The donation comes in the form of a promissory note, not as cash, which the Gates Foundation said “gives the Global Fund the flexibility and authority to distribute funds efficiently based on immediate needs.”

“By supporting the Global Fund, we can help to change the fortunes of the poorest countries in the world,” Gates said in a statement. “I can’t think of more important work.”

At a news conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Gates said the funds could be used immediately to “saves lives, whether it is bed nets (to protect against mosquitoes carrying malaria) or TB (tuberculosis) treatment, those are two diseases that don’t get perhaps the visibility of the work done in HIV but they are every bit as important.”
The investment comes on top of $650 million the Gates Foundation has already contributed since the Global Fund was launched 10 years ago.

The fund has been under scrutiny after controversy over the possible misuse of funds. Dr. Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the fund, said Tuesday he would resign in March after leading the organization for five years. Kazatchkine cited the fund’s decision to appoint a general manager as part of its “ambitions transformation plan” as the reason for his departure.

Speaking to journalists with Simon Bland, the Global Fund’s chair, Gates downplayed the controversy.
The way it had been written about was “pretty disappointing,” he said. “If you are going to do health programs in Africa, you are going to have some percentage that is misused.”

“The interest is saving lives,” Gates said, adding there were “all sorts of things that are going on that far overwhelm any amount of misdirection or whatever it was.”

Maybe his passing out was related to him being overly intoxicated. That’s what some are thinking because sources say he appeared to very drunk during his award acceptance speech.

Morgan was attending the Creative Coalition Spotlight Awards in Park City where he was being honored. The controversial funnyman was escorted out of the building soon after his speech — and fell unconscious outside the building.

Law enforcement sources tell TMZ an ambulance was then dispatched to Morgan’s location where he was picked up and rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment.

Developing …

The entrepreneur already has a longstanding partnership with vodka brand Ciroc, and he is now hoping to team with a “true tequila artiste” to extend his interests.

“There isn’t one particular tequila that I love and I’ve been spending a lot of time in Mexico. So in the next year, you will probably see me going toe to toe with John Paul (Jones DeJoria), who owns (spirit company) Patron,” he tells E! Online. “I’ll be challenging him to who makes the best, smoothest and most authentic tequila in the world.”

This color view of a mineral vein called "Homestake" comes from the panoramic camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

The Opportunity rover, which landed on Mars nearly eight years ago, has discovered a thin, bright mineral vein along the rim of a huge crater called Endeavour. This mineral is almost certainly gypsum that was deposited by liquid water billions of years ago, researchers said.

“This is the single most powerful piece of evidence for liquid water at Mars that has been discovered by the Opportunity rover,” Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Opportunity’s principal investigator, told reporters here today during the 2011 winter meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Exploring Endeavour Crater

The golf-cart-size Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, landed on Mars in January 2004 to search for signs of past water activity on the Red Planet.

The two rovers’ prime missions were slated to last just three months, but both far outlived their warranties. NASA declared Spirit dead just this year, and Opportunity is still going strong.

After a three-year trek, Opportunity reached the 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer) Endeavour Crater this past August. While poking around Endeavour’s rim recently, it found the mineral vein, which is about 20 inches (51 centimeters) long and about the width of a human thumb.

After analyzing the vein with Opportunity’s cameras and X-ray spectrometer last month, researchers concluded that it is gypsum, a hydrated calcium sulfate that on Earth is used to make drywall and plaster of Paris. The vein likely formed right where Opportunity found it, researchers said.

“There was a fracture in the rock, water flowed through it, gypsum was precipitated from the water. End of story,” Squyres said. “There’s no ambiguity about this, and this is what makes it so cool.”

Strong evidence

Both Spirit and Opportunity have found other good evidence of water activity on ancient Mars, including signs of hydrothermal systems. But the new discovery at Endeavour Crater is particularly convincing and compelling, researchers said.

“Here, both the chemistry, mineralogy, and the morphology just scream water,” Squyres said. “This is more solid than anything else that we’ve seen in the whole mission.”

The gypsum vein is also intriguing for scientists interested in whether or not Mars was ever capable of supporting life. Some of the ancient wet environments Spirit and Opportunity have found were likely very acidic. But gypsum formation is consistent with (though not dependent on) a more neutral and therefore benign pH, researchers said.

There’s no water at Endeavour today, however. It’s bone-dry, like the rest of Mars appears to be.

Opportunity keeps rolling

Opportunity is showing a few signs of its advanced age, such as an arthritic shoulder joint in its robotic arm. But the robot just keeps chugging along, and should continue to do so into the future.

“She’s in excellent health,” said Bruce Banerdt, rover project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “This is far from being a rickety old rover.”
Opportunity should keep roving until next month, when it will position itself in a favorable spot to wait out the frigid Martian winter. The robot won’t shut down during this time, researchers said; it will remain awake, studying the rocks around it and perhaps even moving a few feet now and then.

If all goes well, the rover should put its traveling shoes back on next summer sometime, Banerdt told SPACE.com. The team isn’t sure how far Opportunity can go or how long it will last on Mars, but they’re happy they can still go along for the ride.

“Every day is like a gift,” Squyres told SPACE.com.

This artist's conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. It is the first planet that NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed to orbit in a star's "habitable zone" -- the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist.

Called Kepler-22b, the planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth and about 600 light-years away. And it orbits in the “habitable zone,” the region of space just far enough from a star that liquid water could exist on the planet’s surface — a discovery could have profound implications in the quest for alien life, said Alan Boss, an astrophysicist with Carnegie Melon University.

“This discovery supports the growing belief that we live in a universe crowded with life,” Boss said. “Kepler is on the verge of determining the actual abundance of habitable, Earth-like planets in our galaxy.”

The host star lies about 600 light-years away from us (1 light year is about 6 trillion miles) toward the constellations of Lyra and Cygnus, the researchers said, and is about 25 percent less luminous than the Sun. Kepler-22b orbits the star every 290 days, as compared with 365 days for the Earth, at a distance about 15 percent closer to its star than the Earth from the Sun — close enough to suggest a pleasing, balmy temperature on the surface.

Such a temperature means liquid water could exist on the surface of the planet, something necessary for life as we know it — and this new planet might well be not only habitable but perhaps even inhabited.

“This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth’s twin,” said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Kepler’s results continue to demonstrate the importance of NASA’s science missions, which aim to answer some of the biggest questions about our place in the universe.”

Interestingly, Kepler-22b was not photograph so much as implied. The discovery team, led by William Borucki of the NASA Ames Research Center, pored over photometric data from the NASA Kepler space telescope. They watched for tiny dimmings of star light — dimmings that can only be measured by a highly specialized space telescope like Kepler — which indicate that an Earth-size planet is transiting between us and a star.

Kepler requires at least three transits to verify a signal as a planet.

“Fortune smiled upon us with the detection of this planet,” explained William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., who led the team that discovered Kepler-22b.”
Of the 54 habitable zone planet candidates reported in February 2011, Kepler-22b is the first to be confirmed.
The milestone will be published in an upcoming article in The Astrophysical

TMZ reports that the ’90s rapper, born Dwight Arrington Myers, was rushed to an L.A. hospital around noon on Tuesday, where he was later pronounced dead.

When respondents arrived at his Beverly Hills home earlier in the day, he was reportedly conscious and speaking. There were no obvious signs of foul pay, but police are investigating the death.

Heavy D most recently performed at the BET Hip-Hop Awards and Michael Jackson tribute concert in October.

Frazier was 67.

“We The Family of … Smokin’ Joe Frazier, regret to inform you of his passing,” the statement said. “He transitioned from this life as ‘One of God’s Men,’ on the eve of November 7, 2011 at his home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”

He fought fellow boxing legend Muhammad Ali three times, including the famous “Thrilla in Manila” fight in 1975.

“He’s a true gentleman,” personal and business manager Leslie Wolff said Saturday when confirming Frazier’s illness. “Along with Muhammad Ali, (he is) one of the two most recognizable athletes in the world.”

Fans and well-wishers were encouraged to post their thoughts and prayers on a Facebook page at joefrazierscorner.com.

“Thank you for being such a class act,” read a Facebook post written before the champ’s death. “I grew up watching boxing with my dad and you were at the top of our list of exceptional fighters who were also great people.”

Frazier, nicknamed “Smokin’ Joe,” used his devastating left hook with impunity during his professional career, retiring in 1976 with a 32-4-1 record and staging one last comeback fight in 1981.

The son of a South Carolina sharecropper, Frazier boxed during the glory days of the heavyweight division, going up against greats George Foreman, Oscar Bonavena, Joe Bugner and Jimmy Ellis. He made his name by winning a gold medal for the United States at the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo.
But it was his three much-hyped fights against Ali that helped seal his legend.

Frazier bested Ali at 1971′s “Fight of the Century” at Madison Square Garden. In the 15th round, Frazier landed perhaps the most famous left hook in history, catching Ali on the jaw and dropping the former champ for a four-count, according to Frazier’s bio at the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Frazier left the ring as the undisputed champ and handed Ali his first professional loss.

Ali won a 12-round decision in a January 1974 rematch, setting the stage for the classic “Thrilla in Manila” just outside the Philippine capital in 1975.

Ali took the early rounds, but Frazier rebounded before losing the last five rounds. By the end of the 14th, Frazier’s eyes were nearly swollen shut, and his corner stopped the bout, according to the biography.

Later, Ali said, “It was the closest I’ve come to death.”

Frazier was a two-time heavyweight champion for nearly three years until he lost in January 1973 to George Foreman.

He lived in Philadelphia, where he operated a boxing gym for many years.

“I don’t mind working with the kids,” Frazier told CNN’s Don Lemon in 2009. “The kids is tomorrow. And if we don’t do what we’re supposed to do for them now, how are you going (to)expect them to carry on?”

Asked whether he was similar to Rocky Balboa, the title character in the “Rocky” series, Frazier replied, “Sure. I worked at the slaughterhouse. I’m the guy that ran in the streets of Philadelphia.”

A judge issued a warrant for Terrell Owens' arrest after the wide receiver failed to appear at a child support hearing.

The free-agent wide receiver tried to reschedule the October 24 hearing in order to attend an NFL workout to help secure a contract, his spokeswoman said Saturday night.

He is “deeply upset that anyone would misconstrue his nonappearance in court,” Diana Bianchini said.

At the time, Owens did not have representation, but his new attorneys are working to resolve the “no show” court date, she said.

Owens has been nursing a knee injury after surgery, and currently has no income, according to the spokeswoman.

He supports his four children based on his 2007 income of $11 million to $12 million when he was playing for the Dallas Cowboys, which has not been modified to reflect his current situation, she said.

“In addition to this, his attorneys have just filed a lawsuit on his behalf for $2 million in a case where advisers who had access to his accounts were seriously mishandling fund,” she said.
The player is in “serious financial shape” but is working to resolve the issue, according to the spokeswoman.

The wide receiver has played for the San Francisco 49ers, Philadelphia Eagles, Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals.

The troubled actress waived her rights at her probation violation hearing at the Los Angeles Superior Cour Airport Branch and admitted the violation.

Judge Stephanie Sautner ordered the actress so surrender to the jail by November 9.

She was not immediately put behind bars because the judge decided to allow her time to complete her nude photo shoot for Playboy, according to TMZ.

Earlier in the day, the 23-year-old singer tweeted a picture of her arm with tubes coming out, captioned “Sorry Malmo!!!”

A representative for Live Nation said that RiRi is “not in condition to conduct the concert.”

The night before, Rihanna performed in Oslo and tweeted her excitement after the show.

“OSLO!!! U completely Rocked my world tonight!!! U make me feel so welcome, like I’m right at home here with u guys!!! #LOUDtour” she wrote.

Get well soon, Rihanna!