Vatican City - Diplomatic "contacts" are under way for a possible visit by Pope Benedict XVI to Israel and the Palestinian Territories in 2009, the papal spokesman said Thursday.

Father Federico Lombardi was commenting on a report by an Israeli newspaper that the pontiff was set to visit the Holy Land in May 2009.

Lombardi said no definite date had been set since the Vatican was still "studying" the situation.

Tel Aviv-based daily Haaretz said in its online English version that Benedict had accepted an invitation by Israeli President Shimon Peres.

London, November 27: A Brit woman, whose son had gifted her a painting by Adolf Hitler for her birthday, sent her present under the hammer bearing a loss of 7,000 pounds - because she couldn’t stand it.

The watercolour, which as per the experts was painted between 1915 and 1918 at a time when the Nazi Party leader had been stationed as a foot soldier, had been purchased for an amount of 10,500 pounds in 2006.

But the Hampshire woman decided to sell the ''The Church of Preux-au-Bois'', bearing Hitler’s signature at the bottom left, owing to its artists infamous place in history, reports the Telegraph.

Banks have agreed to extend financial help to small and medium enterprises (SME) and exporters in the wake of tight liquidity conditions, following the international credit crunch. The Indian Bank’s Association (IBA) discussed the problems of SMEs and hinted to increase the credit limit and ease loan repayment norms without any penalty. 

The SMEs and export organizations demanded increase in lending limit from Rs 75 crore against stocks of Rs 100 crore to Rs 85 crore against the inventory. The members of SMEs said that the customers are not repaying them as per stipulated conditions and hence the repayments are getting delayed.

Pristina - An unknown Albanian group on Thursday claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on a European Union office in Kosovo earlier this month and warned of attacks against the Serb minority.

Three Germans, allegedly Berlin's intelligence agents, were arrested in connection with the November 14 bombing of the EU office, but were expected to be released Thursday due to lack of evidence.

Adelaide, Nov 27: Ahead of his 100th Test, Australian all-rounder Matthew Hayden has said that he doesn’t consider himself as “special”.

Having played for 14 long years, after making debut against South Africa in Johannesburg in 1994, Hayden declared there was nothing special about his cricketing story.

The chief election commission of India has served a notice to union petroleum minister Murli Deora for his alleged announcement on fuel price reduction.

Mr. Deora had announced price reduction in line with falling international prices of crude oil, after completion of the ongoing election process and opposition parties, especially, BJP, objected to the comments of the Union Minister. It filed a complaint against him before the election commission. Now, the EC has asked the union minister to file his reply by November 27 on his comments regarding price cut.