New Delhi, Feb. 9 : Professor Arjun Sengupta, well-known economist and Chairman of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector, Government of India, today suggested a formula based approach to ensure stability and predictability in the petroleum product prices.

Delivering the keynote address at a Focus Group Discussion on "Petroleum Product Pricing Reforms: Now Is the Time", Sengupta said the formula can be developed either by a group or committee.

New Delhi, Feb 9 : India through an Access Agreement with the European Patent Office, has established a mechanism to protect India''s traditional medicinal knowledge from bio-piracy.

The maiden Indian effort in creating ''Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) database would now be available to the Patent Examiners at European Patent Office (EPO having 34 member states) for establishing prior art, in case of patent applications based on Indian systems of medicine.

The accessibility of data base has come into operation from February 2.

New Delhi, Feb 9 : China has employed artificial means to create rains in at least seven provinces to alleviate a rare drought that has hit the areas.

Reports from the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) indicate that local weather-control officials had fired a total of 2,392 artillery shells and launched 409 rockets in
127 cloud-seeding operations by the night of February 7th.

Rain-enhancing practices were adopted in such drought-stricken provincial regions as Henan, Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hubei and Anhui, the report said.

New Delhi, Feb 9 : Maytas Infra made a startling revelation to the Bombay Stock Exchange on Monday that three of its promoters--B Ramalinga Raju, B Rama Raju and B Nandini Raju had pledged their entire holdings of 15.14 percent to lenders.

While Ramalinga Raju, the former chairman of fraud-hit Satyam Computers pledged his holding worth 48.54 lakh shares, which is 8.25 percent of the paid up capital of Maytas Infra, B Rama Raju pledged 14.85 lakh shares representing 2.52 per cent stake in the firm.

New Delhi, Feb. 9, : The Government has conditionally approved the levy of a Development Fee (DF) by the Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) at Rs. 1,300 per departing international passenger and Rs. 200 per departing domestic passenger with effect from March 1, 2009.

The DF, which is being levied purely on an adhoc basis, is inclusive of all applicable taxes and is for a period of 36 months only.

New Delhi, Feb 9 : Hollywood actress Evangeline Lilly was so desperate to travel around the world that she began working as a flight attendant.

However, the job didn't stand up to her expectations, as it was terribly grueling, thus she finally quit and ventured into Hollywood, reports China Daily.

"I had no money. I was living on tea and peanut butter when I was a university student. I just wanted to travel so desperately that I would have done anything. I did the flight attendant training, which is grueling and hectic," Evangeline said.