the Web Editors

EDITOR'S NOTE: Melinda Gates talks to the Guardian (UK) newspaper about reconciling her Catholic faith  — the wife of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates says she attends mass regularly — with her work promoting family planning. Gates was in London this week to discuss promoting contraception in the developing world with UK government representatives. The Gates Foundation hopes to encourage donor pledges that will enable 120 million women to have access to contraceptives by 2020.

Every day, millions of children go hungry. But it doesn't have to be that way.

• Hunger is the world's No. 1 health risk, causing more deaths annually worldwide than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.
  (Source: World Food Program)
• One in seven people in the world will go to bed hungry tonite.
  (Source: World Food Program)
• There are more hungry people in the world (925 million) than the combined population of the United States, Canada and the European Union (841 million)
  (Source: World Food Program)

Find out about the causes of hunger — and the solutions — in a new video from World Vision Australia (with music by Gotye) inside the blog...

Bill Nye the Science Guy may not be a real scientist, but he tells CNN's news anchor that he knows how to read a chart, and when you look at the data on climate change, journalistic objectivity shouldn't try to obscure the facts. Watch Nye respond to climate change skeptics and discuss the conditions that led to the Colorado wildfires. [via CNN]

Last month, the U.S. Senate held its first hearing ever on the issue of solitary confinement in prisons. To draw attention to the issue, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture urged Americans to fast for 23 hours for one day, symbolizing the 23 hours a day prisoners spend in solitary confinement each day.

"Christian scriptures and the scriptures of all religions say much about the way we are to treat other human beings, especially the most vulnerable," said the Rev. Richard Killmer, executive director of NRCAT. "And all religious traditions teach that it is important to honor and respect the dignity and worth that God has endowed in each human being. When we put people into solitary confinement cells, which we know are going to cause harm, then we have deeply violated that requirement from God to honor and respect each human being."