Balanced News Blog

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will donate $258 million to research on malaria, which kills 2,000 African children each day, Mr. Gates announced yesterday.

Thailand has confirmed another human case of bird flu, as regional experts met in Australia to discuss the virus.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told Pakistan’s president there were indications of a foreign link to the bombings that struck two New Delhi markets, and he reminded the Pakistani leader of his country’s promise to fight terrorism, an official said.

Swiss pharmaceutical maker Novartis AG said Monday it agreed to buy the 58 percent of Chiron Corp. that it does not already own for $5.1 billion, improving a previous offer that the embattled biotechnology company had rejected.

Mobile phone group O2 has agreed a takeover offer from Spanish telecom company Telefonica. Telefonica is to pay £17.7bn ($31.6bn) for the firm in order to get a foothold in two of Europe’s largest mobile phone markets – the UK and Germany.

A Japanese power company, Kansai Electric, achieved a rate of 1 Terabit per second. They used a 2 Hour movie to test speeds, coming in at ½ a second to trasmit the whole file.

Investigations are continuing into what caused a massive fire that destroyed a leading computer science research unit at the University of Southampton.

Radical Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, who was jailed over the 2002 Bali attacks, could have his sentence cut to mark a major Muslim festival.

President Bush, stung by the rejection of his first choice, nominated conservative judge Samuel Alito to replace moderate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in a bid to reshape the Supreme Court and mollify his political base.