Video: Daniel Yohannes of the Millennium Development Corporation

From CNN, a profile on the head of the Millennium Challenge Corporation. Daniel Yohannes is the leader of the U.S. global development aid program.

First pledge of new aid comes from France

The first pledge has been announced from the United Nations Millennium Development Goals summit. France President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged to increase aid by 20 percent to the world's poor. Sarkozy urged world leaders to join him in increasing aid and not to fall back into "old habits."

From this Associated Press article that we found at WOI-TV in Des Moines, writer Edith Lederer gives us this round-up of the mornings speeches.

"We have no right to do less than what we have decided to do," Sarkozy told the assembled leaders. He also said the world body should join in creating a small international tax on financial transactions that would go toward ending poverty and meeting other millennium goals.

Sarkozy said France currently donates 10 billion euros a year.

"The financial crisis is severe in the rich countries, it creates deficits," he said, "but its consequences are far worse for the poor countries."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened the summit with a call to the assembled presidents, prime ministers and kings to use their power to meet U.N. goals to help the world's poorest by 2015.

Ten years after world leaders set the most ambitious goals ever to tackle global poverty, they are gathered again to spur action to meet the deadline - which the U.N. says will be difficult, if not impossible, in some cases.

General Assembly President Joseph Deiss called the session to order, saying: "We must achieve the Millennium Development Goals. We want to achieve them. And we can achieve them."

For centuries, the plight of the world's poor had been ignored but with the turn of the new millennium, leaders pledged to begin tackling poverty, disease, ignorance and inequality.

Israeli President Shimon Peres said peace and full stomachs were key to erasing poverty.

"We share the burden of saving the world from war and hunger. Without peace, poverty will remain. Without food, peace will not prevail," he said.

Yohannes nominated for Millennium Challenge Corp

The Obama administration has announced the next head of the Millennium Challenge Corp. Denver area banker Daniel Yohannes has been tapped to head the federal agency that works with poor nations.

From the Denver Business Journal, writer Mark Harden gives us more of Yohannes' background.

The MCC works with developing countries to promote economic growth and reduce poverty. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Yohannes will succeed John Danilovich, who resigned as the agency's CEO; Darius Mans has been acting CEO.

Yohannes is president and CEO of M&R Investments, a private investment firm that focuses on the clean-energy sector.

He was an executive of Colorado National Bank and its successor, U.S. Bank, from 1992 to 2003, including a stint as CEO of U.S. Bank's Colorado division. Previously he was an executive for Security Pacific Bank, now part of Bank of America.

Yohannes, a native of Ethiopia, was a key organizer of local efforts to host the 1997 "Summit of the Eight" conference of world leaders in Denver.

He served as co-leader of Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter's transition team in the months before Ritter took office in 2007 and has since been a member of the governor's Jobs Cabinet.