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Business News Sep. 28, 2009 • Barack Obama used his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly to call for a “new era of engagement” based on “mutual respect” and argued that solving the world’s problems “cannot solely be America’s endeavour”. Mr Obama spoke shortly before leaders from the G20 countries gathered in Pittsburgh for a summit. • Dell took a long-awaited step towards diversifying its business when it agreed to pay $3.9 billion for Perot Systems, an IT services company. The computer-maker obtains most of its revenue from selling hardware and related products to companies, which leaves it vulnerable to business downturns. Perot Systems, founded by Ross Perot, a former presidential candidate, receives most of its income from government and health-care contracts, a more stable source of revenue which will increase if the American government digitises patients’ records as promised. • Britain’s Lloyds Banking Group announced that “in light of improving economic conditions” it would seek to reduce the amount of toxic assets to be ring-fenced in the government’s asset-protection scheme. Royal Bank of Scotland also wants to reduce its participation in the scheme. • China filed an appeal against a ruling by the WTO that calls for the country to lift restrictions against American books, films and music. Such imports are channelled through state-run distributors, which China argues is necessary to protect public decency and culture. • The price of tea hit another high because of drought in Kenya, the largest exporter. In Sri Lanka, tea workers are demanding a 75% increase in their daily wage, to 500 Sri Lankan rupees ($4). A survey in 2007 found a third of plantation employees live in poverty. • The UN held a big meeting on climate change amid concerns that talks due in December in Copenhagen to renegotiate the Kyoto protocol are heading for failure. Rifts are emerging between rich and poor nations and between America and Europe over the burden of targets for reducing industrial emissions. China pledged for the first time to reduce its emissions in proportion to GDP by a “notable margin”, but gave no specifics. • Researchers claimed a breakthrough in preventing the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, when the results of a study using an experimental vaccine on 16,000 volunteers in Thailand showed the risk of infection had been cut by 31%. • Officials in Taiwan made it clear that, this year, their country will not ask its diplomatic partners to propose its readmission to the UN, which China always blocks. In a gesture seen as conciliatory to China, it will confine itself to seeking membership of two UN agencies dealing with, respectively, climate change and aviation safety. • A huge storm along Australia’s east coast cloaked Sydney in a fog of desert dust whipped up from topsoil in the interior, which is suffering drought.