Bill Gates releases mosquitoes on crowd

Reuters

ITCHY AND SCRATCHY: Microsoft founder Bill Gates released a swarm of mosquitoes into the audience of a technology and design conference, telling the crowd 'not only poor should experience this'.

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Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has released a swarm of mosquitoes into an audience at a technology and design conference in California. 

High profile members of online networking service Twitter reported the incident on Wednesday (US time), which reportedly occurred during Gates's talk on malaria eradication, a cause the entrepreneur is pushing through his philanthropic foundation.

"Bill Gates just released mosquitos into the audience at TED and said 'Not only poor people should experience this'," Facebook manager Dave Morin wrote on Twitter.

Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar and Twitter chief executive Ev Williams confirmed that Gates released the insects on their Twitter accounts.

The official TED Conference Twitter profile confirmed that the mosquitoes were real.

"No they were not malarial. An amazing TED moment." TED tweeted.

TED (technology, entertainment and design) is an annual conference that attracts some of the world's leading thinkers. Past speakers include Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Nobel laureates James D. Watson and Murray Gell-Mann.

This year's conference is being held in Long Beach, California.

Twitter is a micro-blogging service where people post short, text-only comments or updates on what they are doing.