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Photos from Davos

What topics are dominating the hallways and panels at the World Economic Forum? From low-income countries to Larry Summers, David Kirkpatrick on six things everyone is talking about.

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Virginia Mayo / AP Photo
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French President Nicolas Sarkozy waits before delivering his wide-ranging address, in which he critiqued global banking, scolded speculators, and categorically denied the possibility of Europe abandoning its common currency. "To imagine that we might pull out,” he said “that we might abandon the euro, is to show a complete misunderstanding of the state of mind of Europeans who have been at each others' throats for decades and who have only one thing in mind—peace and co-operation."

Virginia Mayo / AP Photo
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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, standing, speaks with corporate leaders during a session prior to his formal address opening the World Economic Forum, in which he said improvements were under way in the Russian investment climate. "We are learning and willing to receive friendly advice. What we don't need is lecturing, we should be working together,” he said. Medvedev arrived in Davos just two days after a terrorist bombing killed 35 at Moscow’s busiest airport.

Dmitry Astakhov / AP Photo
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Rock icon and globe-trotting philanthropist Bono, a regular at Davos, spoke at the “Raising Healthy Children” session of this year’s World Economic Forum. Bono defended Davos from its detractors. “People dismiss events like the World Economic Forum as ‘talk shops,’” he said, “but actually as a result of the initiatives born here since 2004, about 6,000 children’s lives are saved every single day. That’s pretty good news at a time when there’s not much good news around.”

Virginia Mayo / AP Photo
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Bill and Melinda Gates have given much of their wealth to philanthropy in the past, and announced at this year’s WEF their $10 billion commitment to researching, developing, and delivering vaccines to the world’s poorest countries over the next 10 years. During a session on rebalancing sustainable development, Gates stressed the necessity of fostering innovation and health investments. “Slowing population growth and making lives healthier will have a much bigger effect on sustainable development than conventional energy savings plans,” he said.

Christian Hartmann, Reuters / Landov
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Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive of Google Inc., center, uses a smartphone before a session on the third day of the summit. During the forum, Schmidt discussed his company’s partnerships with Apple on search, maps, and YouTube—and of course their competition on smartphones. Google may soon compete with Apple’s Macintosh computer, depending on the outcome of its Chrome OS hardware, which the company hopes to announce later this year.

Tomohiro Ohsumi / Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Indra Nooyi, chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, shakes hands with Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, as Shuvalov announces Pepsi’s new majority stake in Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods, creating Russia’s biggest food and beverage company. The $3.8 billion deal is Pepsi’s biggest-ever international acquisition. “We love Russia,” said Nooyi.

Laurent Gillieron, Keystone / AP Photo
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, speaks with British Prime Minister David Cameron. The two European heavyweights pushed hard to get momentum going to complete trade talks from the Doha Round. The leaders warned that failure to conclude the Doha talks with a world trade agreement could set global commerce back decades. "People feel like this is somehow Monty Python's dead parrot, but we won't stop talking about it," Cameron said. "I profoundly believe that is not true."

Michel Euler / AP Photo
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French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, left, and India's Minister of Commerce and Industry Anand Sharma speak with each other during a Day Two session at Davos. Lagarde mused about China’s emerging challenges in balancing domestic and international responsibilities. Sharma pointed out the difference between China’s rise and India’s, noting that development in the subcontinent has been driven by domestic demand. He later got a laugh, saying "India is on the global train, we are not standing on the platform,” to which an audience member asked, “Who is on this train? There aren’t too many people.”

Virginia Mayo / AP Photo
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Participants in a panel discussion on the euro region economy (from left, George Papandreou, Greece's prime minister, Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, Nick Clegg, deputy prime minister of the U.K., Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, and Jacob Wallenberg, chairman of Investor AB) look at a chart showing the projected EU15 growth rate. The ECB has extended emergency liquidity measures for banks and purchased government bonds to help fight today’s economic crisis, but in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Thursday, Trichet assured, “We have a solid anchoring of inflation expectations.”

Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg via Getty Images
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner attends a session on "Priorities for the U.S. Economy." He argued

Johannes Eisele, AFP / Getty Images
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Klaus Schwab, left, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, talks to Bill Clinton. Schwab went to this year's forum with a broad, yet clear vision of how to positively effect the global economy in the future, which he outlined on The Huffington Post. His vision centered on a "new reality" defined by shared norms and a sense of "global togetherness," with a focus on addressing the scarcity of the world's natural resources and on building "an effective formal and globalized legal infrastructure" for the future.

Jean-Christophe Bott, EPA / Landov