Thirty years ago this month, the first cases of what was to become known as AIDS were diagnosed. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 25 million persons have died from AIDS. More than 60 million people have been infected, and in southern Africa alone there are 14 million children orphaned because of AIDS.

The number of people using Facebook during May fell in the US, UK, Canada, Norway and Russia, according to new data. The slowing growth in user numbers may indicate that Facebook has hit the limits of expansion in the countries where it was first successful – and perhaps even that some early adopters from those countries have stopped using it.

Britain and billionaire Bill Gates together pledged more than $2.3 billion (£1.4 billion) at an international donor conference on Monday to fund vaccination programmes to protect children in poor countries. The Prime Minister said the new funding arrangement will vaccinate more than 80 million children against diseases such as pneumonia and diarrhoea.

It’s official, at least as far as a Japanese government survey is concerned: Americans see China, rather than Japan, as their most important partner in Asia. The opinion leaders’ view offers even more emphatic confirmation that trade relations are increasingly carrying more weight than political or general ties with the U.S., usually cited as a reason for choosing Japan.

The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow” Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks. The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries.

FRAME’s mission is to promote cultural diplomacy within the context of museum exchanges of collections, exhibitions, professional staff, education and the web. Its projects have tremendous variety in scope and in subject matter.

Gates... spoke of NATO turning into a “two-tiered alliance” where the very few... take on the “hard power” combat assignments. Meanwhile, a majority limits itself to “soft power” work such as delivering humanitarian and development aid and, at most, to participating in peacekeeping missions.

Major events in the Middle East –including tensions between the U.S. and Israel, growing political unrest in many Arab countries, and the death of Osama bin Laden – have had little effect on public attitudes toward the region.