Melinda Gates

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Foreign aid may provide the best value for money spent by the U.S. government, Bill and Melinda Gates said Tuesday, but few seem to know it. They launched a new project to try to publicize some public health successes in foreign aid, to encourage the U.S. and other governments to keep giving money. "Dollar for dollar, global health is America's best investment for saving lives," Gates told reporters. "U.S.-supported global health programs are saving and improving the lives of millions of people." Gates, the billionaire Microsoft founder who retired in 2008, has given millions of his own money to programs such ... Read Full Story

The billionaire co-founder of Microsoft is touting what he sees as an investment with enormous returns — the money spent to improve health care in poor countries and the millions of lives saved because of it. "Global health money improves lives more than any other spending," Bill Gates told a roundtable discussion Tuesday on a new initiative called The Living Proof Project that's being launched by Gates and his wife, Melinda. The two were in Washington to urge policymakers and others to continue or even increase federal dollars spent on programs to fight AIDS, malaria and other diseases in underdeveloped nations. "We're seeing a ... Read Full Story

The real secretary of education, the joke goes, is Bill Gates. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been the biggest player by far in the school reform movement, spending around $200 million a year on grants to elementary and secondary education. Now the foundation is taking unprecedented steps to influence education policy, spending millions to sway how the federal government distributes $5 billion in grants to overhaul public schools. The federal dollars are unprecedented, too. President Barack Obama persuaded Congress to give him the money as part of the economic stimulus so he could try new ideas to fix an education system that ... Read Full Story

The real secretary of education, the joke goes, is Bill Gates. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been the biggest player by far in the school reform movement, spending around $200 million a year on grants to elementary and secondary education. Now the foundation is taking unprecedented steps to influence education policy, spending millions to influence how the federal government distributes $5 billion in grants to overhaul public schools. The federal dollars are unprecedented, too. President Barack Obama persuaded Congress to give him the money as part of the economic stimulus so he could try new ideas to fix an education system that ... Read Full Story

Bill Gates says the world can make huge strides in reducing hunger and poverty by helping small-holder farmers in Africa become more productive. The founder of Microsoft Inc. and co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation spoke at the World Food Prize symposium on Thursday in Des Moines. He says helping the world's poorest farmers grow more crops is the single most powerful tool in reducing hunger and poverty. Earlier in the day, the Gates Foundation announced nearly $120 million in grants to help sub-Saharan Africa. Gates says the effort to help small farmers is divided by an ideological wedge between increasing productivity ... Read Full Story