THE BILLIONTH PC
Someone, somewhere created history in April by buying the billionth personal computer, says a computer research consultancy in San Jose, California. 鈥淚t鈥檚 taken the PC industry approximately 25 years to reach the billion mark,鈥� says Gartner Dataquest. The company predicts that the world鈥檚 two-billionth computer will be sold in 2008, but only if systems become cheap enough for customers to afford them in the huge untapped markets of China, Latin America and Eastern Europe.
RECYCLING TRASH
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The city of New York is to stop recycling glass and plastics, which will now be mixed in with ordinary trash and sent to landfill sites. Mayor Michael Bloomberg says most of the rubbish ends up in landfill sites anyway, and that the move will save the city $40 million a year, helping to cut a multibillion-dollar budget deficit. But critics say it threatens the city鈥檚 entire recycling programme, and could encourage other towns across the country to follow suit. Paper and metal recycling will continue.
AIDSMARCHES ON
The AIDS epidemic now outstrips even the worst-case scenarios predicted by epidemiologists, according to a UN report published this week. Previously, scientists believed HIV infections would reach a natural limit in parts of Africa, but in some countries an unprecedented 39 per cent of the population is infected. UN officials now say that if there is a limit on HIV鈥檚 ability to spread, they don鈥檛 know what it is. Of the 40 million people infected with HIV worldwide, 28.5 million are in sub-Saharan Africa.