Berlin - Around 10,000 dairy farmers in three German cities protested Wednesday about the collapse of milk prices to around 0.20 euros (26 cents) per litre.

"We are standing with our backs to the wall," said Romuald Schaber, chairman of the Federation of German Dairy Farmers (BDM), at a rally in the northern city of Hanover.

Dairy farmers are seeking a two-fold increase in the amount they are paid for their milk as well as a retention of milk quotas due to disappear under European Union regulations in 2015.

Dhaka - Saudi Arabia promised to recruit more Bangladeshi workers, while reassuring Dhaka that complications over work permits faced by over 2 million Bangladeshi workers already in the kingdom would be resolved, Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said Saturday. Moni made the comments while briefing reporters on the recent five-day visit by Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed to the kingdom.

Berlin - The German government has demanded that potential Opel investors preserve jobs and factories in Germany, the German daily Bild reported. "Every investor must strengthen Germany," Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee said in an interview to be published Sunday. "Anyone who wants to close plants and cut jobs is not a suitable Opel partner," Tiefensee added.

Warsaw, April 24: India and Poland on Friday signed two agreements -- one on bilateral cooperation in the tourism sector and the second on cooperation in the health and medicine sector.

Katarzyna Sobierajska, Under Secretary of State in the Polish Ministry of Sport and Tourism signed the agreement on tourism cooperation from the Polish side. Minister of State for Industry, Ashwani Kumar, signed on behalf of the Indian side.

Tokyo - Japan's largest brokerage house, Nomura Holings Inc, incurred a record net loss for fiscal 2008 that ended March 31, the firm said Friday.

The record loss amounted to 709.44 billion yen (7.24 billion dollars) after the firm was hit hard by the global financial turmoil and the burden of taking over part of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc in September last year.

Nomura also posted a net loss of 67.85 billion yen in fiscal 2007.

Wellington - New Zealand's budget deficit is spiralling out of control as the country enters its sixth-consecutive quarter of economic contraction, Finance Minister Bill English warned Wednesday.

If growth in public expenditures is not checked, the deficits would hit 45 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in four years and an unsustainable 70 per cent by 2023, he told business leaders in Auckland.

Observers said the speech clearly paved the way for the conservative National Party-led government to cancel tax cuts for the next two years that it had promised in its successful campaign for election in November.