This endowment is managed by Bill Gates Investments, which handles Gates’ personal fortune. ![]() It awards grants mainly in support of global health initiatives, for efforts to improve public education in the United States, and for social welfare programs in the Pacific Northwest. Like most philanthropies, the Gates Foundation gives away at least 5% of its worth every year, to avoid paying most taxes. Not counting tens of billions of dollars more that Gates himself has promised, the total is higher than the gross domestic products of 70% of the world’s nations. Buffett, the world’s second-richest man after Bill Gates, pledged to add about $31 billion in installments from his personal fortune. Investing for profitAT the end of 2005, the Gates Foundation endowment stood at $35 billion, making it the largest in the world. The bright, sooty gas flares - which contain toxic byproducts such as benzene, mercury and chromium - lower immunity, Enyidah said, and make children such as Justice Eta more susceptible to polio and measles - the diseases that the Gates Foundation has helped to inoculate him against. and Total of France - the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. But authorities expect the flares to burn for years beyond the deadline. The gases would be injected back underground, or trucked and piped out for sale. Under pressure from activists, however, Nigeria’s high court set a deadline to end flaring by May 2007. The oil plants in the region surrounding Ebocha find it cheaper to burn nearly 1 billion cubic feet of gas each day and contribute to global warming than to sell it. “We’re all smokers here,” Okey said, “but not with cigarettes.”
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