STWR - Share The World's Resources

You feel most passionately when you meet children excluded from chances we take for granted

Today 110 million of the world's children will not go to school. The vast majority are girls. Half of Africa's children will never finish primary schooling.

Offering primary education to every child is the most cost effective investment the world could ever make. For $10bn [£5.75bn] a year, every child in every continent could have teachers, books and classrooms. For less than 2p each per day, we could provide schooling for every child in the poorest countries, or give girls the same chances as boys in 50 countries where girls lose out dramatically.

The past year saw a massive campaign to double African aid, write off debt and ensure treatment for all Aids sufferers by 2010. This year should usher in a new resolution that, by delivering our Gleneagles promises on aid, we achieve the Millennium Development Goals for education and health care. Our mission should be universal free education for every child, universal health care for every family, and I will suggest to the G8 finance ministers in Moscow next month that this mission to deliver should reach its climax in 2007.

Millions of people living with HIV/AIDS in poor parts of the world could lose their lives in the next few years if governments fail to keep their promises to fight the deadly pandemic, warn U.N. officials and health advocacy groups.

In the absence of treatment, as many as 74 million people could die from HIV/AIDS-related causes by 2015, according to the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILO), which notes that young workers are the ones who are most at risk.

Though acknowledging that the international community has made some progress in the past few years, U.N. officials and independent groups say governments must do more to combat HIV/AIDS.

"The world has made considerable promises," said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the eve of World AIDS Day Thursday. "The time has come to keep them."

There are more than 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS today, according to the United Nations. The disease has already claimed some 25 million lives.

Five million more people infected last year, says UN. Asia singled out as being particularly at risk

The HIV/Aids pandemic is continuing its deadly spread across the globe, infecting five million more people last year and bringing the total living with the virus to over 40 million, the UN said yesterday.

UNAids, in its latest update on the figures, tried to lighten the gloom by pointing to Kenya, Zimbabwe and some of the Caribbean countries, where there is some limited evidence that infection rates may be dropping slightly. But in the worst-hit regions, notably sub-Saharan Africa, the trend is steadily upwards and in India there are suggestions that the scale of infection could be worse than the official figures imply.

Peter Piot, executive director of UNAids, said it was encouraging that prevention efforts had led to gains in some countries. "But the reality is that the Aids epidemic continues to outstrip global and national efforts to contain it."

Not only is one fifth of the world's adult population illiterate, but 100 million children are not attending primary school, the Unesco report says.

With 90 per cent of all Internet users living in developed countries, governments must narrow the gap between North and South by expanding quality education for all.

With 90 per cent of all Internet users living in developed countries, governments must narrow the gap between North and South by expanding quality education for all, increasing community access to information and communication technology, and sharing scientific knowledge across borders, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report released today says.

The report, "Towards Knowledge Societies," launched today on the eve of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), analyses the increasingly important role played by knowledge in economic growth and advances that it can serve as a new springboard for development in the countries of the South.

"Those countries and communities that don't recognize this huge reliance on knowledge as a driving force will be left behind," Elizabeth Longworth, Director of UNESCO's Information Society Division, told a press conference at UN Headquarters in New York.

Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates last night gave $258m (£145m) to the fight against malaria, branding the rich world's efforts in tackling the disease "a disgrace".

The grant is equivalent to more than three-quarters of global spending on research into the disease last year, according to a report published simultaneously by the Malaria Research and Development Alliance. Malaria causes an estimated 500m bouts of illness a year, kills an African child every 30 seconds, and costs an estimated $12bn a year in lost income.

But the MRDA report stated that global spending on malaria research last year totalled just $323m, about a tenth of the funding that would be needed to match its 3% share of the global disease burden.

Mr Gates said that the world had failed to fight the "all-out war" on the disease. "For too long malaria has been a forgotten epidemic," he said. "It's a disgrace that the world has allowed malaria deaths to double in the last 20 years, when so much more could have been done to stop the disease.

Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Labs, has been outlining designs for a sub-$100 PC.

The laptop will be tough and foldable in different ways, with a hand crank for when there is no power supply.

Professor Negroponte came up with the idea for a cheap computer for all after visiting a Cambodian village.

His non-profit One Laptop Per Child group plans to have up to 15 million machines in production within a year.

A prototype of the machine should be ready in November at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunisia.

Children in Brazil, China, Egypt, Thailand, and South Africa will be among the first to get the under-$100 (£57) computer, said Professor Negroponte at the Emerging Technologies conference at MIT.

The following year, Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney plans to start buying them for all 500,000 middle and high school pupils in the state.

Professor Negroponte predicts there could be 100 million to 150 million shipped every year by 2007.