MDG

The deal that helped one of the poorest nations raise $850 million and bond investors lock in rates three times higher than U.S. Treasuries is also spurring concern some of the money isn’t going where the buyers -- and one of the underwriters -- expected.

OpenCongress brings together official, congressional data and allows anyone to track how a bill becomes a law, the voting records of elected officials and more. Major features of OpenCongress include:

Guinea: It is no easy task to transform a country that is corrupt from top to bottom. During President Condé’s first months in office, he performed a kind of triage.

With the assistance of Revenue Watch—an organization, backed by Soros, that encourages transparency in extractive industries—Condé established a committee to inspect existing mining contracts and determine if any of them were problematic.

Conde Nast, the worldwide publisher of fashion, culture, food and home magazines, illegally employs interns in violation of federal and state labor laws, Outten & Golden LLP alleged today in New York federal court.

The class action complaint, filed on behalf of two former interns who worked at W Magazine and The New Yorker, accuses Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc., which does business as CondeNast Publications, of failing to pay interns proper wages for the work they perform in violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the New York Labor Law (NYLL).

Nearly 1 billion people have been taken out of extreme poverty in 20 years. The world should aim to do the same again

In his inaugural address in 1949 Harry Truman said that “more than half the people in the world are living in conditions approaching misery. For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve the suffering of those people.” It has taken much longer than Truman hoped, but the world has lately been making extraordinary progress in lifting people out of extreme poverty.

Here’s a radical idea: Instead of providing services or training to the world’s poorest, how about giving them cash instead?

GiveDirectly, a U.S.-based nonprofit operating in Kenya, is doing just that, and it’s won the support of the likes ofFacebook cofounder Chris Hughes andGoogle . Last Thursday night in San Francisco, Hughes and a posse of venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs including General Catalyst partner Hemant Taneja and Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, hosted about 150 people for wine, conversation and an introduction toGiveDirectly.

Guest blogger Emma Collins is editor of the Top MBA Programs of 2012 from MBAOnline.com, here she talks about some of the most innovative ways in which education technology entrepreneurs are bettering the world. Value News Network has talked a lot about how the Internet is changing education, and this article is a continuation of many of those conversations.
 

Hundreds of former Tamil Tigers, the defeated Sri Lankan rebel army, are moving into a peaceful trade, swapping a history of bombs and guns for bras and football shirts.

John Maynard Keynes’s generation of economists assumed that as people became more efficient at satisfying their wants, they would, and should as rational agents, work less and enjoy life more. Yet power relationships and the insatiability of human wants are such that we have maintained an ethic of acquisitiveness.

Academics, donors and some aid agencies have begun measuring what works. Development is becoming a science

I knew I was going to love this job here,” says Anthony Lake, Unicef’s executive director, pointing at his heart beneath his suit jacket. “But,” he points to his head, “it is fascinating here too. There are no boring bits.”