“On Thursday, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah is set to give a speech at Brookings on the goal of ending extreme poverty, planned to put a bit more policy oomph behind the president’s call in the State of the Union earlier this year for America to join with its allies to end $1.25 poverty in two decades,” Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD), writes in the center’s “Rethinking U.S. Development Policy” blog. He highlights a number of issues he hopes will be raised in the speech, and states, “If [Shah] can use the drive to end global extreme poverty as a means to further improve and target U.S. aid so it can make the most difference, here’s hoping Thursday’s speech is a blockbuster” (11/19).