Saudi Arabia has given a "final warning" to avoid delays on an $8.2 billion high-speed rail project which Spanish and Saudi firms are helping to build.

The Haramain High Speed Rail system is to transport Muslim pilgrims, as well as regular travellers, 450 kilometres (280 miles) between the holy cities of Mecca and Medina via the Red Sea port of Jeddah.

On a sprawling, lush cocoa plantation in Mukono outside the Ugandan capital Kampala, farmers have been sampling chocolate for the first time ever.

"When we gave our farm manager the first product to taste his face was so amazing, he was saying 'really this is coming out from what we are doing?'" said Felix Okuye, 28, the executive director and co-founder of startup Pink Food Industries.

Oil prices edged lower in thin pre-holiday trade Wednesday, but analysts said losses were curbed by upbeat sentiment over a strong US economic growth report. 

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for February delivery fell 46 cents to $56.66, while Brent crude for February eased 49 cents to $61.20 in afternoon trade.

China is losing more than $10 billion a year from its expressways, state media reported Wednesday, despite levying hefty tolls on the world's largest highway network.

China spent 431 billion yuan ($69 billion) on building, maintaining and operating highways in 2013, but only took in 365 billion yuan from tolls, the China Daily reported, citing the Ministry of Transport.

Mass protests against new water taxes set to be introduced in Ireland from January 1 have shown up deep wells of resentment after years of austerity, even as the economy rebounds.

Unease about the charges, agreed as a condition for Ireland's EU-IMF bailout, is threatening the current coalition government which came to power at the height of the financial crisis in 2011.

On the 25th anniversary of the execution of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, life in the small Romanian port town of Zimnicea is defined by poverty, corruption and, remarkably, a yearning for communist days.

This industrial city of 15,000 symbolises the fortunes of the EU's second poorest country as it has tried to rebuild since Ceausescu was killed by a firing squad on December 25, 1989, after a popular rebellion pushed him from power. 

From desert camping to luxury hotels, turtle-watching, and even the Arabian Peninsula's first Italian-style opera house, Oman is hoping to carve out a place on the global tourist track.

Heavily reliant on energy exports, the tiny Gulf sultanate is keen to diversify its economy, especially as the drop in global oil prices begins to bite.

The Iraqi cabinet on Tuesday approved a $102.5 billion budget for 2015 based on a projected oil price of $60 a barrel, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's spokesman said.

Rafid Jaboori also said that the projected deficit for the year is $19.1 billion. He did not give details on how the funds will be allocated.

Israel's antitrust authority is challenging the ownership structure of the country's natural gas resources, a decision that could rattle an increasingly important industry.

A U.S.-Israeli conglomerate has been developing most of Israel's offshore natural gas deposits. It sells gas to the Israeli market and has agreed to sell to neighboring countries as well.

OPEC will not cut oil production even if the price drops to $20 a barrel and it is unfair to expect the cartel to reduce output if non-members do not, Saudi Arabia said.

"Whether it goes down to $20 a barrel, $40, $50, $60, it is irrelevant," the kingdom's Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said in an interview with the Middle East Economic Survey (MEES), an industry weekly.