Health Minister Nicola Roxon announced that private health insurance premiums will go up by an average of 6.02% on April 1. She said she had written to several large funds in this regards and had challenged their request for larger premium rises.

"Without that close scrutiny, premium rises would have been higher for up to eight million Australians," she said.

"This year's increase is the result of increased benefits paid to patients, rising health service costs, and investment losses from the global financial crisis."

The 30-share BSE Sensex continued to trade negative with heavy selling activity seen across all the sectoral indices.

Banking and Metal stocks were hammered badly.

Meanwhile, BSE Bankex (4.18%), Metal (3.44%), IT (2.71%) and Oil&Gas (2.52%) were among major losers in the sectoral indices.

BSE Midcap and Smallcap declined 1.58% and 1.24% respectively.

Showing recovery for the two successive months, Maruti Suzuki has reported a 24.08% growth in its total sales during the last month (February 2009).

India’s biggest car manufacturer sold 79,190 units during Feb 2009, as against 63,822 units in the corresponding period of the last year (Feb 2008).

After September 2008, the company’s saw drastic fall in its sales for the next three months by 7.1%, 27.4% and 10% respectively.

But, the company's sales grew 5.39% in January 2009.

At the Platinum Jubilee celebration of the Medical Council of India (MCI) on Sunday, President Pratibha Patil said that the medical interns should be sent to villages for their training.

She said that this would make them receptive to the requirements in the country’s rustic regions, and hopefully encourage them to work there.

In her speech, Ms. Patil said, “A very important aspect of medical education is the internship phase. I have always emphasised on sending medical interns to our villages as part of their training.”

Companies continue to hire professionals from IIM-A despite low demand and tight conditions of financial market under the impact of global slowdown. Recently, around 50 companies visited the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) to recruit students of the post-graduate program (PGP), encouraging freshers  not to sit idle and face challenges aroused on accounts of breakout of global recession.

The Bengal selectors have named Laxmi Ratan Shukla as the skipper of the Bengal team for the Vijay Hazare Trophy knock-out phase.

However, on the other hand, the East Zone selectors had selected Manoj Tiwary as the skipper for the East Zone team for the next month's Deodhar Trophy.

With this, it becomes clear that there is a divide among the Bengal and zonal selectors over the selection of skipper.