Japanese & American donate to Caritas International for the flood victims in northern and northeastern Brazil -- Learn how!

From Laurie Dougherty in Massachusetts:

An advantage of Caritas International is that you can donate online with any credit card -you don't have to fool with bank wire transfers. And as Suya pointed out there is now an option on the online donation form to earmark the donation for the Brazil flood (this option was not yet there last evening when I became aware of Caritas involvement).

From the press release on Brazil at this link, click the black box "Support our work in Brazil" (or go to to Donate Now, select Emergency Response Fund, check "emergencies," open the drop down list and select Brazil Flood).

http://www.caritas.org/newsroom/press_releases/PressRelease28_05_09.html

I will also donate 100 EUR which at the moment is US$138.78. (A donation of US$100 would be 72.06 EUR.) This currency converter may not be the exact "official" exchange rate, but we use this at work to get a good approximation.

http://www.oanda.com/convert/classic

I will also spread the word among contacts at work -- we have a large Latin American program and several Brazilians on staff.

Laurie

Caritas - the charitable arm of the Catholic Church - is appealing for contributions to provide assistance to flooded areas in northeastern Brazil

Caritas - the charitable arm of the Catholic Church - is appealing for contributions to provide assistance to flooded areas in the northeast of Brazil

Caritas Brazil issued an appeal a couple of weeks ago requesting contributions that can be made through several bank accounts in Brazil (contributions from out of the country would need to be wired to the banks, most likely): http://www.caritas.org/newsroom/press_releases/BrazilFlood.html

Caritas International, based in the Vatican, issued an appeal today to raise US$1.1 million for Brazil flood victims. Contributions can be made online with any credit card (as well as by check or wire transfer). The press release describes the kind of relief intended.
http://www.caritas.org/newsroom/press_releases/PressRelease28_05_09.html

The Caritas website says donations can be earmarked for a specific emergency, but the Brazil floods are not on the list of choices on the online donation form.

Contact: Michelle Hough Tel. 39-06-69879721, 39-334-2344136 or hough@caritas.va

Currency converter (Euros to other currencies): http://www.oanda.com/convert/classic

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ilY_qkKl2-BGIiWlR2wcN2DCykcAD98FF8V82


http://internationalrivers.org/en/blog/glenn-switkes/fatalities-northeast-brazilian-dam-bursts

Many thanks to Laurie Dougherty, in Massachusetts, for the information in this post.

Cruz Vermelha do Brasil: Como fazer doações p/ os atingidos das enchentes do Norte e Nordeste

Veja como fazer doações para o Nordeste

Cruz Vermelha (para todos o atingidos do Nordeste)

Unibanco
Agência 0472
Conta 235.000-8

Defesa Civil do Piauí

Banco do Brasil
Agência 3791-5
Conta 2004-4

Ceará / Campanha Força Solidária

Caixa Econômica Federal
Agência 3281
Operação 003
Conta 300-1

Banco do Brasil
Agência 3515-7
Conta corrente 11024-8

Banco do Nordeste do Brasil
Agência 016
Conta corrente 29393-8

SOS Maranhão

Caixa Econômica Federal
Agência 0027
Conta corrente 1000-2
Operação 006

Banco do Brasil
Agência 2954-8
Conta corrente 2222-5.

Fonte: Folha Online

Link: http://www.gp1.com.br/noticias/mais-de-350-mil-pessoas-deixam-suas-casas-por-causa-das-chuvas-no-brasil-confira-79983.asp

Many thanks to Suya Yamazaki, in Japan, for getting me headed down this road to information for donations.

Maureen Dowd: Rogue Diva of Doom (Dick Cheney, in case you were wondering)

Rogue Diva of Doom

Maureen Dowd. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times.

• Read All Comments (89) »

by Maureen Dowd, New York Times, May 12, 2009

When Bush 41 was ramping up to the Gulf War, assembling a coalition to fight Saddam, Jimmy Carter sent a letter to members of the U.N. Security Council urging them not to rush into conflict without further exploring a negotiated solution.

The first President Bush and other Republicans in Washington considered this treasonous, a former president trying to thwart a sitting one, lobbying foreign diplomats to oppose his own country on a war resolution. In 2002, when Bush Junior was ramping up to his war against Saddam, Al Gore made a speech trying to slow down that war resolution, pointing out that pivoting from Osama to Saddam for no reason, initiating “pre-emptive” war, and blowing off our allies would undermine the war on terror.

Charles Krauthammer called Gore’s speech “a disgrace.” Michael Kelly, his fellow Washington Post columnist, called it “vile” and “contemptible.” Newt Gingrich said that the former vice president asserting that W. was making America less safe was “well outside the mark of an appropriate debate.”

“I think the president should be doing what he thinks is best as commander in chief,” Gingrich said flatly. Now, however, Gingrich backs Dick Cheney when he asserts that President Obama has made America less safe.

Asked by Bob Schieffer on Sunday how America could torture when it made a mockery of our ideals, Cheney blithely gave an answer that surely would have been labeled treasonous by Rush Limbaugh, if a Democratic ex-vice president had said it about a Republican president.

“Well, then you’d have to say that, in effect, we’re prepared to sacrifice American lives rather than run an intelligent interrogation program that would provide us the information we need to protect America,” Doomsday Dick said.

Cheney has replaced Sarah Palin as Rogue Diva. Just as Jeb Bush and other Republicans are trying to get kinder and gentler, Cheney has popped out of his dungeon, scary organ music blaring, to carry on his nasty campaign of fear and loathing.

The man who never talked is now the man who won’t shut up. The man who wouldn’t list his office in the federal jobs directory, who had the vice president’s residence blocked on Google Earth, who went to the Supreme Court to keep from revealing which energy executives helped him write the nation’s energy policy, is now endlessly yelping about how President Obama is holding back documents that should be made public.

Cheney, who had five deferments himself to get out of going to Vietnam, would rather follow a blowhard entertainer who has had three divorces and a drug problem (who also avoided Vietnam) than a four-star general who spent his life serving his country.

“Bush 41 cares about decorum and protocol,” said an official in Bush I. “I’m sure he doesn’t appreciate Cheney acting out. He is giving the whole party a black eye just as Jeb is out there trying to renew the party.”

Cheney unleashed, egged on by the combative Lynne and Liz, is pretty much the same as Cheney underground: He’s batty, and he thinks he was the president.

W. admired Cheney’s brass (he used another word) but grew increasingly skeptical of him, the more he learned about foreign policy himself, and the more he got pulled into a diplomatic mode by Condi in the second term. There were even reports of W. doing a funny Cheney imitation and that it dawned on him that Cheney and Rummy represented a scofflaw, paranoid Nixon cell within his White House.

“Toward the end, 43 was just as confused as anybody about what makes Cheney tick,” said a Bush family loyalist.

Cheney’s numskull ideas — he still loves torture (dubbed “13th-century” stuff by Bob Woodward), Gitmo and scaring the bejesus out of Americans — are not only fixed, they’re jejune.

He has no coherent foreign policy viewpoint. He still doesn’t fathom that his brutish invasion of Iraq unbalanced that part of the world, empowered Iran and was a force multiplier for Muslims who hate America. He left our ports unsecured, our food supply unsafe, the Taliban rising and Osama on the loose. No matter if or when terrorists attack here — and they’re on their own timetable, not a partisan red/blue state timetable — Cheney will be deemed the primary one who made America more vulnerable.

W.’s dark surrogate father is trying to pull the G.O.P. into a black hole of zealotry, just as the sensible brother who lost his future to the scamp brother is trying to get his career back on track.

When Cheney was in the first Bush administration, he was odd man out. Poppy, James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell corralled Cheney’s “Genghis Khan” side, as it was known, and his “rough streak.” Cheney didn’t care for Powell even then.

But with W., “Back Seat” — Cheney’s Secret Service name in the Ford administration — clambered up front. Then he totaled the car. And no amount of yapping on TV is going to change that when history is written.

Link to column: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/opinion/13dowd.html

Maureen Dowd: The Final Frontier -- Put Aside Logic

THE FINAL FRONTIER: Put Aside Logic

by Maureen Dowd, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, published May 9, 2009

Maureen Dowd (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Credit: Shan Carter.

I dreamed that Spock saved our planet, The Daily Planet of journalism.

Instead of swooping in to figure out the dimensionality and logarithms to rescue the world from red matter, as Spock does in J. J. Abrams’s dazzling new “Star Trek,” I imagined Spock rescuing read matter for the world.

Newspapers are an “endangered species,” as John Kerry called us in a Senate hearing last week, just as the Vulcans are in the new prequel.

I know Barack Spock likes newspapers. An aide told me during the campaign that Mr. Obama would get cranky if he didn’t have some time set aside during the day to read The New York Times.

And it was clear from his very first news conference, when I began covering his long-shot bid for the White House and he began referring to stories he had read in The Times, that Mr. Obama’s supple mind was nourished by news and books. You knew he would never inspire alarm as W. did, that if Condi walked too far away or his notes blew off the lectern, he’d be utterly lost.

Once, during his campaign trip to Europe, Mr. Obama told me that he had briefly sold subscriptions to The New York Times when he was at Columbia University to help pay for school, but confessed he wasn’t very good at it.

I said that if he won the presidency, he’d be pretty busy, but that maybe he could find time to sell a few more subscriptions. It would really help us out in the current business crunch.

He gave me that wry Spock look.

In the “Star Trek” prequel, Spock’s father tells him, “You will always be a child of two worlds,” urging him not to keep such a tight vise on his emotions. And Spandexy Old Spock, known as Spock Prime, tells his younger self: “Put aside logic. Do what feels right.”

Mr. Obama is also a control freak who learned to temper, if not purge, all emotion. But as a young man of mixed blood, he was more adept than Young Spock at learning to adjust his two sides to charm both worlds, and to balance his cerebral air with his talent for evoking intense emotion.

Just as President Spock pledged to make hope and government cool again, Mr. Abrams said he wanted his movie to make optimism cool again.

Commanding his own unwieldy starship of blended species, with Cheney, Limbaugh and other pitiless Borg aliens firing phasers from all sides, Mr. Obama has certainly invoked Mr. Spock’s Vulcan philosophy of “Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” And he even recruited some impulsive Rahmulen muscle for his Utopia.

Many other corporations are being coddled by the president. But, as Robert Gibbs correctly pointed out the other day, a government beam-up for newspapers is not logical.

One of the things Young Spock has to learn in the movie is the difference between what is morally praiseworthy and what is morally obligatory. Newspapers do a praiseworthy job of trying to keep the dark side at bay, by shining sun on it. But society may not consider us obligatory, as we’re finding out.

Senator Kerry’s hearing tried to determine, in a metaphor that was whipped to death, whether there was any way to shut the barn door now that the ink-stained horse has gotten out into the virtual pasture (making readers pay for content now that they’ve gotten used to getting it free online).

David Simon, the creator of “The Wire,” who worked for 13 years as a Baltimore Sun reporter, testified that “high-end journalism is dying,” and when that happens, and no one is manning the cop shops and zoning boards, America will enter “a halcyon era for state and local political corruption.”

He said he thought the horse could be lured back into the barn. “I work in television now,” he said, “and no American, for the first 30 years of television, paid anything for their rabbit ears. Now they pay $60, $70 a month for better content.”

Newspapers no longer know how to live long and prosper. It’s enough to make a Vulcan weep.

Kirk out.

Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/opinion/10dowd.html

Susan Boyle sings "My Heart Will Go On" from the movie "Titanic" -- on the Larry King Live Show, CNN, April 2009

Susan Boyle sings "My Heart Will Go On" from the movie "Titanic" -- during her interview on the Larry King Live show on CNN on April x, 2009.

Susan Boyle sings "Cry Me A River" in 1999, and "I Dreamed a Dream" during Britain's Got Talent, April 2009

"Cry Me a River" sung by Susan Boyle in 1999.

Below, a link to her incredible and uplifting rendition of "I Dreamed A Dream" on April, 2009, in the first round of the Britain's Got Talent contest. The video will be posted when it is available again for embedding -- at the moment, too many people are trying to watch it -- more than 32 million people so far in only about a week!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

Toxoplasma may influence behaviors within cultures

Toxoplasma - the brain parasite that influences human culture

Category: Parasites
Posted on: October 5, 2008 10:00 AM, by Ed Yong

We like to think that we are masters of our own fates. The thought that others might be instead controlling our actions makes us uneasy. We rail against nanny states, we react badly to media hype and we are appalled at the idea of brainwashing. But words and images are not the only things that can affect our brains and thoughts. Other animals - parasites - can do this too. According to research by Kevin Lafferty from the University of California, Santa Barbara, a common brain parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, could be influencing human culture across the globe.

Toxoplasma gondii is a single-celled brain parasite spread by cats. Our feline companions are its preferred home and only in their bodies can it mature and reproduce. So like most parasites, T.gondii has a complex life cycle designed to get it into its final host. If it finds itself in another animal, it travels to the brain and changes the host's behaviour to maximise its chances of ending up in a cat. For rodents, this means being eaten and infected individuals are less fearful of cats and more active, making them easier prey.

Humans can also contract the parasite, through contact with soil contaminated by the faeces of carriers or through eating infected meat. But since cats are very unlikely to eat humans, T.gondii reaches a cul-de-sac in our bodies. Still, there is nothing to stop the parasite, evolutionarily speaking, from trying out the strategies that work so well in other hosts. In rare cases, T.gondii infection causes a disease called toxoplasmosis that produces mild flu-like symptoms and only really threatens foetuses and those with weak immune systems. But in most instances, the parasite acts more subtly.

Carriers tend to show long-term personality changes that are small but statistically significant. Women tend to be more intelligent, affectionate, social and more likely to stick to rules. Men on the other hand tend to be less intelligent, but are more loyal, frugal and mild-tempered. The one trait that carriers of both genders share is a higher level of neuroticism - they are more prone to guilt, self-doubt and insecurity.

In individuals cases, these effects may seem quirky or even charming but across populations, they can have a global power. T.gondii infection is extremely common and rates vary greatly from country to country. While only 7% of Brits carry the parasite, a much larger 67% of Brazilians are infected. Given that the parasite alters behaviour, infection on this scale could lead to sizeable differences in the general personalities of people of different nationalities. This is exactly what Lafferty found.

Neuroticism is one of the most widely-studied of all psychological traits and Lafferty found that levels in different countries correlated well with the levels of T.gondii infection. The parasites' presence was also related to aspects of culture associated with neuroticism. Countries where infection was common were more likely to have 'masculine sex roles', characterized by greater differences between the sexes and their part in society and a stronger focus on work, ambition and money rather than people and relationships. Strongly infected societies were also more likely to avoid risk and embrace strict rules and regulations.

Obviously, different countries are also not just uniform populations, and increasing rates of migration mean that many countries are very ethnically and culturally mixed. However, this works in favour of Lafferty's theory as any mixing would serve to mask the link between infection and culture. If anything, the link is stronger than seen in this study.

These results are obviously very controversial and it would be imprudent to suggest that T.gondii is the major driver of human culture. It is just one of a number of influences that include genes, our physical environment and our histories. And Lafferty himself is quick to point out caveats to his own results.

For a start, they do not imply that the parasite is causing these personality types; it could be that people with these traits are more likely to become infected. To establish the true direction of causality, Lafferty will need to find out how the parasite manipulates the mind. The general idea is that infection alters levels of the immune system's communication chemicals - the cytokines - which in turn alter levels of neurotransmitters like dopamine. But the details remain a mystery.

Nonetheless, the results are striking and one implicaiton is that climate could have a larger effect on culture than previously thought. Toxoplasma gondii's eggs live longer in humid, low regions so variations in climate could influence the global distribution of cultural traits. Perhaps, this could explain why men and women perform more distinct roles in society in countries in warmer climates. Other factors can also affect the risk of infection, including cat ownership and national cuisines that include undercooked meat.

We like to think of culture as something governed by the collective actions of free-thinking and free-acting humans. But Lafferty's analysis shows us that if environmental factors like parasites can affect our thoughts and actions, no matter how subtly, they can have a strong effect on national cultures. In many cases, these effects could be much stronger than the agents that we normally believe to drive cultural trends. After all, more people around the world are infected with Toxoplasma than are connected to the internet.

Reference: Kevin D. Lafferty (2006). Can the common brain parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, influence human culture? Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 273 (1602), 2749-2755 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2006.3641

Link to text above: http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2008/10/toxoplasma_the_brain_parasite_that_influences_human_culture.php

Hoax and forgery of purported U.S. geography textbook showing the Amazon belonging to the U.S.

Certain things just get old. Like the fact that most Brazilians are willing to believe the most amazing crap about Americans. A few years back, an e-mail circulated around Brazil stating that American children were being taught that the Amazon rainforest belonged to America. The instantaneous belief in this ridiculous hoax by otherwise seemingly intelligent people was simply astonishing. Then, came the terrible tragedy of the two planes that crashed over the Amazon rainforest. A prominent politician claimed the American pilot had turned off the transponder and had been doing loop-d'-loops. Leaving aside the fact that a top executive from the pilot's company was on board, as well as an executive of the plane's manufacturer, and a reporter for the New York Times, who in hell would take a brand new plane and do aerial acrobatics over the Amazon? I can only surmise that Brazilians believe that a Brazilian pilot might be capable of such a thing and therefore are willing to believe that an American pilot would also do it. Even today, after all the evidence points to the complete innocence of the two American pilots (e.g., the transponder had failed in two other planes before being installed in the "brand new" plane the American company had just purchased, and this is just one of the many factors in the tragic crash -- but the intense focus by many here to protect the business interests of Embraer has superceded any other consideration, like getting at the truth and protecting the flying public), they are assumed to be cold-hearted criminals by most Brazilians.

Thus, I find it necessary to post the information below (taken from someone else's blog), in an effort to educate the unwary.

“Since 2000, a forgery has circulated falsely claiming that the United States and the United Nations have assumed control of the Amazon rainforest in order to safeguard its treasures for all mankind.”

“The forgery purports to be page 76 of a U.S. sixth grade textbook titled An Introduction to Geography by David Norman. There is no indication that such a book exists. The U.S. Library of Congress, with more than 29 million books and other printed materials, has no record of it. The Online Computer Learning Center’s WorldCat database, the world’s largest database of bibliographic information with more than 47 million books, has no record of the book. Nor can such a book be found in Internet searches on amazon.com or Google.”

“Geographical manuals in US schools show an amputated Brazil, without the Amazon and the Pantanal. This is how students are taught that these are ‘international’ areas, in other words: this is how the North American public is prepared for the ‘internationalisation’ of these areas.”

“The following text is taken from a US high school geography manual, signalling the United States (jointly with the United Nations) can take over the Amazon to protect the water and air quality of the world.”

“The manual discusses how this area is in South America, a region with the worst poverty on the planet and divided among eight nations with a weird, irresponsible, cruel and authoritarian population – savages, drugs dealers, illiterates, etc… It is these peoples that could cause the death and destruction of the world, in a mere few years’ time.”

“Going into detail, page 76 of the manual ‘Introduction to Geography’ by David Norman (used at junior high school level), describes ‘Operation Columbia’:”

“North American troops (80.000 strong in Surinam and Guyana) will take over Brazilian airspace and launch rockets from Alcantara. The US will open a CIA office at the Foz de Iguazu tripoint (Argentina/Paraguay/Brazil) and implant two military bases in Argentina – one in Patagonia and one closer to Buenos Aires.”

“Legend below the map: ‘Here we see the International Reserve, consisting of territory of eight South American countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, French Guyana… Some of the most miserable countries of the world.”

“Since the middle of the 1980s, the most important nature area in the world became the responsibility of the US and the UN. The fund that was set up for this purpose is FIRAF (the ‘First International Reserve of the Amazon Forestal Fund’). This foundation has taken responsibility for the Amazon region, located in South America, a region among the poorest in the world and ruled by irresponsible, cruel and authoritarian governments. The area is part of eight different countries, the populations of which consist of violent types, drugs traffickers and ignorants, illiterates and primitives.”

“The foundation of FIRAF was approved and supported by the nations of the G-23 and it is a genuine challenge to our country and a gift to the whole world, as the ownership of this valuable global asset was in the hands of primitive peoples and countries without responsibility for these ‘lungs of the world’, which under their stewardship would disappear in a few years’ time.”

“We can say that this region has the greatest biodiversity on the planet, both in animal and plant species. The value of this region is incalculable, but the Earth can rest assured that the USA will not allow the Latin American countries to further exploit and destroy this heritage of all mankind. The FIRAF will be administered as any other US National Park, with strict rules regarding exploitation.”

“Please send this mail onto as many people as possible, to inform all of these insidious plans. Gracias, obrigado, thank you!”

This is the verbatim transcription of a rambling, repetitive chain mail (often but not always in Spanish or Portuguese) purporting to show a US scheme for taking over the Amazon basin, under the pretext of saving its globally vital resources from the clutches of the savage locals. It’s not hard to find some things wrong with it.

• Why would the US cooperate with the UN, or vice versa? Both entities are more often at odds with one another than not. Furthermore, any such action would have to be approved by the UN Security Council; it’s inconceivable how other veto-wielding members would permit it, especially the increasingly uncooperative Russians, or the Chinese, who no doubt have their own agenda in the region.
• The quoted texts seem hardly appropriate for a school textbook, which are in most cases formulated in neutral tones, even in America… Unless this is an illustration of American arrogance as imagined by outsiders.
• Why would the CIA open an office at said tripoint, and why would the US implant military bases so far from their area of annexation?
• The G-23 doesn’t seem to exist, or if it does, it’s neither googleable nor wikipediable. Maybe they meant the G-8?
• FIRAF is googleable, but only seems to turn up in news reports of questionable veracity, whereas entering it in the – fallible, but rather comprehensive – reference website wikipedia, draws a blank.
• An search for FIRAF does lead to this page of the US State Department, where this context is given:

“To a native English speaker, the accompanying text’s many errors of spelling, grammar, and inappropriate tone and language are clear, although these would not necessarily be obvious to non-native English speakers. The words that are misspelled and some of the other most obvious errors are indicated in boldface. They are:”

• 3.000 should be 3,000; Americans use a comma, not a period to separate thousands from hundreds in numbers
• INT’L should be INTERNATIONAL; informal contractions would not be used in a textbook
• responsability should be spelled responsibility
• irresponsable should be spelled irresponsible
• authoritary should be authoritarian
• the “a” before “unintelligent” should be “an”
• destroying should be destruction
• vegetals should be vegetables
• calcule should be calculate
• cert should be certain
• explorate should be exploit.

“In addition, the text uses an inappropriate tone and contains many other grammatical and word usage errors. Some of the spelling errors in the forgery indicate that the forger was a native Portuguese speaker. In Portuguese, the word for calculate is calcule, and a word for vegetable is vegetal. On June 8, 2000, the then-Brazilian ambassador to the United States, Rubens Antonio Barbosa, characterised the forgery as ‘disinformation made in Brazil by sectors still unidentified’.”

“Ambassador Barbosa added, ‘The initial source of the supposed news was a website associated with the slogan Brasil, Ame-o ou Deixe-o [Brazil: love it or leave it], but with no identification of those responsible for the website.’ The Minister-Counselor of the Brazilian embassy at the time, Paulo Roberto de Almeida, stated that the forgery was linked to Brazilian ‘right-wing sectors that specialize in transmitting news of supposed attacks against our sovereignty in a manner that is not merely paranoid, but also irresponsible’.”

“Although the textbook page has long been identified as a forgery, it continues to circulate widely via e-mail, and is often believed.”

More togetherness now for Bill and Melinda Gates: Now, if we could just get more well-funded Brazilians to develop a similar attitude

More togetherness now for Bill and Melinda Gates

by ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer, Salon, February 1, 2009

DAVOS, Switzerland -- Since Bill Gates left his full-time job at Microsoft Corp., his wife sees much more of him during the day -- but not because he's at home. They work in adjoining offices running the world's biggest philanthropic organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

"We have offices that are side-by-side now at the foundation," Melinda French Gates said. "That's really nice because we have a door that passes between them in the back. We can pop into each other's office."

They share ideas about foundation projects for the health and development of the poorest people in the world and to improve education in the United States.

And, put in Bill Gates, they travel -- sometimes together and sometimes apart -- as they look into the best ways to help the world's poorest people in remote corners of the globe.

They were together for a series of appearances and meetings at the World Economic Forum. Melinda Gates has come from Tanzania, where she was looking into work against malaria, and Ethiopia, where she was seeing what the foundation can do to help make 3,000 new rural health centers more effective.

He's been in Belgium checking on progress toward a malaria vaccine. After Davos, he heads to Nigeria for a couple of days to encourage immunization against polio in one of the world's most affected countries. He visited the other, India, several months ago. He's convinced the world can wipe out the disease with a little more effort.

The couple, sitting next to each other, looked relaxed during an interview Friday with The Associated Press at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos. They alternate in answering questions, picking up where the other leaves off.

"It's my full-time job," said the co-founder of Microsoft who left his full-time job at the software giant last July amid concerns from friends that he wouldn't find his new role as engaging or rewarding. "Even though I loved my old one a lot, this one's every bit as good."

He said he was "maniacally" devoted to developing software aimed at making computers cheap and available for everyone.

Melinda Gates is heading back home to Seattle to be with the couple's children -- Jennifer, 12, Rory, 9, and Phoebe, 6 -- the major constraint on their travel.

"We have three young kids, so we're obviously very committed to being in Seattle and being there when they're in school, and then they travel with us quite a bit to," she said. "They're too young to get involved in the foundation. That will be still yet to come."

Link to article: http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/us/2009/02/01/D962Q26O0_davos_forum_people_bill___melinda_gates/index.html