For example, the path breaking work of Muhammed Yunus and the Grameen Bank shows that small micro-credit loans given to women are nearly always paid back and that the funds are used to invest in businesses, that provide funds to educate children and lift families out of poverty.

FORBES: How Women Entrepreneurs are Transforming Economies and Communities

In 1998, after eight years of frustration and back-breaking work, Mr Clissold, at the age of 38, suffered a total collapse.

ECONOMIST: A disorderly heaven

How does one put that kind of money to work without breaking the rule on usury, given how ubiquitous interest is?

FORBES: Don't Call It Interest

His emaciated body was found by hikers later that autumn in the rusted-out hulk of a 1946 Fairbanks City Transit bus, which had been abandoned in the woods by a work crew many years earlier after breaking its axle along a remote stretch of the trail.

BBC: Journey into the Alaskan wild

Some of these projects are breaking ground this month, putting people to work right now.

WHITEHOUSE: President Obama at Clinton Global Initiative

At the ceremony Professor Dame Carol Robinson, from the University of Oxford, was named Laureate for Europe for her ground-breaking work in studying how proteins function.

UNESCO: Professor Dame Carol Robinson

Paul Thompson, 60, of Denton Burn, Newcastle, had denied breaking the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

BBC: Heathdale Rest Home in Whitley Bay

Steve Wynn is celebrated for his ground-breaking work with The Dream Syndicate, a band that helped invent the American indie rock scene of the 1980s.

NPR: Steve Wynn in Concert

LDP's old-guard, much of which he has already infuriated by breaking with tradition on cabinet appointments, choosing people he can work with rather than those who are next in line on the party escalator.

ECONOMIST: Voters send Junichiro Koizumi a deflating message