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Business Words in the News
Friday 15 November 2002
Vocabulary from the business news. Listen to and read the report then find explanations of difficult words below.

  African Aids patient
Australia trade conference
Summary: Trade ministers and officials from 25 countries have started an informal meeting in Sydney to discuss progress in talks launched a year ago in the World Trade Organisation known as the Doha Development Agenda. This report from Dominic Hughes:
   
The News Listen  
  The first item on the trade ministers' agenda has been the issue of how to revise World Trade Organisation rules governing patents on medicines. By the end of this year member states must reach agreement on how developing countries can override patents and make drugs themselves to treat diseases such as HIV and AIDS, TB and malaria. Officials describe discussion as interesting and useful and say ministers are close to reaching agreement. Among other issues to be discussed is access to markets for services, industrial products and, perhaps most crucially, agriculture. Meanwhile, a few hundred anti-globalisation protestors have been staging a noisy demonstration behind metal fences erected around the meeting venue. So far tight security and hundreds of police officers have kept the protestors well away from the meeting itself.

Dominic Hughes, BBC, Sydney


 
   
The Words Listen
 
  agenda
a list of items to be discussed at a meeting

 
   
  revise
if you revise something, you alter it to make it better

 
   
  patents
a patent is an official right to be the only company or person to sell a new product

 
   
  override
if something overrides other things, it is more important than these things

 
   
  interesting and useful
a formal phrase used when talks are going well

 
   
  access to markets
the right to sell in certain areas

 
   
  services
a service is an organisation or system that provides something such as post, transport or health for the public

 
   
  industrial products
things which are made in factories

 
   
  anti-globalisation
against the domination of international free trade by large corporations

 
   
  venue
the place where an event is held

 
   
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