Gwyneth Paltrow has teamed up with Unicef to make a new short film that dramatizes a new poem from Simon Armitage. Paltrow narrates the film that deals with HIV and a mother and daughter’s experience with it.

The film is a part of Unicef’s Born Free From HIV Campaign. They want to inform people that “almost every minute of every day, a baby is born with HIV, passed on by their mother during pregnancy, labour or delivery. This is because only one in five mothers with HIV receive the right medicine and care to prevent passing on the virus to their babies. Without treatment, most of these children will not live to see their second birthday.”

to watch the video

to sign a petition that will be sent to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, asking him to secure funding to help babies be born free of HIV when he attends the G8 Finance Ministers’ meeting in 2008.

to learn more about the gift campaign.

Yesterday the Senate ensured that our government would be able to operate through September 2008 and that troops in Iraq would get more money, but not to come home. The bill approved 556 billion dollars for the budget and 70 of that is to be spent on Iraq. Democrats were working to get a withdrawal clause attached to the 70 billion but failed and the bill, with no plans to leave Iraq, passed by a vote of 76-17.

The House of Representatives could vote as early as Wednesday to approve the Iraq war funds. When the House passed its version of the budget bill on Monday, it specifically prohibited any new money for Iraq.

But with the Democratic-controlled Congress hurrying to recess for three weeks and Republican Bush promising to veto any budget bill that does not have money for the Iraq war, the House is expected to relent.” We need to pass this spending bill, with troop funds, without any strings and without any further delay,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said.The Senate’s assistant Democratic leader, Dick Durbin of Illinois, who opposes unconditional Iraq funding, said the latest batch of money could keep the wars running through May or June.If Congress does provide the $70 billion, it would boost the overall cost of the two wars to about $670 billion so far. [The Financial Times]

Now seems like the appropriate time to post the trailer to Charles Ferguson’s documentary about the Bush administration’s involvement in Iraq, No End in Sight: