World Bank

Few people on the street may be familiar with the World Bank. Yet, it plays a critical role in the U.S. effort to engage the world through its contribution to economic development in poor and post-conflict societies. As current World Bank President Robert Zoellick steps down this summer, the bank will soon have a new leader. In the past, as per an unwritten convention, the U.S. — the largest single majority shareholder of the bank — got to select the president. Although the bank at its core is a development institution, it was, surprisingly, never led by a development professional.

A division of the World Bank Group announced Wednesday that it has invested $150 million in Laureate Education Inc., giving the international development organization a small stake in the Baltimore-based global higher education company. "It's an incredibly strong endorsement for the company," said Douglas L. Becker, Laureate's chairman and CEO, of the investment by the International Finance Corp. and its affiliate, the IFC African, Latin American and Caribbean Fund. With annual revenue of about $4 billion, Laureate does not need the money but is eager to have the backing of an investor led by members of international governments, he said.

WASHINGTON -- If the dissonant messages rising from the district's streets could be filtered into a coherent, bottom-line plea, it might sound like this: Hey, World Bank. Yo, International Monetary Fund. Stop subsidizing Third World pollution. And stop dunning poor nations for money they don't have. Third World debt relief and better environmental policies for developing nations are the common threads running through the welter of protests in Washington this week, as thousands of environmentalists, union members, students and human rights and anti-business activists demonstrate against the power of global capitalism.

A report that theU.S. Department of Justicehas opened criminal investigations into allegations that Wall Street's biggest banks conspired to rig interest rates tied to trillions of dollars in investments should hearten Baltimore City officials who have filed a related civil suit. It's still too early to know whether Baltimore can force Wall Street to repay the millions of dollars in losses it claims to have suffered, but as the lead plaintiff in a case involving hundreds of investors who believe there were bilked by the alleged scheme, the city is right to make every effort to hold the perpetrators accountable.

WASHINGTON -- Paul D. Wolfowitz said yesterday that he would not resign as president of the World Bank in the face of controversy over his role in securing a U.S. State Department job and large raise for his girlfriend, a former communications official at the bank. "This is important work, and I intend to continue it," Wolfowitz said when asked whether he would step down after the spring meetings of the bank and the International Monetary Fund. Questions about Wolfowitz's future dominated the meetings' concluding news conference, in which the policy-setting committee of the two groups formally endorsed a decision by the bank's multinational board of directors to look into the controversy.

Washington -- In the tense days after World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz admitted his mistake in arranging a generous payment package for his girlfriend, angry employees launched an impromptu campaign. Blue ribbons started cropping up on lapels, taped to doors, and as an image in e-mails - a symbol of support for the bank's ideals of good governance and transparency. The curls of fabric were seen by many of the more than 7,000 staffers in Washington as a silent but clear call for their leader to resign.

WASHINGTON -- Fresh from a massive and occasionally violent demonstration against the World Trade Organization, the people who produced the battle in Seattle have taken their show on the road and are coming to a national capital near you. This time they have fastened their attention on two other multinational institutions identified with world commerce. Thousands of activists, many of them veterans of Seattle, plan demonstrations in Washington April 16 and April 17 to protest the policies, in some cases the very existence, of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

WASHINGTON - The latest example of in-your-face diplomacy by President Bush - the nomination of Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank - is yet another declaration of independence from world opinion that the president professes to be courting. Coming after the appointment of a professed critic of the United Nations, John R. Bolton, to be the ambassador to the world body that Mr. Bush loves to twit, the message to supposed allies and friends is: Get over it. What Mr. Bush wants the world, and the United Nations in particular, to get over is how he brushed aside their widespread opposition to his invasion of Iraq two years ago. He later seemed to go out of his way to fuel antagonism in "Old Europe," in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's memorable phrase.

This week is the 50th birthday of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, but not everyone is celebrating. For the vast majority of people living in the Third World, these two enormously powerful institutions have brought economic hardship and ecological devastation.The World Bank financed highways through the rain forests of northwest Brazil, accelerating their destruction. It backed Indonesia's policy of forcibly relocating people into its undeveloped eastern islands, causing extensive disruption of indigenous communities and of the forest that supported them.

Famines don't afflict democracies, and there's a good reason. Most of the hunger in the world stems not from war or natural disaster but from routine policies and practices that perpetuate abject poverty. One billion people live with hunger. Some starve to death; more often, they suffer from chronic malnutrition and failing health. Hunger is a fact of life for the poorest of the poor, those who live on less than $1 a day.Hunger periodically gets attention from policy-makers -- but not often the kind of probing examination the issue got at a recent World Bank conference in Washington, D.C.Conferences themselves don't solve problems, but they can draw attention and support to the kinds of policies that help to fTC lift people out of poverty and enable them to feed themselves.

- American diplomats abroad confront a rapidly changing world brimming with both promise and peril. This reality is perhaps no more daunting than in the countries and regions - including parts of Africa, southeast Asia and key corners of the Middle East - where populations are young and the 21st century global power struggle will unfold. More than half of the world's 7 billion people are age 25 or younger. According to World Bank data, more than a dozen African nations also feature under-15 population shares near or above 40 percent.

Few people on the street may be familiar with the World Bank. Yet, it plays a critical role in the U.S. effort to engage the world through its contribution to economic development in poor and post-conflict societies. As current World Bank President Robert Zoellick steps down this summer, the bank will soon have a new leader. In the past, as per an unwritten convention, the U.S. — the largest single majority shareholder of the bank — got to select the president. Although the bank at its core is a development institution, it was, surprisingly, never led by a development professional.

A Carroll County-based aid organization has secured more than $26 million in funding from the World Bank to help build a health system in south Sudan, one of the most disease-ravaged, impoverished areas of Africa, officials at the nonprofit agency said. This award brings to nearly $100 million the African relief that IMA World Health, headquartered in New Windsor, is managing, primarily in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. IMA, formerly known as Interchurch Medical Assistance Inc., entered into a 40-month contract this month with the World Bank's multidonor trust program.

Diana Elizabeth Patterson, a retired secretary who had worked at the World Bank and was the wife of radio personality Ted Patterson, died of a stroke and cancer complications Friday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Anneslie resident was 61. Born Diana Elizabeth Gillette in a London suburb, she worked in Zurich, Switzerland, as a German-speaking secretary. She sailed to the United States on the maiden voyage of the Queen Elizabeth II in 1969 and worked at the World Bank in Washington.

WASHINGTON -- The World Bank, newly caught up in the Bush administration's campaign against Iran, has had to suspend payments for earthquake relief, sanitation and other projects there in response to new American sanctions on leading Iranian banks, World Bank officials say. Only $5.4 million in payments has been suspended for four projects, involving earthquake relief, water and sanitation, environment management and urban housing, the officials said,...

JERUSALEM -- The Palestinian economy has become weaker and more dependent on foreign aid as the private sector has atrophied because of political violence and Israeli restrictions on the movement of goods and people, the World Bank said yesterday. The report, which focuses on trends during the past two years, found conditions especially severe in the Gaza Strip, where unemployment rose to almost 35 percent last year and more than a third of residents were living in severe poverty. The bank said overall gross domestic product, a key gauge of economic health, had dropped by nearly a third since 1999, the year before the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising.

WASHINGTON -- On the defensive over a growing Russian money-laundering scandal, the Clinton administration promised yesterday to press for international lending reform. But Republicans called the response inadequate and questioned continued U.S. support for Moscow.In congressional testimony, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers urged Russia to fight harder against corruption and said the United States and other industrialized nations would push the International Monetary Fund at its annual meeting this week to adopt new accounting controls.

THE UNITED STATES was slow and small in its offers of aid to India after the devastating earthquake in the state of Gujarat on Friday. By Sunday, this had grown to $5 million and an emergency team of seven experts, smaller than rescue teams arriving from Britain, Switzerland, Turkey and elsewhere. Canada committed roughly half the funds that Washington did, with one-tenth the economy. This U.S. reaction can be attributed to the changeover of administrations. It came at an awkward moment.

World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick is bringing a touch of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to rescue the poverty-fighting agency's slumping business. The former Goldman vice chairman has concluded, after two months on the job, that the group must behave more like a Wall Street investment firm to halt a worldwide slide in lending. At stake is the bank's survival in a rising sea of private capital. At Zoellick's direction, the agency is pushing sophisticated products such as loans that hedge against the risk of a commodity-price collapse or a surge in interest rates.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has chosen Robert B. Zoellick, a former U.S. trade representative and deputy secretary of state, to replace Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank, a senior administration official said yesterday. Wolfowitz announced his resignation this month after a bank investigating committee found that he had violated bank policies by involving himself in personnel decisions concerning a staff member with whom he was romantically involved. He said then that he would leave by the end of June.