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The immense popularity enjoyed by Pope Francis ever since his election in 2013 has precipitated sharply during the past year, and he no longer ranks among the top ten most admired men in the world, according to a massive new study involving 31,000 interviews.

Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, led the charge when it came to faulting current data for being sexist and failing to show the real challenges facing millions of women who are often invisible in statistics. "We cannot know what to do for women and where to invest to have the greatest return unless we have good data .. and we really don't have the data we need," Gates said. "We cannot close the gender gap without closing the data gap," she told Women Deliver, attended by more than 5,500 participants from over 160 countries... ......

Bill Gates said investment gains should be taxed at the same level as ordinary income — a bold call for one of the world's largest investors. Speaking Monday on CNBC's "Squawk Box," Gates said that he's "pleased" that there is more discussion around changing the tax code. When asked what he would alter, Gates sided with his pal Warren Buffett and said he supports raising the earned income tax credit. But Gates also said he would raise the tax rate for capital gains — the largest source of income for the richest Americans. The current top tax rate on capital...

The Zika virus outbreak currently gripping the Americas could have been sparked by the release of genetically modified mosquitoes in 2012, critics say. The insects were engineered by biotechnology experts to combat the spread of dengue fever and other diseases and released into the general population of Brazil in 2012. But with the World Health Organisation(WHO) now meeting in Geneva to desperately discuss cures for the Zika virus, speculation has mounted as to the cause of this sudden outbreak. The Zika virus was first discovered in the 1950s but the recent outbreak has escalated alarmingly, causing birth defects and a...

Project Veritas has released its third undercover video of another Common Core executive revealing the political ideology behind the national educational standards. And this time the anti-American agenda is made clear. The featured Common Core salesperson in this video is Kim Koerber of National Geographic Education (funded by the Gates Foundation, by the way) and a former Pearson Education publishing executive. Her expressions of hatred for America's founding documents coupled with her undying love for Common Core brings the problem to an entirely new level. Plus, she brings a new meaning to the word disgust when talking about those...

On Thursday, February 4, Satya Nadella will celebrate his second anniversary as the CEO of Microsoft. It's been an eventful couple of years. Microsoft has grown its crucial cloud business, released Windows 10 to a much better reception than its loathed predecessor, launched a bunch of great apps for iPhone and Android, and generally made people like it a lot more. But the real victory of Satya Nadella — the truly monumental shift — has been within the company. Under Nadella, Microsoft is pointed in one direction for first time in modern memory.

A former Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) executive reveals in a Project Veritas undercover investigation how textbook publishing giant Pearson Education won the $1.3 billion contract to put Common Core-curriculum-loaded iPads into the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), despite the fact that, he alleges, other publishers outpaced Pearson in their bids for the contract. In this fourth video of a series by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas – focused on exposing the corporate cronyism behind the Common Core standards reform, Gilbert Garcia, Ph.D. tells the undercover journalist that “the big boys” of the textbook publishing world are Pearson, McGraw-Hill and HMH....

The billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has told the BBC that the United States "should set a better example" by taking in more refugees. Mr Gates said his home country "had the capacity" to follow the examples of Germany and Sweden, who were "to be congratulated" for welcoming migrants. But he acknowledged that relaxing immigration laws "was not easy". Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr Gates added that governments were dealing with "tight budgets". However, he emphasised that the issue was largely a political one, and that "the total number of refugees is not a world record".

The University of California announced Sunday it has pledged $1 billion over the next five years toward research and development of clean energy technology to fight climate change as part of a coalition led by Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates. "The University of California, with its 10 campuses and three national energy labs, is home to some of the best climate scientists in the world and as a public research institution we take the imperative to solve global climate change very seriously," said UC President Janet Napolitano.

NEW YORK CITY, November 18, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – In response to a lower than projected Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) report, Bill Gates is spending more money on abortifacient birth control in third-world countries. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has announced additional donations over three years totaling $120 million more for their pet project, a global initiative to combat childbirth among the poorest of the world. FP 2020 had a goal of getting contraceptives to 120 million more women and girls by its namesake year. A status report showed only an additional 25 million, far short of the trajectory needed...

UK -- Companies such as Apple, Google and others will no longer be able to offer encryption so advanced that even they cannot decipher it when asked to under the Investigatory Powers Bill Internet and social media companies will be banned from putting customer communications beyond their own reach under new laws to be unveiled on Wednesday. Companies such as Apple, Google and others will no longer be able to offer encryption so advanced that even they cannot decipher it when asked to, the Daily Telegraph can disclose. Measures in the Investigatory Powers Bill will place in law a requirement...

Last week changes to the Windows 10 upgrade path mean it is going to become increasingly difficult for any non-techy users to avoid being pushed to Microsoft new operating system. But given Windows 10 is better than Windows 7 and Windows 8, why would that be a problem? Because of policies like this… Speaking to PC World, Microsoft Corporate Vice President Joe Belfiore explained that Windows 10 is constantly tracking how it operates and how you are using it and sending that information back to Microsoft by default. More importantly he also confirmed that, despite offering some options to turn...

Gates wants giant carbon tax, says government 'somewhat inept' The world’s richest man thinks only socialism – and skyrocketing gas prices – can save the world from climate change. Bill Gates, whose net worth is roughly $80 billion, told the Atlantic for its November issue that only massive intervention by world governments can head off environmental disaster. “There’s no fortune to be made. Even if you have a new energy source that costs the same as today’s and emits no CO2, it will be uncertain compared with what’s tried-and-true and already operating at unbelievable scale and has gotten through all...

"Representative democracy" has failed; the private sector is "inept"; and only bigger government - led by China and the US - has the power to save the world from climate change. So says Bill Gates in a dogmatic but somewhat confused interview with The Atlantic in which he simultaneously pours scorn on green tech solutions but insists that more of them are needed - on a scale bigger than the Manhattan Project - if we are to deal successfully with a problem whose nature he admits may well have been exaggerated by environmentalists.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Did you see what Bill Gates did? Did you see what Bill Gates said? This is one of the craziest, nonsensical things I have ever in my life heard. I understand why he said it. But it is just over-the-top unbelievable. Bill Gates says that capitalism cannot save us from climate change. Bill Gates says that socialism is the only thing that can save us from climate change. "The world's richest man, Bill Gates, has said that the private sector is too selfish and inefficient to produce effective energy alternatives to fossil fuels. While announcing his plan...

"On why the free market won’t develop new forms of energy fast enough: ...Without a substantial carbon tax, there’s no incentive for innovators or plant buyers to switch."

There's a new richest man in the world.It's Spanish clothing magnate Amancio Ortega, who has overtaken Microsoft founder Bill Gates for the first time ever.According to Forbes' real-time tracker, the elusive multibillionaire founder of European clothing retailer Zara just smashed past Bill Gates to become the wealthiest person on the planet, with a fortune of $79.8 billion (€71.83 billion or £51.84 billion). The elusive Ortega isn't as much of a household name as Gates, but he's quietly ascended the wealth rankings in recent years, as his company continues to perform well and expand.Unlike many of the richest people in the...

"It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered." – Aeschylus The fundamental issue behind income inequality could be boiled down to a single question: Are poor Americans better or worse off because Bill Gates ($79 billion net worth), Oprah Winfrey ($3 billion net worth), Michael Jordan ($1 billion net worth) and Mark Zuckerberg ($40 billion net worth) are living in the United States? Certainly, having them living in America creates more income inequality. It also hurts the poor by….oh wait, having them here doesn’t hurt the poor at all. None...

Education Secretary Arne Duncan grew up in Chicago and attended the private, prestigious University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. The pre-K-12 Lab Schools are progressive institutions ... resident Obama’s two daughters attended the school before moving to Washington in 2009, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s children are enrolled there now. And in the fall, Duncan’s children will be attending Lab, too, while his wife works there. .... his children will attend a progressive private school in Chicago, a school that does not follow key school reform policies that his Education Department has set for public schools. It does not, for example,...

A notorious al Qaeda magazine is encouraging lone-wolf terrorist attacks on U.S. economic leaders, including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg and Warren Buffett. The list in Inspire magazine also included industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch, internet entrepreneur Larry Ellison, and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. A prominent economist was also on the list but asked that his name be withheld. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was named, though not Janet Yellen, who succeeded him. Also pictured was Jim Walton, one of the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, although he was misidentified in the caption as his late father, Sam Walton. Several...