G8 mostly skips UN hunger summit

ROME: Government leaders and officials met in Rome yesterday for the start of a three-day UN summit on how to fight global hunger, but anti-poverty campaigners are already writing off the event as a missed opportunity.

With the world's hungry topping one billion for the first time in history, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization had called the summit, hoping that leaders would commit to raising the share of official aid spent on agriculture to 17 percent of the total - its 1980 level - from 5 percent now.

That would amount to $44 billion a year, up from $7.9 billion now.