for ending the European Union subsidies to help farmers sell their produce on world markets. The EU was already committed in principle to doing this. Now a senior official says they are prepared to name the date as part of a wider deal. “If there isn’t an agreement here in Hong Kong, the date of 2013 will be in it,” he confirmed. The United States trade representative Rob Portman said he would still prefer a date of 2010, but he is trying to be accommodating.

News item 2

The G20 have come up with a package of plans that add up to well over a trillion dollars to tackle the recession.

One key component is an agreement to treble to seven hundred and fifty billion dollars the resources available to the International Monetary Fund for lending to countries in trouble.

They also want a tenfold increase in what are called special drawing rights which are rather like an IMF currency and which strengthen the foreign exchange reserves of its member countries.

The G20 also plan closer regulation of financial firms with curbs on executive pay and new oversight of large hedge funds.

The British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, described the summit as marking a new consensus on tackling global problems.

News item 3

The conference opened to applause forty minutes late. It began with an environmental film from Danish children, a message from the next generation for those delegates whose decisions here over the next fortnight may help shape the lives they lead.

34,000 people have tried to get accredited for this extraordinary meeting – an unprecedented demand.

Hopes are high here that a deal can be done to lower emission and raise cash to help poor countries adapt to climate change and obtain clean energy. The question is whether that agreement will be strong enough to meet the expectations of those children of the future.

Unit 3

News item 1

The piracy problem looks like it’s here to stay despite the recent muscular interventions by the French and American navies. Whether this latest attempted hijacking was the promised revenge for the killing of three Somali pirates by the US navy isn’t clear. But is does suggest at the very least that the pirates haven’t been deterred.

So why does the problem persist? “Put it simply,” maritime security analysts say. “Piracy will continue as long as the financial rewards for a successful hijacking remain so great and Somalia remains so lawless. Certainly the international effort to thwart the problem is relatively limited. At any one time there are only fifteen to eighteen international warships in the area to police an expanse of sea covering more than a million square kilometers.”

The reluctance to mount a major international naval operation in the area may also be down to the relatively small scale of the problem. Last year, nearly twenty-three thousand ships passed through the Gulf of Aden. Only 92 were hijacked.

News item 2