln at Magraypora in Chadoora area of the central Kashmir district, was shot dead while another labourer accompanying him was injured in the attack.  Earlier in the day, branch manager Vijay Kumar of Ellaquai Dehati Bank was shot dead by a terrorist of banned Lashkar-e-Taiba inside his office premises in South Kashmir’s Kulgam district.  A woman teacher hailing from Samba district of Jammu region at Kulgam on Tuesday. On May 18, terrorists had entered into a wine shop at Baramulla in North Kashmir and threw a grenade, killing one person hailing from Jammu region and injuring three others. On May 24, policeman Saifullah Qadri was shot dead outside his residence in Srinagar while a television artiste Amreen Bhat was gunned down in Budgam two days later. Scores of Kashmiri Pandits, who were employed under a prime minister’s package in 2012, have been staging continuous protests threatening mass exodus since the killing of Rahul Bhat, who was shot dead by terrorists on May 12 in Chadoora area of Budgam district in central Kashmir.    [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] An LO with a client at the closing table The question was on the minds of many at the Waldorf Astoria in Dana Point, California on Thursday – will non-qualified mortgage products become more commoditized as the rising rate environment wallops agency lending? “The way that we like to look at solving that problem is through a click of a button, distributing the loan at an even price to sell that to a cadre of investors,” Al Qureshi, managing partner at Blue Water Financial Technologies, said on Thursday during IMN‘s third annual Non-QM Forum in California. Blue Water Financial Technologies is a provider of asset valuation, mortgage servicing rights (MSR) distribution, MSR hedging and electronic solutions to mortgage lenders.  Qureshi added: “For an originator to do all these things right now there are a number of fixed costs. Investors will have to figure out what the pricing eligibility requirements are, you’ll have to bend backwards to integrate that into your pipeline. That takes a lot of time. The way forward is streamlining the process all the way through.” Non-QM loans, unlike subprime loans, are underwritten to a higher credit, income and asset standards and involve a range of buyers beyond individuals with low credit scores. The pool of non–QM loans today generally includes business owners, entrepreneurs, and self-employed people who don’t have traditional documentation, such as payroll income.  As a result, non-QM borrowers rely on alternative documentation such as bank statements and assets. “Leading up to today, you have a lot of different types of documentation,” said Corina Gonzalez, senior vice president at DBRS Morningstar. “So we see which I think is a pretty commoditized space at this point. Assets need to get verified so it really comes down to reviewing underwriting guidelines.” Industry players such as Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions believe the non-QM market could grow as much as four-fold this year, with origination volume ranging between $70 billion and $100 billion. In 2021, S&P Global estimated non-QM volume reached $28.6 billion, which was just 0.7% of the overall mortgage market.  The non-QM industry is still a fraction of the entire mortgage market and the challenges of underwriting a non-QM loan is what makes it difficult for lenders to expand into non-QM lending.  That was also one of the primary reasons why mortgage executives said the non-QM will unlikely be commoditized. “It [non-QM loans] is a manual underwrite,” Robert Senko, president at ACC Mortgage, said. “Underwriters are trained as desktop underwriters (DUs). Scaling is hard.”  Taylor Stork, chief operating officer at Developer’s Mortgage Company, agrees. “It can’t be commoditized from the origination.” Stork said every origination deal in the non-QM market is unique, hence the reason for hiring qualified underwriters who can prove borrowers’ ability to repay (ATR) is all the more important.  “Under the Dodd-Frank Act, it says if you don’t prove borrowers can pay back their non-QM loans, lenders have to pay three years worth of interest,” Stork added. “That holds us accountable to hold our jobs.” (Reforms created as part of the Dodd-Frank act include penalizing lenders that violate federal standards by prohibiting them from foreclosing on non-compliant mortgages or allowing the borrowers to recover damages as high as three years worth of interest payments.)  What mortgage executives did agree on during the session was offering a broad product mix to maintain sustainability in a rate rising environment.  “It’s been a challenge as an originator,” said Dusty Lloyd, branch manager at New American Funding.” “We’ll do non-QM loans and jumbo loans. We got into the CFI space to help people that don’t qualify any other way. Those really helped us replace a loss in mass volume.” “We’ve been through these cycles,” said Senko. “It’s not subprime lending. It’s a nontraditional product to serve more clients. It shouldn’t be your one tool in your belt to serve the market.” The post The looming non-QM commoditization question appeared first on HousingWire. [ad_2] Source link

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[ad_1] Brazil greenlights study of Petrobras privatization, analysts remain skeptical [ad_2] Source link