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Topic: United Nations

  
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Design Thursday: Gapminder's (and Google's) Revolutionary Design for Data

As anyone who's ever dipped into, say, the United Nations' statistical databases knows all too well, the presentation of data is in dire need of a design makeover. With its ant-sized type and near-infinite columns of bland-on-bland ...READ»

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Campaign for Collaboration

How do you reintroduce law and order to a society brutalized by war? A winner of our first-ever Fast 50 readers' challenge, Andrew Mackay ran a team that applied business principles to persuade different actors in Kosovo to work together to promote security and justice.READ»

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Copenhagen Coal in the Stocking?

As the post mortem of Copenhagen is written, was it a lump of coal in our 2009 holiday stocking? READ»

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Rotten Corps: Biggest Cos Cause $2.2 Trillion in Environmental Damage Each Year

We spend a lot of time heaping praise on companies that have greened their business practices. But the truth is that the world's corporations have a long way to go according to an unpublished UN report uncovered by the UK Guardian. ...READ»

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I Think ICANN

Does the internet belong to America, or to the world? That is the essential question being asked by the UN. They are seeking to have the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body that governs internet ...READ»

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MIT Crowdsources the Next Climate Agreement

Last year's Copenhagen climate conference failed to produce any sort of useful legislation, so they're tapping the crowd. So far? Four responses. READ»

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Climate Change and Security: the Missing Marketing Link?

Over dinner at Kronborg castle-- apparently the inspiration for Elsinore, the setting for Hamlet and scene for a special conference of the Copenhagen Climate Council during the UN Climate Summit--two comments struck me. Both of them ...READ»

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UN to Geoengineers: Don't Blot Out the Sun

Geoengineering, or deliberate manipulation of the Earth's climate, is a controversial topic--climate-altering schemes could slow global temperatures from rising, but nobody really knows what effects they will have in the long-run. Now we may never get to find out.READ»

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United Nations Asks: How Will You Celebrate Housing Crisis Day?

World Habitat Day is on October 4th.READ»

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A Disease-Fighting UN Backed by Big Pharma

A representative of big pharma calls for a UN-like compact to fight antibiotic resistance diseases in the developing world.READ»

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United Nations Millennium Development Goals Summit

A decade ago, world leaders created a list of eight extraordinary to-dos by 2015, among them, "eradicate extreme poverty" and "achieve universal primary education." Feasibility remains an open question. Standout gains in one ...READ»

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Cell Phones to the Rescue, for Iraqi Refugees

The U.N. will soon be giving out food vouchers, via SMS.READ»

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Fortune Favors the Responsible Biz

The UN's Geneva headquarters Goldman Sachs, McKinsey and Company, and the United Nations put out reports today highlighting positive links between corporate responsibility and the bottom line. The three studies were presented in ...READ»

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Can Robotic Cages Save Fish Farming?

Fish populations are dwindling rapidly due to widespread overfishing, and it's not likely to stop any time soon--the UN thinks that world seafood demand will grow 40% by 2030. And your beloved sushi restaurant might not exist for much ...READ»

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Hopenhagen: Twitter-Like Site to Push World Leaders at Copenhagen Climate Change Meeting

Twitter's political usefulness has already proven itself in this month's Iran protests. The U.N. hopes to further its own political goals with a similar microblogging platform on its Hopenhagen campaign site, just launched this week ...READ»

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World Water Day

It's been 4,500 years since the Mesopotamian cities of Lagash and Umma battled over irrigation rights. That was the world's first -- and so far only -- full-fledged water war. But UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon warned last year ...READ»

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Can't We All Just Get Along?

What are all those hieroglyphs plastered on product tags?READ»

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Kopernik Channels Copernicus, Crowd Sources for Social Good

Copernicus changed the way people viewed the world. Kopernik is changing the approach to development. Social Venture Kopernik uses crowd sourcing and crowd funding to connect progressive technologies, poor communities and a global network of donors. READ»

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Crib Sheet: Christiana Figueres, Climate Change Chief of the U.N., Not Trashy Romance Novelist

She has described her new job as "thankless," but all hail Christiana Figueres, the U.N.'s new climate chief. The 53-year-old Costa Rican is a surprise appointment, as everyone was expecting Ban Ki-Moon to offer Marthinus Van ...READ»

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Girls (and Boys) Gone Wild in Copenhagen

Why should policymakers, investors, or businesspeople care about this? READ»

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The Investor Game of Chicken

Is the investment community engaged in a game of chicken or are they simply a bunch of carbon chickens?READ»

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Innovation in Large Organizations: How the UN's Richard Ragan Doesn't Get Stuck

Ragan has seen it all, from North Korea to Nepal, but even at the United Nations people can end up "just doing their job."READ»

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New York Whitewashes a Million Square Feet of Rooftop

Geoengineering, manipulation of the planet's climate, can be a dangerous practice. But there is little downside to painting rooftops white.READ»

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The information the CIA & US Department of State ignored that could have prevented the 9/11 terrorist attacks on NYC.

We both drove to Washington DC together to meet with Republican Senator, Tim Nicholson. Darko spent the night at his house and I in a hotel room on the Beltway. We had brought with us tons of secret information on Al Qaeda operatives with us for this visit but Darko left it all with me in my room and Senator Nicholson did not view it. Senator Nicholson took us out to breakfast early that morning and told us that "In DC, we are alla bunch of paid whores for campaign contributions." The Republika Srpska Information Agency was very generous to help America fight terrorism on many occasions. The boxes I stayed with that night had papers and photos of tons of Al Qaeda operatives.READ»

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What It’s Like to Chill Out With : Ratko Mladic, Goran Hadzic and Radovan Karadzic

Retrospectively, it was all so simple, natural and matter of fact being on a boat restaurant in Belgrade, sitting with, laughing, drinking a two hundred bottle of wine and chatting about war and peace while Ratko Mladic held my hand. Mladic, a man considered the world’s most ruthless war criminal since Adolf Hitler, still at large and currently having a five million dollar bounty on his head for genocide by the international community. Yet there I was with my two best friends at the time, a former Serbian diplomat, his wife, and Ratko Mladic just chilling. There was no security, nothing you’d ordinarily expect in such circumstances. Referring to himself merely as, Sharko; this is the story of it all came about.READ»