The Aldara Hospital and Medical Centre is scheduled for completion in early 2015 and will house a 105-bed, six-storey hospital and two medical centres in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. The client is Aldara Medical Corporation, the statement said.

The contract was awarded to Arabtec Terna, which is 60 percent owned by Arabtec, the company that built Dubai's Palm Island. The company said it wants to expand in the Gulf region and do more specialised construction projects.

The resumption of work was a possible sign that the firm was gearing up towards restarting operations at the world's No. 2 copper mine.

Arizona-based Freeport suspended operations at the remote Papua mine on May 15 at a cost estimated at about $15 million a day in lost production, a day after the tunnel, away from its main operations, fell in on 38 workers.

"Starting today, around 35 to 40 percent of workers have been back to work in Freeport mining facility in Papua, but only for mining facilities and equipment maintenance, especially in Grasberg open-pit mining," Papua-based union leader Virgo Solossa told Reuters.

"Production activities are still shut. We hope investigation teams complete their works as soon as possible."

Several investigations are being conducted into the collapse, including one by the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry and one by Freeport Indonesia using international experts.

The bank said in a statement it had "made provisions in late 2010 to cover losses" of City National, meaning it "hopes for a net capital gain of around 180 million euros" from the sale to Banco de Credito e Inversiones.

The sale of Bankia's American subsidiary, brokered by Goldman Sachs and Sullivan&Cromwell, will result in 435 job losses, the statement said.

The move is part of the "commitments under the plan to restructure the BFA-Bankia group approved by the Spanish and European authorities in November 2012," it added.

The transaction should go ahead "between the last quarter of 2013 and the first of 2014" after receiving the go-ahead of the US, Spanish and Chilean authorities, the statement said.

The bank said in a statement it had "made provisions in late 2010 to cover losses" of City National, meaning it "hopes for a net capital gain of around 180 million euros" from the sale to Banco de Credito e Inversiones.

The sale of Bankia's American subsidiary, brokered by Goldman Sachs and Sullivan&Cromwell, will result in 435 job losses, the statement said.

The move is part of the "commitments under the plan to restructure the BFA-Bankia group approved by the Spanish and European authorities in November 2012," it added.

The transaction should go ahead "between the last quarter of 2013 and the first of 2014" after receiving the go-ahead of the US, Spanish and Chilean authorities, the statement said.

City National was bought in 2008 for 1.117 billion dollars (864 million euros) by Caja Madrid, which merged with six other lenders in 2010 to form Bankia.

Bankia soon became a symbol of Spain's banking crisis and the huge loans that turned sour after a 2008 property crash.

In May 2012, the BFA-Bankia group said it needed 19 billion euros to shore up its books, prompting Spain to seek a 100-billion-euro rescue loan for the entire industry from Brussels. So far, 41.3 billion euros of the rescue package have been disbursed.

The person requested anonymity because the matter is not public. Valeant and Bausch & Lomb could not be immediately reached for comment. Warburg Pincus declined to comment.

The Wall Street Journal, which earlier reported on the talks, said a deal might come as soon as next week.

The IEA also said that Germany, with Europe's biggest economy, should make greater use of natural gas to smoothe the transition and reduce the use of coal so it can meet its carbon reduction targets to combat climate change.

Given the scale of the "Energiewende" or energy shift, the size of the German economy and its location at the heart of Europe, the agency said in a regular review that further steps are needed "to maintain a balance between sustainability, affordability and competitiveness".

Chancellor Angela Merkel decided after Japan's 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident to phase out nuclear power by 2022, an about-turn that started with the immediate closure of the eight oldest plants.

Since then Germany has accelerated a boom in wind farms, solar power and biofuels, promoted by subsidies and legal reforms, with the goal of generating half of its electricity from renewables by 2030.

Legal reform in 2000 "has proven very effective in introducing renewable energies; notably electricity generation from biomass, wind energy and solar photovoltaics," the report said.

However, the Paris-based IEA pointed to a political debate in Germany about discounts given to industry, which have been financed in part by higher power bills for consumers and a tax surcharge.

"The costs and benefits need to be allocated in a fair and transparent way among all market participants, especially households," the report said.

"The fact that German electricity prices are among the highest in Europe, despite relatively low wholesale prices, must serve as a warning signal," said IEA executive director Maria van der Hoeven as she presented the report in Berlin.

This year a tax will add a total of about 60 euros ($77) to the average German household electricity bill, said the IEA, warning that "the transition to a low-carbon energy sector requires public acceptance".

The report also pointed to the geographic spread between the renewables' supply and demand. While most wind farms are in Germany's coastal north, the highest demand is in the industrial south and west.

Gas-fired power stations struggle

Germany is planning massively to expand its transmission and distribution networks, a costly process complicated by local opposition in many places to the new power infrastructure.

"To date, Germany's record with regard to the construction of new grid infrastructure is patchy and planning and consenting procedures present a major stumbling block," the IEA said.

In the global effort to halt climate change, melting ice caps and rising seas, Germany has pledged to cut its carbon emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and by 95 percent by 2050.

Ironically, a drop in the price of coal, one of the biggest polluters, has led to a comeback for coal at the expense of cleaner-burning natural gas. The fall in coal prices is largely a result of the development of shale oil and gas in North America.

"As a result of weak carbon prices and high gas prices in Europe, existing gas-fired plants have lost competitiveness, and evidence suggests that some are being taken off-line," said the report.

The IEA said that gas plants now "struggle to make a return despite the flexibility they offer to the market" in terms of quickly evening out troughs in the fickle supply of weather-dependent renewables.

"The strategic role of natural gas in the Energiewende needs further clarification," said the IEA, "and greater thought should be given to its use and place in the electricity supply mix of the future."

Under an agreement on financial help in 2011, the International Monetary Fund and European Union required Romania to privatise the company, CFR Marfa.

The state intends to sell 51.0 percent of the company at a price set initially at 180 million euros ($233 million).

The ministry of transport said on Friday that three companies had qualified for the next phase of the process.

It named them as OmniTRAX, a private US company, the Romanian railway group (GFR) which is the leading private rail freight operator in Romania, and a consortium.

The consortium comprises Romanian company TFG (Transferoviar Group), and Austrian investment fund Donau-Finanz and CO KG Austria.

They have until June 5 to present their final bids. The result of the tender will be announced on June 20.

The financial daily newspaper Ziarul Financiar ran a headline on its website "Surprise turn of events" noting that the three bidders had failed to qualify when the first attempt at the tender was made last week.

Since then the government has relaxed terms and conditions. Now candidates may participate if their turnover in the last three years exceeded 20 million euros instead of 100 million euros required previously.

Romania has repeatedly failed to respect the timetable for the privatisation and has obtained a delay of three months from the IMF and EU, up to the end of June, to privatise the business.

In Romania and Bulgaria, two former Communist countries which joined the European Union in 2007, the privatisation of state-owned rail freight companies has been announced for years, but repeatedly put off.

CFR Marfa employs about 9,000 people and carried debt of 1.5 billion lei (347 million euros). It has big property assets.

In 2011, the company had sales of 1.107 billion lei (251 million euros) and made a net loss of 93 million lei (21 million euros), on the basis of the latest available official data.

After a sharp 5.9 percent drop in March, new orders for long-lasting manufactured goods rose 3.3 percent to $222.6 billion, the Commerce Department reported.

The rebound was twice as strong as analysts expected and pointed to continued growth in the manufacturing sector.

Transportation equipment led the advance, increasing 8.1 percent to $67.6 billion, the department said. Commercial aircraft and parts orders drove the gain with a $1.9 billion rise.

Excluding transportation orders, which can be volatile month-over-month, new durable goods orders were up 1.3 percent.

Excluding defense, orders were up 2.1 percent.

Computer and electronic products orders rose 3.6 percent, while orders for computers dropped 3.7 percent.

Orders were marginally higher on a 12-month basis, up 0.7 percent from April 2012.

The announcement came days after Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak announced that one of the ratings giants was about to review its grade for Russia's credit.

Storchak never spelled out whether this review intended to raise or lower Russia's investment outlook.

But the markets are concerned that the revision will be made to the downside owing to rapidly slowing economic growth and inflation that has outpaced expectations.

Any downgrade would make Russian foreign borrowing more expensive and put a further strain on a budget that is expected to reach a deficit this year.

Russia today has similar investment-grade ratings with Standard and Poor's (BBB) as well as Moody's (Baa1 and Fitch (BBB).

But Moscow has set itself the goal of securing the highest ratings possible from the three agencies by 2016 at the latest.

Storchak told the RIA Novosti news agency that "we have agreed with J.P. Morgan for it to be our official partner in relations with the ratings agencies."

The minister provided no details of what the bank's work would entail and J.P. Morgan itself issued no immediate comment.

In January, the Russian authorities had already hired the US investment banking leader Goldman Sachs as its official adviser on its overall economic image.

Russia has been grappling for decades with official corruption and an ineffective legal system that has been spooking foreign investors and forcing the country's stocks to be sold at a discount.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin is set on making Moscow into a global financial centre that one day will link the Hong Kong markets with those in London and New York.

Jet shareholders approved the proposed issue of shares on a preferential basis to Etihad, at an extraordinary general meeting held in the city, the Press Trust of India agency said.

Shares will be allotted only after completion of all regulatory approvals.

"The commercial agreement with Etihad will help us to expand network, reduce costs and increase profitability," Jet's chairman Naresh Goyal reportedly told shareholders. Jet officials were not immediately available to comment.

The Jet-Etihad deal, announced in April, is the first overseas investment in an existing Indian carrier since New Delhi eased restrictions in September to allow foreign firms a 49 percent stake in the country's airlines.

Jet is India's second largest airline, with a 22.6 percent market share, according to the country's civil aviation regulator.

For the three months to December 2012, Jet reported a net profit of 850 million rupees ($16.03 million), from a net loss of 1.01 billion rupees a year earlier, aided by rising fares and lowering costs.

India is one of the biggest aviation markets in the world as its large and growing middle-class scrambles for air travel, spurred by rising incomes.

But the sector, once vaunted as a symbol of India's economic vibrancy, has seen its fortunes fade in the face of aggressive fare rivalry, a slowing economy, rundown infrastructure, high airport charges and expensive fuel.