Today’s good news:

The number of deaths worldwide among children under 5 dropped to a record low of 9.7 million in 2006, reflecting progress in areas such as malaria prevention, childhood immunizations and breastfeeding rates, global health officials said yesterday. …
Last year, there were 72 deaths of children under 5 for every 1,000 live births, compared with 93 deaths per 1,000 births in 1990 and 184 deaths per 1,000 births in 1960. Over the decades, that is a decline of more than 60 percent, UNICEF officials said. (In the United States, the under-5 mortality rate is about eight deaths per 1,000 live births.)