Athletes David Beckham, Andy Murray and Denise Lewis paid a visit to 10 Downing St. in London, England to remind Prime Minister Gordon Brown on behalf of Malaria No More of the UK’s promise to deliver 20 million mosquito nets to Africa by 2010 … and, apparently, the best way to do that was to show up lookin’ fine and shizz. Here is are a few photos from today’s photo op on Downing St. of the athletes and Prime Minister Brown and some info about their visit:

David Beckham and Andy Murray are usually more preoccupied with football and tennis nets, but on Monday they met UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London to discuss malaria nets. Along with former Olympic champion Denise Lewis, they went to Downing Street to remind Brown of Britain’s promise to deliver 20 million of the nets to Africa by 2010. The sports icons have been named as members of the leadership council of new campaign group Malaria No More UK and were helping to mark its launch. “For less than the cost of a football you can protect a family from dying,” said Beckham. “I urge the UK public to get behind the Malaria No More UK campaign to save a life and make malaria no more.” England and AC Milan star Beckham, who hopes to be in South Africa next year for the World Cup finals, posed for pictures outside No. 10 where the front door was draped in a malaria net. “For less than the cost of a football you can protect a family from dying,” he said. “I urge the UK public to get behind the Malaria No More UK campaign to save a life and make malaria no more.” World fourth-ranked tennis ace Murray said: “This is the first global charity I’ve been involved with in this capacity and it was an easy decision. “Malaria is completely preventable and stoppable but yet it still kills more children in Africa than any other single disease.” A year after making the pledge, Britain has delivered some 9.7 million nets to Africa, and a further 1.9 million are on order. Malaria No More UK wants to ensure the Government meets its promise in full as its share of a total of 100 million nets. Around 90 percent of the one million deaths from malaria each year are in Africa, where the disease kills a child every 30 seconds. A single net can protect a mother and child or brother and sister for up to five years. Malaria No More UK executive director Sarah Kline said: “Malaria No More UK is launching a mass campaign to help stop the suffering and death caused by malaria. Our first mission is to help reach the United Nations target of getting everyone at risk in Africa under a bed net by the end of 2010. We are delighted the prime minister has announced today that the UK is has already delivered 9.3 million nets of the 20 million pledged and look forward to seeing the rest delivered on time. We are calling on him to press other EU and G8 governments to deliver their share of the 100 million bed nets they promised last year.”

As you may recall, Ashton Kutcher donated 10,000 mosquito nets to Malaria No More in celebration of his Twitter War win against CNN to become the first user to attain 1 million followers. It sounds like Malaria No More is the charity du jour for the celebrity set … which is awesome because charities like Malaria No More don’t tend to get the same attention that some other charities do. It seems so simple but mosquito nets really do prevent the spread of the deadly disease. I’m sure the 20 million nets promised to Africa by the British government are much needed. Any sight of David Beckham is a welcome one but even more so when he uses his hotness for a good cause. If YOU would like to help Malaria No More, click HERE for more info on how to do so.

[Photo credit: Splash News; Source]

For the past few days, Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) has been in a “Twitter War” with CNN (@cnnbrk) to see which user of the micro-blogging service could reach the hallowed level of 1 million followers first … and last night, a winner was determined and Ashton Kutcher came out on top. From what I understand, Ashton managed to break the million follower mark ahead of CNN by just 12,000 to win the competition … and in celebration, Ashton is making a donation of 10,000 mosquito nets to the charity Malaria No More (tho, I gotta say, a donation of 1,000,000 nets would’ve been more apropos, don’t you think?). Here are some photos of Ashton and his wife Demi Moore (@mrskutcher) celebrating the win last night and some deets about the Twitter War:

Take that CNN. Ashton Kutcher, 31, has become the first Twitter user (@aplusk) to reach more than one million “followers.” For the past few days, he’d been locked in a race with CNN’s breaking news feed — (@cnnbrk), but just before midnight Thursday he became the first “Twitter millionaire.” Around 1:30 he tweeted, “Victory is ours!!!!!!!!” and posted a twitpic of the win. Kutcher says he’s donating 10,000 mosquito nets to the medical charity Malaria No More to celebrate, and the video-game publisher Electronic Arts says the millionth follower will become a character in “The Sims.” Plus, there’s the promised ding-dong-ditch of Ted Turner’s Atlanta home to look forward to! Stay tuned for his appearance on Oprah Friday, where he plans to teach Winfrey how to Twitter.

If anything, this really goes to show how quickly Twitter has crossed over from being a fun new online social networking site to THE most talked about new fad on the Internets. I only hope that all of this Twitter saturation doesn’t kill all the fun that goes along with the service. I had a great time posting tweets on my Twitter profile (@trentvanegas) last night from the Britney Spears concert at the Staples Center. It’s really fun sharing thoughts, observations and photos in real time with anyone interested anywhere in the world … especially among friends. Now Ashton Kutcher has 1,000,000 people following him to read/see whatever he has to put out there … here’s hoping he uses this new power for good rather than evil. Congrats Ashton, I’m not sure what this accomplishment wins you but I suppose the bragging rights of being the first Twitter user to have 1 million followers should be enough to keep you pretty happy for a while … at least until the next Internet fad comes along.

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