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Beijing: Over 1,900 giant pandas, an endangered species, are currently in China and different parts of the world, representing an increase of 16.8 per cent compared to twelve years ago, according to official data.

There were 1,864 giant pandas living in the wild in China by the end of 2013, while 42 more stayed in 12 different countries, a survey of the State Forestry Administration said.

China has established collaborative research on giant pandas with 17 zoos from 12 countries, including Japan, the US, Austria, Thailand, Spain, Australia, Britain, France, Singapore, Canada, Belgium and Malaysia, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

New Delhi: The infrastructure sector has remained clogged by bottlenecks so much so that it accounted for one of the highest stressed advances by public sector banks, but a slew of steps are on fast-track its growth, says the Economic Survey.

"Infrastructure, iron & steel, textiles, mining (including coal) and aviation, hold 54 per cent of total stressed advances of PSBs as on June 2014," said the Economic Survey for 2014-15, tabled in Parliament today.

It said exposure of PSBs to infrastructure stood at 17.5 percent of their gross advances and was significantly higher than private sector and foreign banks.

The Survey added however that government's focus was on resolving issues that have marred the sector's growth.

The Obama administration on Friday proposed a bill intending to fill gaps by issuing some baseline information-processing requirements for all sorts of firms.

The new proposed bill, the Customer Privacy Bill of Rights Act, aims to provide American with more handles, fulfilling a promise the president had talked about for years.

But some privacy advocates immediately raised questions on the proposed bill. They said that the new legislation less adequate, specifically given the broad statements President Barack Obama had issued on the challenge.

They said that the bill will provide more flexibility to the providers and customers on the other hand will have no sufficient power.

Mumbai: A benchmark index of Indian equities markets, the 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex), Saturday surged 213.71 points or 0.73 percent in the early session ahead of the Union Budget.

Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has lost a final bid to move his trial to another city. It happened just a week before a jury will start hearing the terrorism case.

This is not the first denial for him, as the 21-year-old former college student has lost repeated requests to move the trial to New York or Washington.

Tsarnaev was accused of building two homemade pressure cooker bombs with his older brother, Tamerlan.

The death penalty trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has faced a delay due to painstaking jury selection, crippling snowstorms and last-ditch appeals to move the case someplace else.

A report released by the University of Michigan on Friday showed that unusual harsh winter weather in February proved to have weighed upon consumers. But increase in jobs and lower gas prices helped strengthened the consumer sentiments, showed report.

According to the report, the measure of consumer sentiment fell to 95.4 in this month. Despite the fall, it is the highest level in past eight years.

Consumer sentiment in January was 98.1, an 11-year high. Severe winter weather and lower gas prices highly affected the consumer optimism.

Richard Curtin, chief economist of the surveys, said in a statement that it is very hard not to attribute the small February decline to the temporary impact of the harsh weather.