Sydney  - Wafer-thin women are the latest casualty of the economic downturn in Australia, modelling agency executives said Wednesday.

"Brands are being very cautious and going with what is safe," Scene Models proprietor Vikki Graham told Sydney's Daily Telegraph. "For women, that means there's a bit more of a focus on curves."

Scoop Agency owner Ursula Hufnagl agreed, saying that in these grim times for retailers, modelling demand had shifted from skinny young things to older women with more representative shapes.

Budapest - The Hungarian Finance Minister Janos Veres said on Tuesday that there was no real justification for a recent tumble in the value of the Hungarian forint.

"The weakening of the forint was fundamentally influenced by misinformation over the past few days," Veres said at a meeting with the international press.

The forint was trading at a mid-market rate of 284 to the euro as the minister spoke on Tuesday morning, down from 266 on Friday.

Hong Kong - Hong Kong was Tuesday ranked the world's freest economy for the 15th consecutive year in a survey by the US think-tank the Heritage Foundation.

Singapore was again ranked second in the annual study, followed by Australia, Ireland and New Zealand. The US was ranked sixth, one place lower than last year.

At the opposite end of the survey, North Korea was ranked the world's most restricted economy, followed by Zimbabwe, Cuba, Myanmar and Eritrea.

Wellington - Business activity and confidence in New Zealand, which has been in recession since the start of 2008, is at its lowest since 1970, according to a survey of companies released on Tuesday.

The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research said its quarterly survey of business opinion found 44 per cent of firms reported a fall in their businesses in the last three months of 2008.

A net 43 per cent said they expected their trading activity to decrease in the first quarter of this year.

Both figures were the highest since March 1970 and ASB Bank economist Nick Tuffley said they indicated that the recession would continue to the middle of the year, if not longer.

Vilnius  - The level of inflation in Lithuania fell to 8.5 per cent year-on-year in December from 9.1 per cent in November according to official figures released by the national statistics office in the largest of the Baltic states on Monday.

The 12-month inflation average for the whole year stood at 10.9 per cent. Lithuania's is the largest of the three Baltic economies and until recently was among Eastern Europe's strongest.

Washington  - US President George W Bush asked Congress Monday to sign off on the remaining 350 billion dollars of the finance bailout package after receiving a request to release the funds from president-elect Barack Obama.

Bush had said earlier Monday that he was willing to do so if Obama, who takes office in eight days, asked the president to move forward on the 700-billion-dollar bailout for the embattled financial industry.