Microcredit Financing Organizations: Global Players Empowering Women and Alleviating Poverty Worldwide

World poverty is a global issue and a development issue. Poverty reduction and women's empowerment are deeply connected to regional stability and long lasting peace. Nations will continue to be plagued by poverty, and top-down government agency aid programs to date have been unsuccessful. Encouraging news resides in innovative microfinance initiatives that alleviate poverty and impact millions of impoverished people around the globe. Microfinance organizations provide small loans, primarily to women otherwise excluded from the formal banking sector, for entrepreneurial endeavors. Myriad social, educational, and health programs accompany microfinance loan services. It is a powerful poverty-fighting tool with socioeconomic benefits. Evidence suggests that while imperfect, microfinance goals and successes are inspiring given the paucity of realistic alternatives in today's global development arena.

Russia's Clandestine War against the United States: The Resurrection of the KGB and Russian Organized Crime Post 9/11

As American leadership has narrowly focused on fighting global terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, the modern version of the KGB, now known as the FSB, has been conducting continuous clandestine warfare operations against the United States. These warfare operations include strategic economic and political partnerships with anti-American entities worldwide and direct embedding of double agents in the US intelligence community. This paper investigates the role of Russia's cultural history leading to the merger of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and Russian Organized Crime (ROC). This paper concludes that the FSB is the most pervasive security threat to the United States and that employing Russian native and heritage speakers of Russian in the US intelligence community compromises US national security.