Generation Equality Forum in Paris announces plans to radically speed up progress on women’s rights
Billions of pounds will be pledged to support efforts to tackle gender inequality this week at the largest international conference on women’s rights in more than 25 years.
The Generation Equality Forum, hosted in Paris by UN Women and the governments of France and Mexico, will launch plans to radically speed up progress over the next five years.
Continue reading...Lack of prenuptial agreement with Bill Gates could herald $73bn divorce settlement as fears focus on future of couple’s charity
Melinda Gates, a philanthropist and campaigner for female empowerment, could be about to become the world’s second-richest woman, with a fortune estimated at $73bn.
In her divorce petition filed on Monday at King County superior court in Seattle, Washington, Melinda Gates stated that her marriage to multibillionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, one of the richest men on the planet, had “irretrievably broken” and called on the courts to divide up the couple’s combined $146bn (£105bn) fortune
Continue reading...Deals struck by wealthy nations to secure treatments could leave the world’s poorest people unvaccinated without urgent action
It could be too late for any kind of fair distribution of coronavirus vaccines because of the deals already made by rich countries, according to Mark Suzman, chief executive of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Despite the unprecedented pace of scientific progress on the development of vaccines, he said it remains “really, really complicated” to ensure they are produced and distributed fairly.
Continue reading...Pandemic could result in a ‘lost decade’ for developing countries says co-chair of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in stark report
The world’s poorest countries risk a lost decade of development unless leaders move quickly to help them recover from the fallout of Covid-19, Melinda Gates told the Guardian.
The co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has committed $350m (£270m) to support the global response to the pandemic, said it was in the hands of the global community to decide the long-term impact.
Continue reading...Ursula von der Leyen voices regret as expert warns herd immunity still a way off in Europe
The EU has offered “a heartfelt apology” to Italy for letting it down at the start of the coronavirus crisis as fresh evidence emerged that few European countries are likely to have achieved herd immunity as they begin cautiously lifting their lockdowns.
As the World Health Organization warned that the continent remained firmly “in the eye of the storm”, the president of the European commission said on Thursday that truth was needed to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic – including political honesty.
Continue reading...These tiny pests adapt so successfully to changing conditions that they have become humankind’s deadliest predator. We might soon be able to eradicate them – but should we? By Timothy Winegard
We are at war with the mosquito. A swarming and consuming army of 110tn enemy mosquitoes patrols every inch of the globe except for Antarctica, Iceland and a handful of French Polynesian micro-islands. The biting female warrior of this droning insect population is armed with at least 15 lethal and debilitating biological weapons, to be used against 7.7 billion humans deploying suspect and often self-detrimental defensive capabilities. In fact, our defence budget for personal shields, sprays and other means of deterring her unrelenting raids is $11bn (£8.8bn) a year, and rising rapidly. And yet her deadly offensive campaigns and crimes against humanity continue with reckless abandon. While our counterattacks are reducing the number of casualties she perpetrates – malaria deaths in particular are declining rapidly – the mosquito remains the deadliest hunter of human beings on the planet.
Taking a broad range of estimates into account, since 2000, the average annual number of human deaths caused by the mosquito was around 2 million. Humans came in a distant second at 475,000, followed by snakes (50,000), dogs and sandflies (25,000 each), the tsetse fly, and the assassin or kissing bug (10,000 each). The fierce killers of lore and Hollywood celebrity were much further down our list. The crocodile was ranked 10th, with 1,000 annual deaths. Next on the list were hippos with 500, and elephants and lions with 100 fatalities each. The much-slandered shark and wolf shared 15th position, killing an average of 10 people per annum.
Continue reading...The philanthropist and wife of Bill Gates on what she tells her kids, getting women into tech and the perils of wealth
Melinda Gates is co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which she set up with her husband, Bill Gates. It is the largest private charitable organisation in the world and uses Microsoft’s billions in diverse philanthropic drives: supplying vaccines and birth control to developing countries and working to get the world’s 130 million girls not in formal education into school. Gates was herself educated in an all-girls Catholic high school in Dallas and studied computer science and economics at university before taking a job with “a smallish software company called Microsoft”. Her new book The Moment of Lift is an illuminating and often moving scrutiny of the ways in which the lot of women can be improved; her argument is that it is only by involving women that the world will be changed for the better. She lives in Seattle with her husband and their three children.
What, aside from donating, are the top three things a western woman could do to improve her situation and help the world beyond herself?
The first thing I’d urge is: look into your own home. Figure out whether you have true equality. Sit down with your partner and say: “OK, who is doing the dishes? Who is putting the rubbish out? Who is doing the gardening? Do we need to make some changes?” [Her book describes her own negotiations with Bill over divisions of labour – he volunteers to do the school run.] And if there isn’t equality, you need to bring up some tough conversations about unpaid labour in your home. The second thing that still needs saying to women is that it is essential to vote – and to vote for candidates whose policies best support women. And the third thing is: look at your workplace. Is there full transparency about pay?