For Indian films to break out internationally, what was needed were original stories with an Indian feel that Western viewers can connect, says Hollywood producer Ashok Amritraj.

"For me it's all about stories and starting stories. The question is what the ideas are?" Amritraj, who is bringing his 3D venture "Ghost Rider Spirit Of Vengeance" to India, told IANS in an interview here.

"It always has to be something that could break out internationally. So far, there have been two movies that have broken out internationally - "Gandhi" and "Slumdog Millionaire"...I would look for stories that our Western viewers get connected to," he said.

"There are movies made around the world and the audiences connect to it. It doesn't matter where it is made and what language, people connect to the story. So the question is to find screenplays or stories that have an Indian feel to it but can move across the Western world. I'm not making it just for India," he added.

In his 31-year-long stint in Hollywood, he has produced more than 100 films under his banner Hyde Park Entertainment and collaborated with big names like Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Angelina Jolie and Robert DeNiro.

He is open to co-production with Indian studios, but said: "It's a question of finding interesting stories. In India, we have so many, but working it in a way that can give it a larger market."

Indian filmmakers recently got into experimenting mode, but Hollywood has been focussing on it for years, Amritraj points out.

"The great thing about Hollywood is that they always made different kinds of movies - you had 'Lawrence of Arabia', 'The Sound of Music', and also have 'Chariots of Fire', 'Gandhi' and 'Forrest Gump' - it's one of the things that has always excited me. In the last two years, we had 'Black Swan', 'The King's Speech' and this year you had 'The Descendants'.

Kamal Bawa, an Indian-born professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, is the 2012 winner of the Gunnerus Sustainability Award, the world's first major international award for work on sustainability.

"I was mesmerised by the change," says an excited Sifat Khan, a 21-year-old who grew up in Australia and visited poll-bound Lucknow this winter after four years. She was thrilled to find recreation spots, malls, well-lit roads and a changing lifestyle - not to mention the renovated commercial hub of Hazratganj.

After a Siberian district court in late 2011 rejected a petition seeking a ban on a Russian translation of the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita, Tomsk region prosecutor general Vasily Voikin has demanded that a Russian comment included in the scripture be banned, his deputy said Thursday.