India is moving swiftly to sell majority stakes in more than 20 state firms including hotel chains, airlines and telecom companies, according to reports quoting minister of state for disinvestments Arun Shourie.

He told Star television that the government was aiming to meet the annual budget target of raising 120 billion rupees (2.5 billion dollars) through privatization, despite running into resistance from opposition lawmakers.

The government’s efforts at privatization recently received a boost when labour unions ended a two-month old strike to protest the sale of a 51-percent stake in state-run Bharat Aluminum Company to a private firm.

India has already approved the sale of stakes in major state-owned firms including international airline Air India, domestic carrier Indian Airlines and the country’s largest carmaker, Maruti Udyog Ltd.

To keep up with the design demands of the new century, Japan’s Toyota Motor Corporation has started selling in the home market new models of Ipsum and Corolla since May.

Targeted to sell 3,500 units per month, Corolla Spacio is a new "tall two-box" model and based on New Century Value (NCV) development concept, states Toyota in a press release received in Kahtmandu.

The New Ipsum Minivan is targeted to sell 5,000 units per month. Both the models are claimed to meet 2010 fuel-consumption standards and said to have 25% lower emissions than the standards for 2000.

According to newly released 15th annual list of world’s billionaires by Forbes, Microsoft’s cofounders Bill Gates and Paul Allen have come out as the richest and third richest men on the earth with stock market wizard Warren Buffet grabbing the second position.

The billionaire club swelled to 538 members this year, up from 482 last year because Forbes decided for the first time to include all billionaires.

Previously, the magazine counted only working rich or those who ran business.

As a result, Masayoshi Son of Japan, Michael Dell of USA, Silvio Berlusconi of Italy and Rupert Murdoch of USA are some of the noted billionaires that lost their top-twenty berth in this year’s list. Ajim Premji & family of India have come out on 42nd position.

In a land mark verdict, a jury in Los Angeles, USA, has ordered tobacco giant Phillip Morris to pay more than three billion dollars to a cancer patient, who is a longtime smoker.

In his complaint, the smoker accused Phillip Morris, the producer of Marlboro brand of cigarettes, of lying to the public for more than 40 years about the harms of smoking.

Phillip Morris lawyers have described the verdict "outrageous in the extreme" and are preparing to go for appeal.