China

Dodging next month's IFA gathering in order to go out on its own, Microsoft will reportedly debut the eagerly-awaited Surface Phone alongside the final Windows 10 for mobile release.

It's not the only Microsoft-made device being tipped for an October unveiling, either. According to Chinese Windows blog, WPDang, the flagship phone will debut alongside the heavily rumoured Surface Pro 4 tablet and a second-gen Microsoft Band wearable.

Physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, calculated that about 1.6 million people in China die each year from heart, lung and stroke problems because of incredibly polluted air, especially small particles of haze.

Earlier studies put the annual Chinese air pollution death toll at 1 to 2 million, but this is the first to use newly released Chinese air monitoring figures.

China's government said the devaluation of the yuan was part of reforms meant to make its exchange rate more market-oriented. But the decision has added to worries over slowing growth in the world's second-largest economy and that Western companies might find it harder to sell their goods there.

The IMF’s new data set, released in April with its latest World Economic Outlook report, estimates that in real terms (corrected for price differences, that is), China’s output in 2014 edged ahead of the United States for the first time. There was little between them: assuming its national accounts are correct, China produced goods and services worth US$17.6 trillion, just $198 billion more than US production of US$17.4 trillion.