TIG Post

Tag: Bill Gates

  • “I still consider it my biggest failure” – Bill Gates on life after divorce

    “I still consider it my biggest failure” – Bill Gates on life after divorce

    Bill Gates is speaking candidly about his divorce from Melinda French Gates, calling it “the mistake I regret the most.”

    In an interview with The Times of London published on Saturday, Jan. 25, the former Microsoft exec, 69, opened up about his 2021 divorce from his wife of 27 years, revealing that one of his biggest goals in life was to replicate his own parents’ 45-year marriage.

    “I encouraged Melinda to be a little calmer than my mother was, but we were both quite driven,” he told the outlet, reflecting on how he tried to make his own marriage reflect his parents’. “I spent more time with the kids than my dad did, but the ratio was still 10:1, with Melinda doing most things for the kids. We had a great time.”

    Bill said he believes there is a “certain wonderfulness to spending your entire adult life with one person,” especially when you share children together, as well as fond memories and shared projects.

    “When Melinda and I met, I was fairly successful but not ridiculously successful — that came during the time that we were together,” he told The Times of London. “So, she saw me through a lot. When we got divorced, it was tough and then she made the decision to leave the foundation — I was disappointed that she took the option to go off.”

    The former couple first met in 1987, when Melinda became a product manager at Microsoft, and they eventually married in Hawaii in 1994. The pair founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — a nonprofit dedicated to combating global poverty and disease — in 2000. Following their split, Melinda, 60, resigned from the foundation in May 2024.

    When asked if divorce was his only failure in life, Bill told The Times of London: “You would have to put that at the top of the list. There are others but none that matter.”

    “The divorce thing was miserable for me and Melinda for at least two years,” he continued, adding elsewhere in the conversation that he has become “more cheerful” in the nearly four years since their split, but still considers it to be “the mistake I most regret.”Bill and Melinda Gates with their children in 2018. Melinda Gates Instagram

    “Melinda and I still see each other — we have three kids and two grandchildren, so there are family events,” he said. “The kids are doing well. They have good values.”

    The pair share three children: son Rory, 25, daughter Phoebe, 22, and daughter Jennifer, 28, as well as two grandchildren, Jennifer’s daughters Leila and Mia. Bill is now dating Paula Hurd, the widow of former Oracle executive Mark Hurd.

    Melinda has also previously opened up about her split from Bill, telling Time last year that while their divorce was “hard” and “painful,” over time it eventually came with “wonderful” new opportunities.

    “I live in a neighborhood. Now I can walk to little stores. I can walk to the drugstore, I can walk to a restaurant,” she told the outlet, speaking about her change of scenery after the split. “I absolutely love it.”

    Melinda also revealed that the former couple had separated during the COVID-19 pandemic, trading off who was able to stay at their shared family home with their children.

    “It gave us the privacy to do what needed to be done in private,” she told Time of their family life during the pandemic. “You know, I separated first before I made the full decision about a divorce. And to be able to do that in private while I’m still trying to take care of the kids, while still making certain decisions about how you’re going to disentangle your life — thank God.”

  • Massive copper deposit found in Zambia by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos’ firm

    Massive copper deposit found in Zambia by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos’ firm

    A startup with investments from Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, Kobold Metals, has recently uncovered extensive copper deposits in Zambia.

    This discovery is anticipated to play a pivotal role in reducing the West’s reliance on China for this valuable material, while also contributing to the global push for decarbonization, particularly in the growing electric vehicle sector.

    According to a Financial Times report, Kobold Metals disclosed that it has identified the largest copper reserve in Zambia, presenting a timely opportunity for the United States.

    This revelation aligns with the nation’s efforts to diversify its sources of vital minerals, such as copper, and embrace alternative energy sources.

    Despite the increasing demand for copper, particularly with the rising popularity of electric vehicles, many of the world’s leading mining companies have faced challenges in locating high-quality assets.

    This breakthrough by Kobold Metals comes at a crucial juncture in addressing these supply concerns.

    “We’ve spent a year with the largest fleet of drilling rigs in Southern Africa,” Josh Goldman, founder and president of KoBold Metals, told the Financial Times.

    “We now know that Mingomba will be one of the very highest grade large copper mines when put into production and it’s very much like Kakula in scale and grade,” he added.

    KoBold Metals, backed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures—a climate change investment initiative established by Bill Gates—employs artificial intelligence to extract insights from historical geological records, including old PDFs and hand-painted maps on linen. Utilizing algorithms, the company determines strategic locations for mineral exploration.

    As reported by the Financial Times, this California-based firm holds a valuation of $1.15 billion, with investments from major entities like BHP, the world’s largest mining group, and Equinor, a prominent oil company.

    At the $2 billion underground mine, the company plans to start producing copper in the early 2030s.

  • Bill Gates’ daughter Jennifer Gates expecting first child with her husband Nayel Nassar

    Jennifer Gates, the daughter of Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Bill Gates, and her husband Nayel Nassar announced on Instagram on Thanksgiving they were expecting their first child. The couple, married for a year, signaled they were expecting with the caption “thankful” along with emojis of a green heart and baby bottle.

    One posted photo shows the happy husband and wife posing as Gates holds her baby bump and another photo just shows Gates as she looks down and holds her baby bump.

     

    View this post on Instagram

     

    A post shared by Jennifer Gates (@jenniferkgates)

    Gates, 26, and Nasser, 31, celebrated their wedding at her Westchester horse farm last October in a luxurious event. Both are equestrians with Nassar competing in the Olympics.

    Bill Gates, and his ex-wife Melinda French Gates, share three children together. The two divorced last year after they were together for 27 years.

  • Record-breaking $1.5 billion art auction for late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s collection

    Paintings and sculptures owned by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen fetched a record $1.5 billion (£1.3 billion).

    According to Christie’s, it was the largest art auction in history.

    Works by Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne, and Gustav Klimt each sold for more than $100 million (£88 million), according to the auction house, breaking individual records for those artists.

    The sale proceeds will be donated to charities that Allen supported before his death in 2018.

    The most expensive piece of art bought was Seurat’s 1888 work Les Poseuses, Ensemble (small version), a renowned work of pointillism, which fetched $149.2m (£131m), including fees, Christie’s said.

    Paul Cezanne's La Montagne Sainte-Victoire
    IMAGE SOURCE,CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD 2022 Image caption, Paul Cezanne’s La Montagne Sainte-Victoire fetched $138m

    Experts say the super wealthy are viewing art as a safe investment amid a tumultuous global economy and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    Other record-breaking works included Van Gogh’s Orchard with Cypresses, which fetched $117.2m (£103m); Gauguin’s Maternity II, which sold for $105.7m (£93m); and Klimt’s Birch Forest, which went under the hammer for $104.6m (£92m).

    Paintings from Georgia O’Keefe, Claude Monet, David Hockney, Andrew Wyeth and Pablo Picasso were also sold, along with sculptures by Alexander Calder and Max Ernst.

    Gauguin's Maternity II
    IMAGE SOURCE,CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD 2022 Image caption, Gauguin’s Maternity II was sold for $106m

    The total value of the collection has already beaten the record set earlier this year, for the Macklowe collection, owned by a wealthy New York couple – which sold for $922m (£810m).

    Paul Allen
    IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES Image caption, Paul Allen set up a foundation while he was alive, donating hundreds of millions

    Mr Allen co-founded Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend Bill Gates.

    He was treated for non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2009, but it returned, and in 2018 he died from complications of the disease.

    In 2010, he pledged to leave the majority of his fortune to charity after his death. At the time he was the 37th richest man in the world, according to Forbes magazine, with an estimated $13.5bn (then £8.8bn).

    A further 90 lots from his collection will be sold on Thursday.

  • Bill Gates Has Big News About Terrible Disease

    Bill Gates almost never gives up in a fight. “Several significant worldwide setbacks over the past few years have left many people disillusioned and wondering whether the world is doomed to get worse,” the billionaire philanthropist bemoaned on Twitter on July 13 after what he dubbed “setbacks.”

    The pandemic is one of the biggest setbacks in history. The war in Ukraine is a gigantic tragedy for the entire world. The damage from climate change is already worse than most models predicted. The U.S. has taken a huge step backward for gender equality and women’s health.”

    He later appeared somewhat optimistic, as if he’d been trying to persuade himself that he saw light at the end of the tunnel.

    “But I’m still optimistic. These setbacks are happening in the context of two decades’ worth of historic progress and I believe it is possible to mitigate the damage and get back to the progress the world was making,” the entrepreneur said.

    $1.2 Billion to Fight Polio

    A few months later, the philanthropist seems to have regained his energy and his will to win his humanitarian battles.

    He has thus just promised $1.2 billion more to eradicate polio. The announcement was made on Sunday in Berlin by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which made the pledge to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

    “By coming together and funding efforts like the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, we can #EndPolio and build a healthier world, ” Gates tweeted on Oct. 15.

    “We’re very committed,” Gates told Bloomberg in an interview. “I can’t say forever, but giving up would mean hundreds of thousands of kids being paralyzed.”

    The new fund will help redouble and speed efforts to fight this disease, which has reappeared in recent months in regions where it was thought to have disappeared. A resurgence would jeopardize billions of dollars of investment over decades.

    Polio Reappears in New York

    A case of polio had been identified last summer in Rockland County, N.Y., half an hour north of Midtown Manhattan. Traces of the virus had also been detected in sewage in the U.K. and Israel, which had suggested that the disease, which had been almost eradicated worldwide, had resurged.

    “The individual experienced severe symptoms, including paralysis, and was hospitalized,” New York State and County health officials said. “New Yorkers should know that paralysis from polio is typically permanent, resulting in life-long disability.”

    The last known case of polio in the U.S. was in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A 7-month-old child who had just moved from India to the U.S. was diagnosed in San Antonio.

    The World Health Organization in June warned that a type of poliovirus derived from the oral polio vaccine – which, in rare cases, can cause infection in others but not in the person vaccinated – had been detected in London sewage samples. It can cause severe illness and paralysis in unvaccinated people.

    Polio, which largely affects children under age 5, has been virtually eradicated worldwide, according to Unicef. Cases have fallen by 99% since 1988 when polio was still endemic in 125 countries and 350,000 cases were recorded. Polio remains endemic in two countries – Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    Infections declined sharply in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the U.S., with the development of a vaccine. The last natural infection to have occurred in the U.S. dates from 1979.

    The Gateses, through their foundation, have already donated nearly $5 billion directly to the fight against polio.

    For 2019-2023 some $4.2 billion is needed to eradicate polio through vaccination and other health services, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. The program had $2.2 billion before Gates’ pledge. After the commitment, the funding shortfall is around $1.4 billion. Germany will co-host a pledge event at the World Health Summit on Oct. 18 in Berlin.

    “India’s success against poliovirus showed the world that to #EndPolio, perseverance and collaboration are vital. @naveenthacker and over 1,300 leading global experts have urged the world to recommit to ending polio,” Gates posted on Oct. 15.

     

  • Bill Gates lauds Ghana for exemplary leadership

    American business magnate and Co-founder of Microsoft, William Henry Gates, popularly known as Bill Gates, has, lauded Ghana for showing exemplary leadership and making strides on several fronts.

    Mr Gates made the remarks when Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia held a meeting with him via Zoom, to discuss three pertinent issues affecting Ghana.

    They discussed Ghana’s progress on immunization against the new circulating vaccine-derived polio virus type 2 (cVDPV2), the lessons from Ghana’s policy response to COVID-19 pandemic and Ghana’s digitisation strategy.

    In a tweet, Vice President Bawumia said, “It was a good exchange of views and he (Bill Gates) congratulated Ghana for the strides we have made on several fronts.

    “I also thanked him and the Bill Gates Foundation for their successful work in the fight against polio and other diseases”.

    Dr Bernard Okoe-Boye, a Deputy Minister of Health, also joined the zoom meeting.

    Source: GNA

  • Bill Gates says most coronavirus tests are a ‘complete waste’ because the results come back too slow

    ShareBill Gates, the former CEO and founder of Microsoft, believes Coronavirus tests are a ‘complete waste.’

    According to the Billionaire, the amount of time it takes for test results to come back means they don’t achieve the purpose for which they were carried out, which is a timely isolation of the patient before spread of the disease begins.

    According to Bill Gates, whose foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to treatment and vaccine research for Covid-19, people need to get results back sooner so that they’re able to “change their behavior so they’re not infecting other people.”

    “The simplest thing, which has to do with such insanity, is you should not reimburse somebody for getting a test that it takes more than 48 hours to get the result back,” Gates said in an interview with CNBC.

    “That test is a complete waste. And to all these numbers about how much we test, the majority is just complete waste,” he added, calling it “insane” to have to pay for test results that could take more than three days and up to a full week.

    Adm. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health at the US Department of Health and Human Services, agrees with Bill Gates that testing needs to be improved.

    Giroir speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” said;

    “I started out by saying that we are never going to be happy with testing until we get turnaround times within 24 hours, and I would be happy with point-of-care testing everywhere. We are not there yet. We are doing everything we can to do that,”

    Source: cnbc.com

  • Coronavirus: Bill Gates condemns Donald Trump for stopping US payments to World Health Organisation

    Bill Gates has said Donald Trump’s decision to stop US funding of the World Health Organisation “during a world health crisis” is as “dangerous as it sounds”.

    The Microsoft founder tweeted:”Their work is slowing the spread of COVID-19 and if that work is stopped no other organization can replace them. The world needs @WHO now more than ever.”

    Donald Trump had said that the global health body had “failed in its basic duty and it must be held accountable” for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

    He blamed the group for promoting China’s “disinformation” about the virus in the days following the initial outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

    The virus – which has infected almost two million people worldwide – could have been contained at its source if the WHO had been better at investigating the initial reports that came from China, Mr Trump said.

    But he added that the US will continue to engage with the organisation to pursue what he described as meaningful reforms.

    The US is one of the World Health Organisation’s biggest financial backers. In February, Mr Trump’s administration had called for America’s contribution to be slashed from $122.6m (£99.5m) to $57.9m (£47m).

    The WHO has praised China for its transparency on the pandemic, despite the fact there is reason to believe the country’s official tally does not reflect the true number of fatalities.

    Beijing is another major financial contributor to the UN health agency, prompting critics to claim that the WHO lacks the independence needed to properly fulfil its role.

    Mr Trump’s move comes amid growing criticism of his own handling of the COVID-19 crisis.

    Despite his own claims of success, it has emerged that he was warned about the virus and its potential for destruction as early as January.

    Among those warnings was one from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on 8 January, when the pandemic was seen as just a cluster of pneumonia.

    On 21 January, the US saw its first case – a man in his 30s – but a day later, Mr Trump said: “It’s going to be fine”.

    As late as the middle of March, he was comparing COVID-19 to flu, an illness which he said saw “nothing shut down, life and the economy go on”.

    Mr Trump’s news conferences have focused on promoting hydroxychloroquine, a drug that has not been scientifically proven to treat the virus, along with dodging blame and attacking reporters and rival politicians.

    Mr Trump used a media briefing on Monday to direct his anger at fellow politicians and the media, in what one television network described as “the biggest meltdown from a US president” they’d ever seen.

    The president had also claimed he – not state governors – had total authority over when states should end their lockdowns.

    Among those angered by that assertion was New York’s governor Andrew Cuomo, who said: “His proclamation is that he would be king, that’s what a king is. A king has total authority. That statement cannot stand.”

    But on Tuesday, Mr Trump stepped back from his previous stance, saying he would talk to governors and states would decide when and how to end lockdowns.

    Last month, Mr Gates and his wife Melinda’s foundation, which funds fights against diseases like malaria and polio, sent 15,000 medicinal molecules to a leading laboratory in Belgium to be tested as a potential cure for coronavirus.

    Source: Sharon Marris| sky.com