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The New York Times Magazine just unveiled its latest issue, dedicated to global issues that impact women. Though we'll post on more of the pieces later this week, today we'll start with the magazine's interview of Hillary Clinton. More »
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We've always heard that microloans were a good idea — in fact, we gave to Kiva earlier this year. But Tanglad at Racialicious asserts that microcredit may be too good to be true: More »
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There's nothing like a good political discussion between two friends that rides quickly off the rails, which is basically what happened this morning with Latoya Peterson of Racialicious and me, when we fully planned to talk about the next terror attacks on the United States and then drifted into farm subsidies, foreign aid, violence in the media, Malawi and Mexico and didn't manage to even work in a single reference to Madonna because we were so focused on corn. Mmmmm. Corn! More »
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Who is the world's best celebrity? The New York Times Magazine came out this week and seemed like it was going to decree it to be Natalie Portman. While Angie, Brad, Bono, Clooney, Don Cheadle, Mia Farrow, Matt Damon, John Legend etc. etc. mostly dedicate themselves to Darfurian genocide and such, Natalie Portman's big issue is microfinance, which is, as causes go, apparently not as sexy. (Well, it's sexy if you're on the Nobel Committee, but you know.) Anyway, so, the genesis of Portman's decision to try and heal the world began in 2003, her senior year at Harvard, because "something very bad" happened to a friend of hers in Israel — where she was born. She won't say what happened, but she decided to call up Queen Rania of Jordan — an ethnic Palestinian! — and Rania suggested she get involved in microcredit, since it is pretty much the least controversial sort of philanthropy an Israeli and/or Arab are able to get involved in together. More »
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