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First half net profit of Premier Investments Ltd. declined, said the company on Monday.

The net profit of the group fell by 14 per cent to become A$42.4 million for the H1 period. This is against A$49.2 million for the same period last year.

The company saw its sales rise by 9 per cent to touch A$476.4 million. Most of this came from the Just Group division which saw sales of A$436.5 million. The net profit of this division rose by 12.3 per cent to become A$56.3 million.

The company informed that poor performance of its bottom line has happened because of the below than expected performance of Portmans retail division. While some units of the division were doing well, on the overall front it was not profitable.

The month of February saw a decline in total motor vehicles in Australia. As against January, the total sales for February were 85,035, a drop of 1.9 per cent.

This has happened, say industry experts, because of the rolling back of the tax breaks given by the government. It has led to a fall in investment and thus directly impacting the commercial vehicle segment.

The category known as the 'other category' fell by 8.6 per cent and the passenger auto segment saw a fall of 0.1 per cent.

Three Melbourne-based communication-related companies, GoConnect (GCN), Cashmere Media Pty Ltd and PLW Entertainment, have decided that they would merge their businesses.

This is in line with a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which they signed together on February 1.

This they are doing so that the trio can enter into the business of launch of music IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) channel besides making up global strategies and facing the growing competition in the industry.

Knee replacement has proved to be very successful in relieving the pain of patients who are bothered by osteoarthritis.

A talk highlighting the benefits of the procedure was organized by the Rotary Club, Ludhiana Southend on Sunday. Veteran Bollywood actor Sulbha Deshpande extended her support to the endeavor and shared her story with the audience.

The talk landed support to the campaign called Arthritis & its Management-Stand on Your Feet Again.

China's Minerals and Metals Group (MMG) posted a profit after forming an entity which was based on assets of Australia's OZ Minerals.

MMG bought over the assets of OZ by spending A$1.47 billion.

The company saw net profit of A$197.2 million for the last seven months of the last year. The company said that this has been possible because of the rising commodity prices. And that is precisely the reason why it expects that
2010 will be even better.

It also posted revenue of A$ 929.9 million for the above mentioned period and saw a total EBITDA of A$382.2 million.

A student from IIT- Kharagpur, Manoj Mandelia has devised a way to generate electricity from sewage water.

“I developed a product which uses the concept of microbial fuel cell, a bio-electrochemical system that drives current by mimicking bacterial interactions found in nature,” he said.

Mandelia is 23 years old and is pursuing integrated MTech from the premier institute. His project named Localised Operation of Bio-cells Using Sewage (LOCUS) is able to reduced chemical oxygen demand in sewage water by about 60-80 per cent.