U.N. and World Bank to Set up a Task Force to Tackle Food Crisis

The United Nations agency chiefs and the World Bank's representatives decided on Tuesday to set up a task force to tackle the rise in global food prices which is threatening poor countries, which are the world's most vulnerable areas. The United Nations said in a statement the crisis has evolved into “an unprecedented challenge of global proportions.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said its first priority will be to meet the $755 million shortfall in funding for the World Food Program.

"Without full funding of these emergency requirements, we risk again the specter of widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale," he told reporters in the Swiss capital, Bern, where the U.N. agency chiefs have been meeting, according to the Associated Press.

He added an additional funding will be required.

Ban added that new measures must also go beyond the usual approach of simply providing emergency food relief when crises hit, the source noted.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) Food Price Index, measuring the market prices of cereals, dairy produce, meat, sugar and oils, was 57 percent higher in March 2008 than a year earlier.

"In addition to increasing food prices, we see at the same time farmers in developing countries planting less, producing less, due to the escalating cost of fertilizer and energy," he said. "We must make every effort to support those farmers so that in the coming year we do not see even more severe food shortages."

Bad said the UN'S Food and Agriculture Organization has developed a $1.7 billion plan to provide seeds for farmers in the world's poorest countries.

But World Bank President Robert Zoellick emphasized that the “crisis isn't over once the emergency needs are met.” This project has to be a continuous one, year after year. He called on countries nor to ban exports of food because it only worsens the crisis.

"We are urging countries not to use export bans," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said in a statement. "These controls encourage hoarding, drive up prices and hurt the poorest people around the world who are struggling to feed themselves."

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Skype introduces 'unlimited' world calling plan

The plan will allow unlimited calls to land-line phones in 34 countries for $9.95 per month, said Don Albert, vice president and general manager for Skype North America.

The countries encompassed include most of Europe, plus Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Malaysia.

Calls to domestic land lines and cell phones are included as well, as are calls to cell phones in Canada, China, Hong Kong and Singapore, but not cell phones in other countries.

Skype has already been selling unlimited calls to the U.S. and Canada for $3 a month. It is expanding that offering with another plan, for $5.95 per month, that gives free calls to Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, and a discount on calls to other places in Mexico.

Skype is generally used as a software application running on a computer equipped with a microphone and speakers or a headset. But subscribers will also have the option to call a local number from their phones and be connected to international numbers that fall under their plan, paying only local access charges or using their cell-phone airtime.

Unlimited international calling plans have been popping up in recent years from hardware-based phone services like Vonage International Holdings Corp. and cable companies, but the prices are generally higher, and the plans are add-ons to basic calling plans that cost even more.

Skype said its subscribers called phones for 1.7 billion minutes in the first three months of the year, compared with 14.2 billion minutes used in computer-to-computer sessions, which are free.

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Zimbabwean officials fear prosecution if Mugabe loses

Bulawayo and Harare, Zimbabwe - Defeat is never easy in politics, but it seems especially hard for Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party, which has steered Zimbabwe through 28 years of ruinous and often brutal rule.

Harsh crackdowns against dissent, starting with the "Gukurahundi" massacres that left more than 20,000 people dead in the early 1980s to the crackdown against university students in 1988 to the land invasions against white commercial farmers in the late 1990s have created a long list of potential human rights violations by senior members of ZANU-PF.

Prosecution for involvement in these alleged crimes – and for rampant corruption – has given many top ZANU-PF leaders another compelling reason to hang on to power in the wake of Zimbabwe's disputed March 29 elections.

Recent examples of former African dictators – most notably Liberia's former President Charles Taylor who's now on trial for war crimes in The Hague – provide caution for any official facing defeat.

Small reason, then, that ZANU-PF officials and top military commanders are expressing reluctance to hand over power to the opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai, who has pledged a clean sweep of government and a redress of past crimes.

"We cannot allow our liberation war hero [Robert Mugabe] to be humiliated like [former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein]," says a senior ZANU-PF politburo member in Harare, who requested anonymity.

The official claims that the opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), plans to send Mr. Mugabe to The Hague to face human rights and war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court in order to please Western countries. He says some countries have already pledged financial support to the opposition party should it emerge victorious.

While much of the international community seems baffled by the two-week long delay for releasing Zimbabwe's election results – in which preliminary tallies show the opposition party to be the winner – the reason for ZANU-PF's intransigence may be a simple matter of staying rich and avoiding prosecution.

Twenty-eight years of unquestioned power is a hard thing to leave behind, and having a military – especially one that is equally implicated in crime and corruption – seems to give the Zimbabwe ruling elite the capacity to hold onto power, no matter what the polls say.

The question now is whether the MDC will give the ruling party confidence that they will receive fair treatment in court.

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More Than 90,000 U.S. Infants Are Victims of Abuse or Neglect

THURSDAY, April 3 (HealthDay News) -- An estimated 91,000 babies in the United States were victims of maltreatment in 2006 during their first year of life, including 29,181 infants who suffered abuse or neglect during their first week of life, federal officials reported Thursday.

The report -- the first national examination of the risk for nonfatal maltreatment of children less than 1 year old -- was based on data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System.

"We weren't surprised by these numbers, but we certainly were distressed," Ileana Arias, director of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, said during a teleconference. "It's a picture you don't even want to imagine, that this number of infants are being maltreated in ways that are largely preventable."

Most maltreatment of infants less than a week old was the result of neglect, which is the failure to provide for basic physical and emotional needs or to protect the child from harm, Arias said. Neglect accounted for 68.5 percent of the reported cases. A smaller number of infants -- 13.2 percent -- were victims of physical abuse by a parent or caregiver that resulted in injury during the first week of life, she said.

Almost 40 percent of the infants were abused or neglected during their first month after birth.

The causes of the maltreatment aren't clear from the data, Arias said. However, neglect includes abandonment and prenatal exposure to drugs, which appear to be common problems, she said.

When children are mistreated, the consequences can haunt them the rest of their lives, Arias noted.

Children who suffer maltreatment are at higher risk for engaging in risky behaviors -- such as alcohol and drug abuse -- during adolescence and adulthood, Arias said. "Because of that risk behavior, these people have higher risk of developing chronic conditions, such as diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease," she said.

Although the new report looked at nonfatal maltreatment of infants, Arias noted that neglect and abuse is the leading cause of death in children.

"It is the third-leading cause of death for kids under the age of 3, and the fifth-leading cause of death for children between the ages of 1 and 9. About 19 percent of child-maltreatment deaths occur among babies who are less than 1 year of age," she said.

The findings were published in the April 4 edition of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Arias said the CDC is actively trying to develop programs to prevent the maltreatment of infants. "We are very committed to making sure that we prevent any instance of maltreatment. We want to get the kids before they are ever hit or neglected," she said.

Dr. Desmond Runyan, a professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and an expert in child welfare, said he's convinced that only a fraction of maltreatment cases are ever reported.

"I'm sure these numbers underestimate the problem," he said. "Agencies investigate cases that come to their attention, because they're flagrant and are reported."

However, Runyan added that children are better treated now than in the past. "Taking the long historical view, we are at a place now where kids are probably safer than they've ever been in the history of the human race," he said.

Runyan thinks education about parenting -- particularly for teens -- is the key to preventing the maltreatment of infants and children.

"We still have a situation where you need a license to drive a car, but you don't need a license to be a parent," he said. "Kids don't come with owners' manuals. They cry and annoy people.

"Family planning and education in the schools about parenting and delaying having children until people are a little bit older are the things that probably would have the most dramatic impact on reducing the incidence of abuse and neglect," Runyan added

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