FIAT DEALERS GARAGES

While Jim Yong Kim emphasized that his top priority would be to protect developing nations at a "pivotal moment" for a world economy that is losing steam rapidly, he said the bank could also deploy its technical know-how to help richer nations with structural problems.

"We only go into countries when asked, but I feel the kind of expertise we have could be relevant in many, many countries in the world, including high-income countries," the Korean-born American told reporters on his first day on the job.

"My staff feel they have the relevant experience that could add value ... if that is the case and we are asked, I could be open to the possibility" of helping Greece, he added.

Former World Bank chief Robert Zoellick had pushed back at the idea of the bank getting involved in Greece. He said on June 14 that if the bank had gone in "as a reform taskmaster for the Greek government ... it might not be as productive for Greece as it would be harmful to the bank."

Still, many development experts argue the bank's decades of experience working with governments to improve their ability to improve tax collection, social programs, combat corruption and attract investment could help countries like Greece or Portugal that struggle with these issues.

An international bailout for debt-burdened Greece has kept the country in the euro zone but has come at the price of deep spending cuts, increased poverty and unemployment.

One idea bank officials have discussed is for the European Commission to fund World Bank technical advice in Greece.

By charging for its advice, the World Bank would boost its own revenues at a time lending returns are set to decline as more borrowers gain access to capital markets. Big bank shareholders, like the United States, are also cutting budgets and would be hard pressed to persuade their legislatures to pony up more money for the World Bank.

"We are not talking about the World Bank investing massive amounts of finances in high-income countries," Kim said. "Where we feel we can add value is in the technical support around some of the structural issues that some countries are facing."

The idea already has been informally debated among the bank's shareholders. "I would encourage the bank to do it as long as it does not involve resources that are meant to go to developing countries," said one World Bank board official from a large developing country.

WORLD BANK READY TO HELP

Kim, a physician and former head of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, has relied on support from U.S. Treasury advisers as he prepared for his new job.

He takes the presidency at a time the euro zone debt crisis is beginning to exact a wider global toll.

Growth is slowing in emerging economies from China to India to Brazil, with developing countries feeling the effects of tighter bank lending and a drop in trade financing - problems Kim will have to address as the head of the world's top development lender.

As Europe struggles to get a handle on its crisis, new manufacturing data in China, the world's second-largest economy, on Monday showed a further decline in export orders.

Slowing global growth will affect already scarce government revenues in the poorest countries, which could force them to turn to the World Bank for more financial assistance.

World Bank assistance to middle-income countries could also increase if many find themselves unable to obtain the financing they need in the market.

The World Bank stepped up lending to developing countries in 2009 as the global financial crisis spread, providing a record $100 billion to borrowers.

Kim said the World Bank financial position was "very strong" and it was ready to support middle income and poor countries should they need assistance again.

"We feel that especially in low and middle-income countries we are ready to support those countries," he said.

Unlike previous heads of the World Bank, Kim is not a politician, banker or career diplomat. Instead, his life work has focused on bringing healthcare to the poor, whether fighting tuberculosis in Haiti and Peru or tackling HIV/AIDS in Russian prisons.

Addressing critics who see his lack of economics training as a weakness, Kim said he had worked in development throughout his career and has extensive experience working with the World Bank tackling difficult problems in poor countries.

"I feel that I share a passion for development and poverty alleviation with the World Bank staff and come into the organisation feeling very close to them in terms of why they come here," he said.

(Editing by Will Dunham, Dan Grebler, Tim Ahmann and M.D. Golan)

Organizers hope the expedition will conclusively solve one of the most enduring mysteries of the 20th century - what became of Earhart after she vanished during an attempt to become the first pilot, man or woman, to circle the globe around the equator.

A recent flurry of clues point to the possibility that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, ended up marooned on the tiny uninhabited island of Nikumaroro, part of the Pacific archipelago Republic of Kiribati.

"The public wants evidence, a smoking gun, that this is the place where Amelia Earhart's journey ended," said Richard Gillespie, executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR). "That smoking gun is Earhart's plane."

The group's research team had planned to set off by boat on Monday from Hawaii on a 1,800-mile (2,900 km) voyage to Nikumaroro accompanied by the technicians from a U.S. Navy contractor called Phoenix International who recovered "black-box" flight-data recorders from an Air France crash from the floor of the Atlantic last year.

But the departure was postponed for a day, until Tuesday, because of a delay in the arrival of a Kiribati customs official who is to accompany the expedition, said Stephanie Buttrill, a spokeswoman for the group. The team will spend 10 days at the search site, plus 16 days at sea travelling to and from the island.

Previous missions to Nikumaroro have unearthed tantalizing evidence that Earhart was there, including a cosmetic bottle from the 1930s that appeared to be jar of a once-popular brand of anti-freckle cream.

Also found were a clothing zipper from the '30s, pieces of a woman's compact, a bottle of hand lotion, parts of a woman's shoe and a man's shoe, a bone-handled pocket knife of the type Earhart carried and human bone fragments.

"We've found artefacts of an American woman castaway from the 1930s, but we haven't found anything with her name on it," said Gillespie. "We've tried to get contact DNA from things that were touched, and it didn't work. The environment was too destructive. The recovered bone samples were too small. The logical thing is the airplane."

FLYING INTO THE UNKNOWN

Earhart and Noonan were last seen taking off in her twin-engine Lockheed Electra on July 2, 1937, from Papua New Guinea en route to tiny Howland Island, some 2,500 miles away in the central Pacific. Radio contact with her plane was lost hours later after she reported running low on fuel.

A massive air-and-sea search, the most extensive such U.S. operation at that time, was unsuccessful. Earhart's plane was presumed to have gone down, but it has never been known whether she survived, and if so, for how long.

TIGHAR researchers theorize that Earhart and Noonan made an emergency landing on Nikumaroro, then called Gardner Island, about 400 miles (640 km) southeast of their destination on Howland.

Gillespie believes that within of days of its landing, the plane was washed over the island's edge by rising tides and surf, and was pulled down the reef slope into as-yet unexplored depths.

A recently enhanced 1937 photograph, taken three months after Earhart's disappearance by a British officer, shows what is now thought to be a detached landing gear assembly on the island's Western reef.

It is the same location where TIGHAR had hypothesized the plane might have landed and will be the geographic starting point in their underwater search.

Using underwater robotic submarines equipped with sonar, researchers will first map the sea floor, then probe the depths for objects that might be pieces of the aircraft.

If they find something promising, a third, remote-controlled submersible vehicle with camera, lights and a robot arm will attempt to explore the object up close.

But Gillespie cautioned that the conditions for such a search were less than ideal, explaining that the sonar probe works best over a flat, sandy bottom, rather than the craggy, reef slope the team expects to encounter at the site.

After 24 years of working on the Earhart case, Gillespie said he accepts that previous hypotheses have been disproved, and this seemingly promising one could be as well.

"That's scary. What if you look there and you don't find it? It might mean you're wrong. Or after 75 years of dynamic, destructive ocean activity, we could be absolutely right and not find anything," he said.

"It's hard not to see the parallel with Amelia's trip. You prepare the best you can and recognize, well, you're taking a risk. We're out to prove the case if it can be proven."

(Reporting by Malia Mattoch McManus; Editing by Steve Gorman, Cynthia Johnston and Cynthia Osterman)