Life's Work
Ranked number one in the world among female tennis professionals in 2002, Serena Williams had become one of the sport's most exciting and closely watched young players.

With her older sister Venus, she formed half of a tennis-prodigy pair that had been making headlines from an early age. As an African American in an historically white- and European-dominated sport, she found herself in the spotlight and under scrutiny.

Serena and Venus Williams were coached by their father, Richard, an unorthodox career-builder whose methods stirred comment and controversy. Beyond all these reasons Serena Williams caught the attention of tennis fans simply because she was a player of extraordinary ability and dynamism. She rose to the very top of her game achieving the No. 1 ranking among female tennis players in the world in 2002 and winning seven Grand Slam events by 2005.

Serena Williams was born in Saginaw, Michigan, on September 26, 1981, but she and her sister were raised in the economically depressed and often violence-riddled Los Angeles suburb of Compton. Her father, Richard Williams, ran a private security firm, and her mother Oracene (who often uses the name Brandy) was a nurse. A fan of televised tennis, Richard Williams dreamed of the opportunities that might await his offspring-to-be: "I went to my wife and said, 'Let's have kids and make them tennis players,'" he told Newsweek. Venus, born in 1980, and Serena, the youngest daughter, showed promise from the start. "Venus and Serena took to tennis as soon as rackets were put in their hands," older sister Lyndrea told Sport magazine.

Early career
The sisters' early training took place on public tennis courts in and around Compton, where they remember having to duck gunfire. Despite this difficult beginning, though, their skills developed rapidly. Serena entered her first tournament at the age of four and a half, and over the next five years, her father has claimed, she won 46 of 49 tournaments she entered. She succeeded Venus as the number-one player in southern California's highly competitive age-12-and-under rankings, and well before reaching adolescence both sisters had attracted national attention in the form of invitations to prestigious tennis camps, promises of lucrative product-endorsement deals, and glowing newspaper reportage.

WTA Ranks
Williams's first professional match in the WTA was in Moscow in 1997 where she was taken out in the first round by a highly ranked player. Many critics claimed that she did not have the talent of her older sister, who was slowly climbing the ranks of the WTA, but that perception was soon to change.

Williams qualified for an Ameritech-sponsored tournament in Chicago where she was slated to face Mary Pierce, who was ranked number seven in the world, in the second round. She staged a stunning upset over Pierce, beating her in only two sets. This advanced her to the quarter finals where she faced an even more difficult opponent, fourth-ranked Monica Seles.

At first it seemed that Williams had given her all in the match against Pierce as she dropped the first set to Seles. Then, in a shocking turn of events, Williams rallied and won the next two sets, defeating Seles. The critics who had said that she showed little promise only a few weeks before now spoke of her as the next rising WTA star, which was reflected in her ranking, which jumped from 304 to 102 after the tournament. She would finish 1997, her first full season with the WTA, with a ranking of 99.

By the following year her world ranking had risen as high as number 21, and both Williams and her sister, Venus, were bona-fide celebrities. She served notice that her time had come when she advanced to the semifinals of a Sydney, Australia tournament by beating the then third-ranked woman in the world, Lindsay Davenport, who went on to become the United States Open champion that year.

Expected to do well in her first Grand tournament, the Australian Open, Williams had the bad luck of having to face her sister in the second round after ousting ninth-ranked Irina Spirlea in the first round.

Venus emerged victorious, and Essence magazine reported that she was heard to say, "I'm sorry I had to take you out, Serena," as the two sisters walked off the court. This was the first time that the public caught a glimpse of the relationship between the two sisters and how they work not only to be the best for themselves, but also to motivate each other. The sisters met again that year at the Italian Open, this time in the quarter finals where once again Venus took the victory.

Nineteen-ninety-eight continued to be an excellent year for Williams as she realized success beyond expectations. She began to play in doubles play and won two other doubles titles that year with Venus in Oklahoma City and Zurich. Her victory in Oklahoma City became Williams's first pro title in doubles, but it would not be her last. She also went on to win two mixed double titles at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open with partner Max Mirnyi.

1999 was a watershed year for Williams as it would be the one in which she won her first singles title as well as a Grand Slam tournament. Ranked No. 21 at the beginning of the season, her first singles title came at the Paris Indoor tournament where she defeated Amelie Mauresmo in three sets.

From there Williams went on to win Indian Wells where she plowed through Lindsey Davenport, Mary Pierce, and number seven ranked Steffi Graf to gain the victory. Williams was on a 16-match win streak when she went against Venus again in the finals of a tournament in Miami, having defeated Seles, Coetzer, and number one ranked Martina Hingis in straight sets. Despite losing to her sister again, Williams cracked the top ten of the rankings for the first time, becoming the ninth best player in the world.

Williams's biggest match of the year, however, came when she entered the U.S. Open. Her road to the finals took her through fourth-ranked Seles and second-ranked Davenport. Once she had defeated them, she had to face number one ranked Hingis, and when the final match was over, Williams had won her first Grand Slam tournament in record-setting fashion.

She became the lowest seeded player to ever win the title and only the second African-American woman to win a Grand Slam title. The only thing Williams had not done yet was to beat her sister Venus, and that happened later that year when the sisters met in the finals of the Grand Slam Cup. It seemed that nothing could stop Williams and that she was poised to take over the world of women's tennis.

Became Best
The 2001 season started out slow for Williams when she lost twice to Hingis, once in Sydney and once at the Australian Open. She did, however, find victory again in the doubles tournament of the Australian Open with her sister Venus. As doubles partners, the Williams sisters seemed undefeatable.  While Venus would continue to succeed early in the season, Williams seemed to continue down the familiar path she had traveled in 1999 and 2000 when she withdrew from the Paris Indoor tournament with fatigue and from the Scottsdale tournament with the flu. While she did win a title at Indian Wells over Kim Clijster, she fell to Capriati in the quarter-finals round in the Miami tournament and withdrew from the Charleston tournament, the Italian Open, and the Madrid tournament because of knee injuries.

Williams bounced back to win the Canadian Open over third-ranked Capriati who had knocked her out of Wimbledon that year in the second quarter-finals round. Then Williams dominated the U.S. Open defeating Davenport and Hingis on her way to the finals where she once again was matched up against her sister Venus. It was the first time that the sisters had ever met in a Grand Slam final and while the match-up proved to be much more exciting than their semifinal round in Wimbledon the previous year, Williams still walked away defeated by her older sister.

While Williams took the loss hard, she used it as a stepping stone to improve even more and by the end of the season, she was in peak form and for the first time was healthy enough to compete in the WTA Championship. She advanced to the finals where she faced Davenport, but the match was never played because Davenport withdrew with a knee injury. While Williams has said she would have rather played the match to prove that she was the best player that year, she still walked away with a major win, her first since her U.S. Open win in 1999.

Finally, in 2002, Williams hit her stride and began to rack up the victories. She started off slow with an ankle injury in the Australian Open, but went on to win a major tournament in Miami, where she beat the three top players in the world (Hingis, sister Venus, and Capriati) on the way to the title. From there, Williams only continued to succeed.

She took the Italian Open victory from Capriati and then captured the French Open title, beating out Venus for the first time in a Grand Slam competition and rising to No. 2 in the world rankings, bested only by her No. 1 ranked sister, Venus. The siblings got a chance at a rematch later that year when they met in the final at Wimbledon, where once again, Williams defeated Venus to take the title.

To Williams, this was the most important win of her career to date, because, as she told the Sunday Mercury, As in past years, Williams also competed with sister Venus in the doubles competition at Wimbledon and came away with another title, their fifth Grand Slam victory as a team.

After Wimbledon, Williams quickly snatched the number one ranking away from Venus and for the next year held on to it with amazing play on the courts. She once again defeated Venus, this time in the U.S. Open, for a third straight Grand Slam victory that year.

She also won numerous other tournaments both in single and double play including the Princess Cup in Tokyo and the Leipzig tournament, but ended up losing the WTA Championship to Clijster in two sets. The following season she started off strong by winning her fourth straight Grand Slam event, once again beating Venus in the finals at the Australian Open, and becoming one of only five women to have ever held all four Grand Slam titles at one time.

The Williams sisters took the doubles title as well at the Australian Open, their sixth straight. Williams went on to win the Paris Indoor tournament and Miami tournament before losing in the Charleston tournament finals to Justine Henin-Hardenne, ending a 21-match winning streak.

Awards
Selected: Won seven Grand Slam tournaments including 1999 and 2002 U.S. Open, 2002 French Open, 2002 and 2003 Wimbledon, the 2003 and 2005 Australian Open; won six Grand Slam doubles tournaments including 1999 U.S. Open, 1999 French Open, 2000 and 2002 Wimbledon, and the 2001 and 2003 Australian Open; won WTA Championship, 2001; won Olympic gold medal for doubles tennis, 2000; WTA number one ranked player in the world, July 8, 2002-August 10, 2003; Female Athlete of the Year, Associated Press, 2003; ESPY for female tennis player of the year and female athlete of the year, 2003; Sportswoman of the Year, Laureus World Sports Academy.

The World Bank today announced the three winners of the 2008 Jit Gill Memorial Award for Outstanding Public Service: Kisan Baburao Hajare, a social activist from India; Karina Constantino-David, former Chair of the Civil Service Commission of the Philippines, and Nuhu Ribadu, Chair of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission of Nigeria.
 
The World Bank established this memorial award for Outstanding Public Service in 2004, following the death of the Bank staff Jit Gill, a dedicated leader in public sector governance and integrity.
 
“The people honored today have embodied the highest ideals of public service,” said Danny Leipziger, World Bank Vice-President for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM). “They clearly were able to translate their ideals into innovative public sector reforms.”
 
Mr. Kisan Baburao Hajare is a social activist from India, who created a thriving model village in Ralegan Siddhi, in the impoverished Ahmednagar region of Maharashtra state, and championed the right to information and the fight against corruption. Ms. Karina Constantino-David, battled against formidable obstacles to defend meritocracy and improve civil service pay as Chair of the Civil Service Commission of the Philippines until February of this year. Mr. Nuhu Ribadu, has led a courageous anticorruption drive in Nigeria, as Head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
 
“We instituted this award in 2004 as part of our work on leadership with integrity as a crucial pillar for good governance and anticorruption,” said Sanjay Pradhan, Director of the Public Sector Governance Group in the World Bank.   “The award is intended as an inspirational tool to recognize the courage, tenacity and contributions of outstanding leaderships who have championed reforms for better governance against formidable odds.”
 
The memorial award was received by the honorees today during the Jit Gill Memorial Lecture held at the World Bank, as part of the annual conference of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) Network.

The World Bank 

The impact of climate change could fall disproportionately on women and children, UNICEF cautioned today, on the occasion of World Health Day 2008.

The theme for World Health Day 2008 is climate change and health. The annual day commemorates the founding of the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Nearly 10 million children under age five die every year of largely preventable diseases,” said Ann M. Veneman, Executive Director of UNICEF. “Many of the main global killers of children – including malaria and diarrhoea – are sensitive to changes in temperature and rainfall, and could become more common if weather patterns change.”

In addition, women and children tend to be disproportionately affected by hurricanes and flooding, which climate change experts say will increase in intensity and frequency in coming years. The destruction of homes, schools and health centres resulting from natural disasters reduce services available to families.

Climate change experts also predict that warming and shifting rains could impact crop production, which could reduce food availability. In 2006, some 36 per cent of children globally were either moderately or severely underweight.

Last year’s report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that malnutrition and associated disorders, including those relating to child growth and development, could increase as the global climate changes. Reduced supplies of clean water in some areas could also add to the burden on rural women and girls, who are usually responsible for collecting water for cooking and washing.

The voices of women and children must be heard and their needs assessed as part of the international response to prospective changes to the environment, and they must have access to the knowledge and tools necessary to protect themselves and their communities.

All UN member states are facing a rigorous examination of their human rights records. The inaugural session of the UN Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) working group began on Monday.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a new mechanism of the UN Human Rights Council and, over the next four years, it will regularly review the human rights obligations and commitments of all 192 Member States. Governments themselves will carry out this regular and systematic scrutiny.

The new process will address one of the main criticisms of the Council’s predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights, which was accused of considering only a small number of countries, and of often avoiding pressing situations for political reasons.

The UPR Working Group will, until 18 April, examine the human rights records of 16 countries: Algeria, Argentina, Bahrain, Brazil, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Finland, India, Indonesia, Morocco, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Tunisia and the UK.

This first session will be followed by two further sessions in 2008, so that 48 countries, selected by drawing lots, will have been scrutinized during the year.

An important feature of the new process is that governments of the countries under examination are expected to carry out a broad consultation among civil society. Amnesty International has lobbied energetically to ensure that all relevant voices are heard.

The organisation has submitted information on 14 of the 16 countries above and its members and supporters are working with civil society within each country to raise awareness of the new process.

Amnesty International said, in a statement issued on Monday, that this first session of the UPR Working Group will be key in setting the standard for future reviews, in terms of process as well as substance.

"Both reviewed and reviewing countries have an important role to play. Amnesty International looks to all member states to step up and help launch the UPR as an effective human rights mechanism," said Martin Macpherson, Director of the organization's International Law and Organisations Programme.

Amnesty International  

With soaring food prices expected to continue for the foreseeable future, the World Bank is calling for a “new deal” of long-term measures, ranging from increased investment in African agriculture to genetically engineering fuel-producing plants.

Aid organisations are already confronting growing financial shortfalls in their struggle to feed the world’s hungry as food prices have exploded over the past six months, propelled by increased demand from newly prosperous Asian countries like China, rising fuel prices and the diversion of land from food crops to bio-fuel production.

The problem extends way beyond usual temporary production blips like the recent Australian drought, the volatility of soaring oil prices and a falling dollar, and could be severely compounded by climate change - with harsher droughts in some parts of the world and more severe flooding in others predicted.

In a worst case scenario not only could mortality and disease from malnutrition, already the underlying cause of an estimated 3.5 million child deaths each year, soar, but widespread social and political unrest might erupt. Food riots have already been reported in several countries and the World Bank estimates that 33 nations face potential social unrest.

“For these countries, where food comprises from half to three-quarters of consumption [spending], there is no margin for survival,” World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick told the Center for Global Development in Washington on 2 April, calling for a "new deal" combining hundreds of millions of additional dollars for immediate relief with long-term efforts to boost agricultural productivity in developing countries.

He announced that the Bank would nearly double agricultural assistance to US$800 million in Africa, adding: “We can help create a ‘Green Revolution’ for sub-Saharan Africa.”

Just last month the UN World Food Programme (WFP) issued an “extraordinary emergency appeal” to world government leaders, endorsed by Zoellick yesterday, for an additional $500 million over the $2.9 billion it sought a few months ago, just to feed the same 73 million people in 78 countries.

Policy questions

For some the World Bank’s “new deal,” which follows up on the conclusions of a report last year, has been too slow in coming. “The World Bank, I would say very belatedly, acknowledged the importance of the agricultural sector,” Tom Arnold, chief executive of the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Concern Worldwide, which seeks to reduce suffering in the poorest countries, told IRIN.

“Immediately, there needs to be a recognition that if we are to have some kind of international safety net in place for the most vulnerable people on the planet, then responding positively to something like WFP is an important aspect,” he said.

“For the longer term, there are a lot of big policy questions that need to be addressed both nationally and internationally, such as taking agriculture more seriously in the economic sector... Any short-term measures to alleviate the problem have to go hand in hand with a serious and strategic commitment to promoting agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa.”

Other NGOs agree. “For the recent couple of decades donors, including countries like the United States, have been quite dramatically neglecting the agricultural sector, reducing their funding support for agricultural programmes,” Oxfam America Policy Director Gawain Kripke told IRIN.

“The food aid system is quite broken and needs reform, and urgently needs it, because dollars are being wasted quite dramatically. We need to be thinking about less short-term palliative responses and longer-term security responses,” he said.

Avoiding high transport costs

The NGO Action Against Hunger (AAH) calls for building capacity in Africa through access to credit, agricultural extension programmes and training, citing the continent’s untapped potential and the need to avoid the high transportation costs as oil prices soar.

“The transport costs associated with food aid could be better used to improve local production techniques and agricultural systems,” AAH Food Security Adviser Silke Pietzsch told IRIN.

Oxfam America’s Kripke cited US insistence that all US food aid be purchased in the US and shipped mostly on US-flagged carriers as a major barrier, greatly increasing costs and entailing delays of up to six months.

“The cost increment of doing it that way rather than buying food more flexibly for instance in Africa for distribution in Africa, can be 50 percent,” he said. “So we can get a lot more assistance from the same amount of money if the United States were to reform how it did its food assistance.”

GM crops

Siwa Msangi, research fellow in the Environment and Production Technology Division of the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), believes bio-technology holds the solution and that genetically mutated crops need to be de-demonised.

“Biotechnologies can help us grow more drought-resistant, pest-resistant, disease-resistant traits in staple crops,” he told IRIN. This could counter climate change by, for example, producing submergence-resistant strains to withstand increased flooding.

“There are certain attitudes to technologies in food that I think we need to overcome through better education,” he said, citing the prejudices against so-called franken-foods and franken-fish and noting that farmers in Africa are afraid to use bio-technologies that might reduce their competitiveness on the European market due to attitudes there.

But for some there is at present no clear way ahead. Jim Bishop, president for Humanitarian Policy and Practice of InterAction, a US-based coalition of non-profit organisations, said US groups and international agencies like the WFP are still trying “to come to grips” with how to respond adequately.

“The longer term prospects are not terribly encouraging,” he told IRIN. “No one has come up with an agreed answer to the problem. There obviously isn’t a silver bullet, and there’ll be various views, and we hope that the international community will contribute additional resources.”

Bio-fuels and biotechnology

Nobel economics prize winner and former World Bank chief economist Joseph E. Stiglitz sees bio-fuels as a major culprit. “The market has been distorted badly by some of the bio-fuel requirements,” he told IRIN. “The whole system is affected by this very large withdrawal of agricultural output that was going into food production.”

But this is where biotechnology could come to the rescue, according IFPRI’s Msangi. “We should be aiming for high yielding varieties both for food and for fuel as well,” he said, foreseeing a switch to grasses, and to using the stock instead of the grain of maize for fuel.

Meanwhile the immediate problem remains. Zoellick called for immediate action on WFP’s new appeal. “The United States, the European Union, Japan, and other OECD [the 30-member Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries must act now to fill this gap - or many more people will suffer and starve,” he warned.

USAID announced in February that its food aid costs had jumped 41 percent in the first half of the US 2008 financial year, swallowing $120 million.

Another donor, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), this fiscal year has already provided over $116 million to WFP. “The Government of Canada is concerned by the impact that the rising price of food commodities will have on the world’s vulnerable and hungry people,” CIDA spokeswoman Jo-Ann Purcell told IRIN. “We will continue to follow WFP needs closely and make every effort possible to respond to the increased demands for food aid.”

WFP continues to call attention to the plight of the one billion people who still live on less than $1 a day, the threshold defined by the international community as absolute poverty, below which survival is in question.

“The crunch means that families which may have had a bit of money to pay school fees for their children, to go to clinics when they are sick, or take much-needed nourishing food together with anti-retroviral drugs, will suffer as they will cut back in these areas,” it said in a recent update. “They will also start cutting meals and substituting less nutritious foods.”

More HIV-positive children and pregnant women are receiving treatment but there is still a long way to go before the promise of an AIDS-free generation is fulfilled, according to a United Nations report released today. 

Children and AIDS: Second stocktaking report is a review of progress on how AIDS affects children and young people. Unite for Children, Unite against AIDS, which was launched in October 2005 by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), UNICEF and other partners, was a call to action around the impact of HIV and AIDS on children.

“Today’s children and young people have never known a world free of AIDS,” said UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman. “Thousands lose their lives to the disease every year, and millions have lost parents and caregivers. Children must be at the heart of the global AIDS agenda.”
 
Produced by UNAIDS, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, the report reviews the progress made – and the challenges remaining – in four key areas: preventing HIV transmission from mothers to children (PMTCT), providing paediatric treatment, preventing infection among adolescents and young people, and protecting and supporting children affected by AIDS. The report focuses on low- and middle-income countries.

According to the report, in 2007, an estimated 290,000 children under 15 died from AIDS, and 12.1 million children in sub-Saharan Africa lost one or both parents to AIDS.

However by the end of 2006, 21 countries – including Benin, Botswana, Brazil, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa and Thailand – were on track to meet the Unite for Children: Unite Against AIDS target of 80 per cent coverage for PMTCT by 2010, up from only 11 countries in 2005.

In addition, the number of HIV-positive children in low- and middle-income countries receiving antiretroviral treatment increased by 70 per cent from 2005 to 2006.

"Important gains have been made in addressing treatment needs for children and in preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV," said UNAIDS Executive Director Dr. Peter Piot. "However much more needs to be done to prevent HIV amongst young people and adolescents if we are to make a major change in the direction of the epidemic."

Indicators show progress on the protection and care for children affected by AIDS in many countries and on access for these children to social services. Progress has also been made in school enrolment rates for children who have lost both parents to the disease, although AIDS-affected children are still more likely than other children to fall behind in school and to live in poorer households.

Since 2000-2001, in 11 of 15 countries for which sufficient data are available, HIV prevalence among pregnant women aged 15-24 attending antenatal clinics has declined.

The proportion of HIV-positive pregnant women receiving antiretrovirals to reduce the risk of transmitting the virus to their infants increased by 60 per cent from 2005 to 2006, but even with this increase, it is estimated that only 23 per cent of HIV-positive pregnant women are receiving antiretrovirals.

"We are making progress but still face many challenges," says Dr. Kevin DeCock, Director of the World Health Organization's HIV Division. "Critically, we must provide antiretroviral treatment for women who require it for their own health, which will save their lives but also assure a future for their children. To achieve all this, health systems and their most precious component, the health care workforce, must be strengthened."

Most of the 2.1 million children under 15 living with HIV in 2007 were infected before their birth, during delivery or while breastfeeding. And young people aged 15-24 still account for about 40 per cent of the new HIV infections among all people over 15 in 2007.

While the news is mixed, the report argues that achieving an AIDS-free generation is possible. Although funding gaps persist, governments and donors alike are allocating more resources to prevention, treatment and protection efforts. In 2007, some $10 billion were available to combat AIDS, up from $6.1 billion in 2004.

The priority is now to implement new initiatives and scale up those that have already been tested and proven effective.

The report calls for action to:

• Strengthen communities and families whose role is crucial to every aspect of a child-centered approach to AIDS

• Reinforce health, education and social welfare systems which are key to effective interventions to support children affected by HIV and AIDS

• Integrate services for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission in maternal, newborn and child health-care programmes

• Consolidate data and measurement in order to document advances and shortfalls and strengthen commitment.

World Bank President’s Proposals Target Key Areas: Food, Minerals and Innovative Financing

The World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick announced a package of proposals designed to help African countries address rising food and commodity prices, create new opportunities for managing wealth earned from high energy and mineral prices in a more inclusive way, and generate long-term liquidity by tapping into sovereign wealth funds.
 
The speech “A Challenge of Economic Statecraft” was delivered at the Center for Global Development, an independent Washington, DC think tank, ahead of next week’s Spring Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
 
“There is an urgent need to counter immediate threats in response to the current global crisis,” said Mr. Zoellick.  “We must lay the foundations to maximize opportunity and hope for all over the longer term.”
 
Specifically, his bold proposals call for:
 
•         A “New Deal for Global Food Policy” to help African countries meet the challenges posed by surging food prices, and a pledge to nearly double agricultural lending for increasing farm productivity and boosting food availability across sub-Saharan Africa (currently $450 million to $800 million next year).  Commenting on the importance of building local food markets and creating a new “Green Revolution” for sub-Saharan Africa, he said: “The World Bank Group estimates that 33 countries around the world face potential social unrest because of the acute hike in food and energy prices. For these countries, where food comprises from half to three quarters of consumption, there is no margin for survival.”  He also warned the time was “now or never” for breaking the Doha Round impasse and reaching a global trade deal.  He urged the United States, European Union, Japan and other developed countries to provide the United Nations’ World Food Program with the $500 million it needs for emergency food supplies.
 
•         A renewed and invigorated Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, or EITI++, to help developing countries seize the opportunities of high prices for energy and minerals, while at the same time ensuring the benefits for resource rich countries were inclusively spread among their people.  The original EITI encouraged resource rich countries to publish and verify company payments and revenues from the lucrative oil, gas, and mining sectors.  The enhanced EITI++ version will expand on that approach to include such areas as the awarding of contracts, improving economic management, and investing revenues effectively in sustainable development. Notably, of the 24 countries currently implementing EITI initiatives, 17 are in Sub-Saharan Africa.
 
•         Creating a “One Percent Solution” for equity investment in Africa – a continent with opportunities and the potential to become an alternative pole of growth as China, India and other countries are today.  Detailing the enormous potential of this innovative approach, he said: “Today, sovereign wealth funds hold an estimated $3 trillion in assets. If the World Bank Group can help create the platforms and benchmarks, the investment of even one percent of their assets would draw $30 billion to African growth, development, and opportunity,”
 
In support of the EITI++ initiative, the World Bank is designing a facility to help build capacity of governments; providing quicker assistance than is possible through traditional lending operations; developing and disseminating good practices, standards, and codes, and suggesting fiscal, legal, and regulatory frameworks.  An advisory committee of stakeholders will guide the process.
 
The Government of Guinea is planning to commence the EITI++ in May 2008, working with the World Bank and other development partners.

The World Bank

The deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Observer has left for the United States of America, to attend the 19th National Youth Crime Prevention Conference and International Forum, which kicked-off on March 26 in Miami, Florida.

Ebrima Manneh, widely known by his sobriquet, Ebrima Jaw Manneh, will join close to a thousand local and international delegates, including distinguished dignitaries of American society in this all-important conference which seeks to draw energies to end drugs abuse, violence and crime in the world.

The Gambia’s delegation to the week-long conference is being led by Mr Abdul Jobe, the president of Youth Crime Watch (YCW) of The Gambia, who represented the country to the 2007 conference, where The Gambia won the International Programme of the Year Award. Mr Jobe was himself awarded with the International Casey Award for his role and achievement in YCW’s objectives in Banjul.

The orgsanisation also awarded President Alhaji Dr Yahya Jammeh for his government’s support towards YCW-Gambia Police Force (GPF) programmes, especially the Community Based Policing Project.

The organisation, which is headquartered in Miami, Florida, is a non-profit youth-led crime prevention movement in schools and communities with programmes throughout the US and abroad.

The conference seeks to provide international platform to empower and develop youth and adult leaders to proactively work together in creating resilient communities and countries resistant to crime, drugs and violence. The event consists of educational workshops, interactive training, a youth-led symposium, and professional development seminars.

"This is the key to taking responsibilities and showing that crime prevention does work," the two YCW executive members told the Daily Observer, shortly before their departure.

According to the duo, the event presents a unique opportunity for the participants to network and receive advance training on organisational development, as well as programme learning, including the most up-to-date and latest techniques.

In his own words, the Daily Observer deputy Editor-in-Chief, Ebrima Jaw Manneh observed that drugs, violence and crime have crept into the fabrics of various societies around the world, depriving the humanity the right to peaceful co-existence. Mr Manneh stressed that the pedigree of this scourge is increasing visible as many youngsters fall victims to these vices.

He then stressed that such "gatherings inspire young leaders to step-up the crusade in order to avert the alarming vulnerability of young people to the vicious cycle of crime and drugs and substance abuses".

"The Gambia is not an underdog in this struggle and this has been evidentially demonstrated in the YCW Gambia country programme and at other fronts. We will revisit our achievements and shortcomings; and inject vigour in areas where things are moving at tortoise’s speed. This is the synopsis of what we want to do. We shall do our utmost to make sure that The Gambia’s flag does stumble," Mr Manneh told the Daily Observer.

Ebrima Jaw Manneh then thanked all those who have been supporting YCW Gambia to carryout its programme of activities in the country.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has discovered evidence that points to the existence of an underground ocean of water and ammonia on Saturn's moon Titan.
"We believe that about 100 kilometers (62 miles) beneath the ice and organic-rich surface is an internal ocean of liquid water mixed with ammonia," said Bryan Stiles of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

If the findings turn out to be true, this will be the fourth such moon in our solar system found to have some form of water on it. Currently only three other moons, all from Jupiter, have been found to have known water sources. Ganymede, Callisto and Europa are so far the only known moons with a water source.
Members of the mission's science team used Cassini's Synthetic Aperture Radar to collect imaging data during 19 separate passes over Titan between October 2005 and May 2007. The radar can see through Titan's dense, methane-rich atmospheric haze, detailing never-before-seen surface features and establishing their locations on the moon's surface.

Using data from the radar's early observations, the scientists and radar engineers established the locations of 50 unique landmarks on Titan's surface. They then searched for these same lakes, canyons and mountains in the reams of data returned by Cassini in its later flybys of Titan. They found prominent surface features had shifted from their expected positions by up to 30 kilometers (19 miles). A systematic displacement of surface features would be difficult to explain unless the moon's icy crust was decoupled from its core by an internal ocean, making it easier for the crust to move.

Cassini scientists will not have long to wait before another go at Titan. On March 25, just prior to its closest approach at an altitude of 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), Cassini will employ its Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer to examine Titan's upper atmosphere. Immediately after closest approach, the spacecraft's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer will capture high-resolution images of Titan's southeast quadrant.

The study of Titan is a major goal of the Cassini-Huygens mission because it may preserve, in deep-freeze, many of the chemical compounds that preceded life on Earth. Titan is the only moon in the solar system that possesses a dense atmosphere. The moon's atmosphere is 1.5 times denser than Earth's. Titan is the largest of Saturn's moons, bigger than the planet Mercury.