Bill Gates now world's richest person

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Bill Gates now  world's richest person

Bill Gates became the world’s richest person today, the first time he has held the title since 2007. His fortune was valued at $72.7 billion at 4 p.m. in New York, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Gates, 57, was more than $550 million ahead of Carlos Slim, who has a $72.1 billion net worth. The co-founder of Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft Corp. has seen his fortune climb about $10 billion this year. The software maker’s shares hit a five-year high today, and have advanced 28 percent year-to-date.

Slim’s fortune has dropped more than $2 billion this year as Mexico’s Congress passed a bill to quash the market dominance of the 73-year-old billionaire’s America Movil SAB.

“When they’re talking about reform in a country that’s generally poor, and the guy shows up No. 1 on the list — not a good thing,” said Greg Lesko, managing director at New York-based Deltec Asset Management LLC, which oversees $750 million and has an “underweight” position in Slim’s flagship company. “He’s had a pretty good monopoly situation in Mexico, and the Mexican cellphone user has been paying more than he should. We applaud it for the country.”

Earlier this month, a group of kazoo-playing protesters confronted Slim when he appeared at an event at the New York Public Library, denouncing him for overcharging consumers to enrich himself. He denies the accusation.

The bill passed by Mexico’s Congress last month, which is backed by President Enrique Pena Nieto and is now before state legislatures, would allow regulators to break up phone companies with more than 50 percent of the market or force them to share their networks. America Movil has 70 percent of Mexico’s mobile-phone subscribers and 80 percent of the country’s landlines.

Gates’s fortune has also benefited from a rally in stock holdings that include the Canadian National Railway Co. and waste-collection company Republic Services Inc .

Most of Gates’s fortune is held through Cascade Investment LLC, a holding entity through which he owns stakes in more than a dozen publicly traded companies and several closely held operations, including Four Seasons hotels and Corbis Corp. Less than a quarter of Gates’s fortune is held in Microsoft. He’s donated $28 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Billionaire Bill Gates is Handing out $100,000 to anyone who creates safe and enjoyable sex balloons.

Philanthropist and Microsoft founder Bill Gates is offering start-up funds of $100,000 to anyone who can come up with the “next-generation condom,” according to Grand Challenges in Global Health.

The Round 11 of Grand Challenges Explorations initiative through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is aimed at improving the lives of the world’s poorest people – and a new, innovative condom could do just that.

The condom must be effective at lowering the chance of transmitting sexually transmitted diseases, and offer incentive for men and women to use it.

If chosen, the Foundation would continue to fund the condom up to $1 million. 

“To overcome persistent health and development problems, we need new, game-changing ideas,” Chris Wilson, director of Global Health Discovery & Translational Science at the Foundation, said in a press release.  “Inspiration can come from anywhere, and we are hopeful that this new round of Grand Challenges Explorations will uncover innovative approaches to improve lives around the world.”

According to the press release, the new condom will “preserve or enhance the pleasure so as to increase uptake and also promote its regular use.”

The proposals must have a “testable hypothesis . . . an associated plan for how the idea would be validated . . . and would yield . . .an unambiguous data plan in Phase I, to be considered for Phase II.”

Of course, the condom should also be easy to use and include ground-breaking design.

Bill Gates is running a reverse Shark Tank to try to get someone to develop a new type of condom that the people of the world will adopt as the new cool way to prevent unwanted pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Anyone who's able to create such a product will get a cool $100,000.

“We are looking for a Next Generation Condom that significantly preserves or enhances pleasure, in order to improve uptake and regular use. Additional concepts that might increase uptake include attributes that increase ease-of-use for male and female condoms, for example better packaging or designs that are easier to properly apply,” the Foundation says in an invitation on its Grand Challenges website.

“In addition, attributes that address and overcome cultural barriers are also desired.  Proposals must (i) have a testable hypothesis, (ii) include an associated plan for how the idea would be tested or validated, and (iii) yield interpretable and unambiguous data in Phase I, in order to be considered for Phase II funding.”

That second phase of funding could call for a $1,000,000 investment. They're looking for new materials, shapes, sizes, or science-based changes to help improve the condom's marketability.