Sanitation - the Microsoft Toilet is coming: Bill Gates aims to save $233 billion by reinventing the toilet - by Jason Gale

Bill Gates thinks toilets are a serious business, and he’s betting big that a reinvention of this most essential of conveniences can save a half million lives and deliver $200 billion-plus in savings.

The billionaire philanthropist, whose Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation spent $200 million over seven years funding sanitation research, showcased some 20 novel toilet and sludge-processing designs that eliminate harmful pathogens and convert bodily waste into clean water and fertilizer.

“The technologies you’ll see here are the most significant advances in sanitation in nearly 200 years,” Gates, 63, told the Reinvented Toilet Expo in Beijing on Tuesday.

Read more: Bill Gates aims to save $233 billion by reinventing the toilet

The Have and Have's not: Bill Gates could become world’s first trillionaire

Microsoft founder Bill Gates could become the first dollar trillionaire in 25 years, according to Oxfam, an international network of organizations collectively working to tackle global poverty.

Given the exponential growth of his wealth Gates would have earned his first $1 trillion by the time he is 86 in 2042.

When Bill Gates left Microsoft in 2006, his was worth $50 billion. In the next decade his wealth has increased to $75 billion, "despite his commendable attempts to give it away through his Foundation," the report said, as quoted by CNBC.


Read more: Bill Gates could become world’s first trillionaire — RT Business

Microsoft: Bill Gates is once again the richest person in the world - by Shawn Knight

Bill Gates is once again the richest man in the world thanks to the recent success of the company he helped create. The 57-year-old Microsoft co-founder surpassed Mexican investor Carlos Slim yesterday to reclaim the title according to the Blooomberg Billionaires Index as stock value in Microsoft hit a five-year high twice this week.

Microsoft is riding a wave of success that has seen shares climb 28 percent so far this year. Gates owns a substantial amount of stock in Microsoft which as of yesterday, put his net worth at $72.7 billion – an increase of 15 percent year to date. Keep in mind that Gates has already donated some $28 billion of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a charity that he runs with fellow billionaire Warren Buffett.

Interestingly enough, however, less than 25 percent of his total fortune is held in shares of Microsoft. As of late April, the NASQAD revealed Gates held more than 400 million shares in the company.

It’s the first time Gates has been the wealthiest man on the planet since 2007 when he lost the title to Slim. The 73-year-old investor has watched share value in America Movil – the largest wireless provider in the Americas - slide 14 percent thus far this year. Mexico’s Congress recently passed a law designed to regulate the telecom industry which could force Slim to either break up the company or charge lower rates for service.

Read more: Bill Gates is once again the richest person in the world - TechSpot

To Keep Wilders happy Dutch foreign aid could be slashed by one billion euros - will Kathleen Ferrier and Ad Koppejan of the CDA go along with this?

Kathleen Ferrier 

It seems that in order to get Geert Wilders "back on board" during the this week's Rutte Government coalition austerity meetings in the Hague, the PM Mark agreed to Wilders demand to slash the Dutch development aid budget by one billion euros, as one of the items to be cut, to bring the Netherlands budget deficit in-line within EU limits.

But when and if the new budget proposals eventually come before the Dutch Parliament for a vote, Kathleen Ferrier and Ad Koppejan, two CDA parliamentary members who have always been critical of their party's cooperation with Geert Wilders PVV,  could very well hold the key to PM Rutte's survival.

Ad Koppejan

Each year, the Netherlands spends 4.6 billion euros on development aid. The one-billion euro cutback amounts to more than 20 percent of the total budget, reducing the Dutch contribution to less than 0.6 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. The United Nations norm is 0.7 percent

Even US billionaire Bill Gates tried to influence the talks on the development cooperation budget. He on his own initiative to express his concern and said he feared that if the Dutch cut the aid budget to developing countries other countries will follow.

To ensure the Dutch budget deficit remains under the European norm of 3 percent, the Dutch government would need to cut another 9.6 billion euros on top of their earlier proposed 18 billion euros.

All by all this means that there is little negotiation flexibility for Dutch PM Mark Rutte. Both Geert Wilder's PVV and the Christian Democrats of Maxime Verhagen could at any time torpedo the coalition based on a variety of issues, including dissident opposition within their own parties.