Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action.

• The American Enterprise Institute and Brookings Institution got liberal and conservative researchers together to come up with a U.S. poverty reduction plan. What was nice was they said that having opposing viewpoints forced them to actually look at data to come up with policy recommendations (which there was plenty of, when they got down to it).
• There is a lot of underreported sub-Saharan Africa news including: Cameroon army captures a Boko Haram leader, update from Burundi, after 30 years with one president Burkina Faso has elected a new president (via Tom Murphy). I recommend catching up with This Week in Africa tomorrow.
• The U.S. Health and Human Services Department is rewriting rules around IRBs and human subjects protection. The comment period ends Jan 6.
• The Gates Foundation is collaborating with others on big new funds working on malaria and clean energy.
• Chinese President Xi was in Zimbabwe where he signed new multi-billion dollar agreements with South Africa. But on the Monkey Cage, researchers report that African countries who get support from China become more violent, possibly because U.S. aid usually comes with political requirements, but Chinese aid does not (h/t Rachel Strohm).
• Ideas42 released a report on using behavioral nudges for college success.
• The Incidental Economist blog has writing tips, showing three versions of an 800 word column as it developed to demonstrate the writing process in action (one, two, three).

And, if you’ve ever had someone find a mistake in one of your papers, don’t feel bad, it even happens to the New York Times. (via Sarah Boxer)