Dhaka  - Bangladesh's foreign minister, Dipu Moni, Wednesday called for increased duty-free access for Bangladeshi products in the Indian market, to offset the huge trade imbalance between the two South Asian neighbours.

"As one of the world's fastest growing economies, India has the capacity to import more Bangladeshi products to ease the balance of trade situation between the countries," the newly appointed foreign minister said when the Indian envoy to Bangladesh called on her in Dhaka.

Brasilia  - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva congratulated new US President Barack Obama on Wednesday, and expressed a call for "fluent and profitable" dialogue and a "renewed friendship" between the two countries.

Los Angeles  - At the distinctly un-starlike hour of 5:30 am (1330 GMT) Thursday morning, the Oscar season will officially move into high gear.

That's when Forest Whitaker, who won an Oscar in 2006's The Last King Of Scotland, will unveil the nominations for the 2008 Academy Awards from Hollywood's Samuel Goldwyn Theatre.

Forest, 47, will be reading out the names at the press conference alongside Sid Ganis, who heads the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Budapest  - Unions called off a strike at Budapest's Ferihegy international airport Wednesday, but had yet to reach a compromise with airport management in a dispute over terms and conditions.

Passengers were faced with delays on Monday afternoon when two unions representing ground staff announced the resumption of a strike that had been suspended after
12 days on December 22.

Sana'a, Yemen  - The governor of Yemen's south-eastern province of Shabwa has vowed to pursue tribesmen who abducted a German oil expert and two Yemeni engineers, the official Saba news agency reported on Wednesday.

"Security apparatuses are determined to pursue all those involved in the crime of kidnapping the German engineer and to arrest them at the earliest," the agency quoted the governor, Ali Hassan al-Ahmadi, as saying during a meeting with the freed hostage.

Vienna  - The global economic and financial crisis has softened the traditionally eurosceptic attitude of the Austrian population, a European Union poll released on Wednesday showed.

According to the latest Eurobarometer poll which was conducted amid the global financial crisis last October and November, 47 per cent of Austrians said EU membership was good for their country, an 11-per-cent increase from the previous poll.