Topic: South America

How a Handful of Countries Control the Earth's Most Precious Materials

While the global market for ever more sophisticated tech gadgets grows, the metals and minerals that make them go are controlled by a handful of countries.READ»

Innovation Agents: Jessica Mayberry, Founder of Video Volunteers

Imagine giving a village full of people who have never seen a film, barely ever watched television, much less have access to a computer, a way to challenge traditional news coverage. To millions of impoverished people in India, Jessica Mayberry offers a way to do just that, by creating their own stories through Video Volunteers.READ»

Here Come the Diarrhea-Fighting Transgenic Goats!

Medical inspiration often comes from strange places. A plan from researchers to fight diarrhea with milk from transgenic goats is no exception.READ»

Tokyo Eco-Startup Fullcircle Innovations Is Announced as a Finalist in Red Herring 100 Asia Prize

Solving climate change is a big challenge that will require cooperation and innovation on a global scale. Tokyo startup Fullcircle Innovations is taking on this challenge with its offerings at GreenITers.com and EcoAppsFree.com.READ»

PATH Bringing Super-Fortified Rice to Africa

When we last covered PATH, the nonprofit had licensed its rice fortification technology to producers in Brazil, Columbia, and India. Now PATH is bringing Ultra Rice--a rice-shaped extruded rice grain filled with vitamins and minerals--to Burundi.READ»

Global Heritage Fund Invests in Archaeologists to Save the World's Most Endangered Sites

Jeff Morgan took an unlikely route from Silicon Valley to Haiti and Cambodia--but he brought his startup expertise and venture capitalist training with him. READ»

Have Your Chocolate and Fund It Too: A New Vision for Microloans

The Hoop Fund, a new kind of online marketplace founded by a former Coke executive, lets consumers make loans to fair trade businesses worldwide, in $25 increments -- and also buy the products from the companies they're supporting.READ»

UN Report: Cellphones a Ticket Out of Poverty for the World's Poor

Cellphones aren't all fun and games for the world's poor. For many, they make the difference between bringing home the bacon--or not.READ»

Your Average Pharmacy Zinc Product to the Rescue for Developing World Kids

Think zinc is just a health food store supplement? Think again. UNICEF and the International Zinc Association are rolling out a zinc campaign to help prevent more than 800,000 deaths.READ»

Chilean Miner Rescue Shows Significant Events Can Aid Personal Branding

All of the miners will soon be exposed to a tsunami of media exposure and each of them will have to decide how they want to be viewed by people. Everything they say and do will reveal who they are, at least in the public eye.READ»

Blake Mycoskie, Founder and Chief Shoe Giver of TOMS Shoes

After seeing countless shoeless impoverished children in Argentina, Blake Mycoskie started TOMS Shoes in 2006 with a simple idea: If you buy one pair of shoes, TOMS gives one pair of shoes to someone who needs them.READ»

Why Brazil Is Right to Auction Off the Amazon Rainforest

It sounds like a nightmarishly bad idea: Brazil is auctioning off big pieces of the Amazon to timber companies. But it's a move that could ultimately save the Amazon from destruction.READ»

You Don't Get to 500 Million Amigos ... At This Rate

Latin American businesses are less active on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites than their global counterparts. Why?READ»

Elizabeth Scharpf's Banana-Based Pads Win the Curry Stone Design Prize

The founder of Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE) was recently named winner of the prize and is pioneering a new era of home-brewed NGOs.READ»

London Film Festival

Most filmmakers toil in obscurity for years before getting the chance to premiere at a world-class event like the London Film Festival. Not so for the winner of Unilever's Consumer Creative Challenge, a contest in which amateur ...READ»

How Anna Elliot's Bamyan Media Used Reality TV to Help Entrepreneurs in Afghanistan

Anna Elliot is no fan of mainstream reality TV. And her show, Dream and Achieve, which used the popular entertainment genre as a vehicle for social change, was no Jersey Shore. For the series that aired across 13 weeks in ...READ»

Follow the Buffalo

In the global economic downturn that everyone seems to be saying is "over" (who am I to judge?) the travel sector was hit pretty hard.READ»

Unknown Country Buys All-Seeing Surveillance Plane

The Saab Group, a relative of the car company, sells its $670 million airborne surveillance system. But who's the mystery buyer?READ»

Ad Industry Attempts to Self-Regulate Behavioral Advertising

On Monday, the ad industry launched a self-regulatory program to make behavioral advertising more transparent by including an icon next to ads that track online behavior.READ»

Meet Five Amazing Millennials Who Have Already Changed the World

From the stage to Kenya’s slums, the 2010 Do Something award winners are changing our world.READ»

• Do Something: In Defense of Millennials

Humanitarian Design or Neocolonialism?

Fast Company's Bruce Nussbaum raised some controversial questions in a trio of posts -- and readers had a lot to say. We sample the debate.READ»

• Is Humanitarian Design the New Imperialism?
• Do-gooder Design and Imperialism, Round 3: Nussbaum Responds
• Nussbaum: Should Humanitarians Press On, If Locals Resist?

Now: October 2010

October MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT SUN         01 02 03 04 05 0 ...READ»

• Read: How Did I Get Here?
• Protect: Convention on Biological Diversity
• Veg Out: 100th Anniversary of the Cathode-Ray Tube

Going, Going, Gone - Online Auction Sites Catching Fire Worldwide

eBay has long been the leader in online auctions, but the venerable giant is facing rising competition in emerging economies from indigenous companies on a mission.READ»

Interested in Africa's Innovation Scene? Catch the Entrepreneurial Safari This December

Forget Asia--here's your chance to get the scoop on Africa.READ»

Infographic of the Day: Even Poor Countries Can Excel in Education

A remarkable series of graphs, commissioned by the Gates Foundation.READ»