Ramin Talaie/Bloomberg Unlike recent World Bank presidents, Jim Yong Kim, president of Dartmouth College, is not a former banker or policy maker in the U.S. government. WASHINGTON – The White House on Friday named Jim Yong Kim, the president of Dartmouth College and a global health expert, as its nominee to lead the World Bank. That makes Dr. Kim the frontrunner to take the helm of the multinational development institution on June 30, when its current president, Robert B. Zoellick, will step down at the end of his five-year term. Tradition has held that Washington selects the head of the bank and Europe its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund, since their founding during World War II. Dr. Kim’s name was closely held and not ... Continue reading →

The War Will Be Streamed February 14th, 2012 | by Kelly McEvers Kelly McEvers Covering the Arab Spring, for me, has been about as unglamorous as you can imagine. While my colleagues were tear-gassed and then celebrated in Cairo’s Tahrir Square or rode out with the Mad Max rebels in Eastern Libya to defeat forces loyal to Moammar Ghaddafi, I was sitting in dark, lonely hotel rooms, hunkering down with activists on Skype, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. That’s mainly because I cover the Arab uprisings that so far have not succeeded: Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen. (Sure, Yemen’s president has stepped down, but that’s no guarantee he won’t be back.) And to do my job — to cover a group of activists who are the constant ... Continue reading →