Scientists: Earth-like planet discovered www.nhk.or.jp

A group of scientists say they have discovered a potentially habitable planet around the nearest fixed star to Earth. The planet is about four light years away.

Guangzhou Auto starts building 240-mln-USD Xinjiang plant www.xinhuanet.com

China oil giants suffer from dropping crude prices www.xinhuanet.com

BEIJING, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- Despite rising output, China's major oil producers posted lackluster performance in the first half of the year weighed upon by dropping global crude prices.

German business confidence falls post-Brexit, says Ifo www.bbc.com

Business confidence in Europe's biggest economy, Germany, has fallen unexpectedly after the UK Brexit vote, according to a closely watched survey.
The Ifo business confidence index, based on about 7,000 company responses, fell to 106.2 points for August from 108.3 in July.
It was the steepest monthly fall in more than four years and took the index to its lowest since December 2014.
Despite the gloom, the euro was up slightly against the pound and dollar.
'Delayed reaction'
The latest drop follows a much smaller decline in confidence in July immediately after the UK voted to leave the EU.
Economist Carsten Brzeski at ING-DiBa said the ongoing decline "suggests that German businesses have suddenly woken up to Brexit reality".
"It is not the first time that the Ifo reacts with a delay of one or two months to global events,'' he said, adding that at present, the German economy remained in a "virtuous circle".
Across the sectors it examines, the Ifo found confidence had fallen in all but construction and services.
"The German economy has fallen into a summer slump," Ifo president Clemens Fuest said.
Other official figures released earlier this month showed the German economy grew 0.4% in the second quarter compared with the previous three-month period.
That was a slower pace than the 0.7% growth in the first quarter, but double what economists had expected.

Mongolia might harvest wheat to fully provide country with flour www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ At a cabinet meeting held Wednesday, a preliminary balance of harvest for this autumn was presented.

Asia Foundation wants cooperation to fight against corruption www.gogo.mn

Head of Security and Foreign Policy Standing Committee J.Enkhbayar, Head of State Structure Standing Committee N.Enkhbold and MP A.Undraa received today the representatives of Asia Foundation, a nonprofit international development organization. 
During the meeting, the parties have exchanged views on projects and programs to be implemented jointly by the Asia Foundation, State Great Khural, the Government and NGOs. Currently, Asia foundation is working in 18 countries while operating in Mongolia since 1990 to strengthen democracy, promote good governance and transparency, empower women, reduce corruption and focus on environmental restoration.

Washington warns Brussels over plan to demand billions in unpaid taxes from Apple www.rt.com

The US Treasury Department has threatened possible retaliation if the European Commission pursues American companies like Apple, Amazon and Starbucks over tax avoidance.
The EU has been investigating whether Apple’s tax dealings in Ireland, which allowed the company to pay very little income tax for its European earnings, violated European rules. Apple is suspected of using loopholes in tax laws and paying just two percent tax in Ireland, well below the official 12.5 percent. The decision is expected to be announced next month.

PayPal and FIS team up for careless ATMs www.businessinsider.com

Google punishes sites with pop-up adverts www.bbc.com

Google is to penalise websites that feature intrusive pop-up adverts.
It is updating the algorithms used to rank its search results so that offending pages are more likely to get lower placings.
The change is due to come into effect on 10 January.
Google makes much of its money from placing ads on the mobile web. One expert said the company wanted to give users one less reason to use ad-blockers or search within apps instead.
For its part, Google said the move should make using some of its results less frustrating.
"Pages that show intrusive interstitials [elements that cover the content] provide a poorer experience to users than other pages where content is immediately accessible," it blogged.
"This can be problematic on mobile devices where screens are often smaller."
Punishing pop-ups
The California-based company gave three examples of practices it wanted to discourage:
pop-ups that covered part of the main content when the user clicked on to a page
an intermediary webpage that had to be dismissed before the main content could be seen
an ad that filled the web browser's screen so users had to scroll down "below the fold" before they could see the material they wanted
Google will, however, make some exceptions.
Pop-ups that alert readers to the use of cookies are still permissible, for example, as are ones that require log-in details to let visitors get behind a paywall.
"Google is one of the largest advertising companies in the world, but it's in a very different position to Facebook, Snapchat and other global media consumption apps," said Daniel Knapp, senior director of advertising research at the IHS consultancy.
"Google is still very reliant on the desktop and mobile web to make money, and it's much more difficult to clean up that experience than the native app environments.
"That's why it needs to tighten the screws on everyone with this crackdown."

UK firm launches sports streaming service in Japan www3.nhk.or.jp

A British media firm has started live streaming of international sports events for smartphone users in Japan.