Rebel News - Independent News and Analysis

A South Korean company has won a contract worth $1.46 billion to construct the world's largest desalination plant in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi state-owned Saline Water Conversion Corp notified Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction on winning the contract on Wednesday and said the plant will be launched by January 2014.

The private sector in the United States has cut 10,000 jobs in August to underscore a weakening labor market, the ADP Employer Services says.

The drop last month represented the first monthly decline since last December, while it failed to meet economists' estimates that recruiting would edge higher.

Apple Inc unveiled a snazzier line of its iPod on Wednesday, with new designs for every model of the popular media device in hopes of kick-starting holiday sales.

"We've gone wild," Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said. "It's the biggest change in the iPod lineup ever."

Trade in global currency markets has increased by 20 percentage points over the past three years to a daily amount of $4 trillion a day, a major survey has shown.

The triennial report by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) showed rapid growth in trading by hedge funds, insurance firms, central banks and other non-bank financial institutions, with the majority of business happening in London.

Stocks jumped Wednesday after surprisingly strong growth in U.S. and Chinese manufacturing allayed some of the worries that had been building over the global economy in recent weeks.

The new reports snapped a string of disappointing economic data that sent stocks slumping in August. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index, the benchmark most widely used by professional investors, lost 4.7 percent in the month, its worst August performance since 2001.

Iran has extended a credit line of more than 200 million euros to Bolivia to help the industrial development of the South American country.

The agreement included the transfer of technology to Bolivia, Iranian Minister of Industries and Mining Ali Akbar Mehrabian said at a joint press conference with Bolivian President Evo Morales in the capital city of La Paz on Monday, the state-run ABI news agency reported.

The unemployment rate across the eurozone has remained at a record rate of 10 percent in July for the fifth month running, official figures show.

According to European Union data (Eurostat) released on Tuesday, some 15.8 million people within the 16-nation eurozone were jobless in July as the eurozone unemployment rate remains at its highest level since the euro's virtual birth in 1999.

Iran has produced more than 16 million tons of petrochemical products in the first five months of the Iranian year (March 21 - August 21, 2010).

Iran exported 7.14 million tons of petrochemicals, worth $4.2 billion, and some 2.8 million tons of the produced petrochemicals were sold in domestic markets, according to a report published on the Oil Ministry's official website SHANA.

A senior official in Iran's Energy Ministry says the country ranks eighth among world countries that have the capability to construct gas power plants.

Iran has successfully managed to develop the advanced technology to build gas power plants and compete with the developed countries in this field, Iranian Deputy Energy Minister Hamid Chitchian said on Tuesday.

India's economy has registered its fastest growth in more than two years in the last quarter due to an expansion in manufacturing and services, official data shows.

India's economy grew 8.8 percent in the 2010 April-June quarter compared with the same period last year, India's Central Statistical Organization said in a statement released in New Delhi on Tuesday.