BMW and Intel plan robot car production www.bbc.com

Chinese company Hisense reaps benefits from Euro 2016 sponsorship www.chinadaily.com

Mongolia and Turkey have willingness to cooperate in tourism www.mongolia.gogo.mn

Rio Tinto exits PNG, gives away copper-gold mine with $51bn in reserves www.mining.com

U.S. shale oil's Achilles heel shows signs of mending www.reuters.com

Since the beginning of the U.S. fracking revolution, oil producers have struggled with a vexing problem: after an initial burst, crude output from new shale wells falls much faster than from conventional wells.

However, those well decline rates have been slowing across the United States over the past few years, according to data analysis provided exclusively to Reuters.

The trend, if sustained, would help ameliorate the industry’s most glaring weakness and cement its importance for worldwide production in years to come. It also helps explain shale drillers' resilience throughout the oil market's two-year slump.

While shale oil production revolutionized the oil industry over the past decade, bringing abundance of global oil supplies, high costs and rapid production declines have been its Achilles heel. That is beginning to change thanks to technological innovation and producers' focusing less on maximizing output and more on improving efficiency and productivity.

According to data compiled and analyzed by oilfield analytics firm NavPort for Reuters, output from the average new well in the Permian Basin of West Texas, the top U.S. oilfield, declined 18 percent from peak production through the fourth month of its life in 2015. That is much slower than the 31 percent drop seen for the same time frame in 2012 and the 28 percent decline in 2013, when the oil price crash started.

The change was even more dramatic in North Dakota's Bakken shale, where four-month decline rates for new wells fell to 16 percent in 2015 from almost 31 percent in 2012. (Graphic:tmsnrt.rs/292ScGY)

A slower decline means producers need to drill fewer new wells to sustain output, said Mukul Sharma, professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.

"You can have cash flow without having to expend a lot of capital."

The recent decline rates mark a dramatic improvement from first-year 90 percent declines in the early years of the shale boom that made some investors question the sector's long-run viability.

NEW PHILOSOPHY

There are no 2016 figures yet, but oil executives expect the trend to continue this year and beyond.

Scott Sheffield, chief executive of Pioneer Natural Resources Co (PXD.N), a top Permian producer, credited improved fracking techniques for helping stabilize production, which shareholders rewarded by lifting Pioneer's shares up about 9 percent over the past year.

"We're exposing more of the reservoir and breaking it up so we don't get as sharp a decline," Sheffield told a recent energy conference.

Slower declines also reflect producers' more conservative approach to operating wells. In the early years of the hydraulic fracturing boom, high crude prices encouraged operators to boost initial production as much as possible.

To do this, they would let wells flow fast by keeping pressure low on the ground's surface. About seven years ago, however, some shale operators in Louisiana found this ultimately hurt production later on by causing rock fractures to shut.

Now, many operators maintain surface pressures higher, which limits initial flow rates and slows a well's decline rate.

"Conventional wisdom has shifted," said John Lee, a professor of petroleum engineering at Texas A&M University.

Sharma of the University of Texas said that while shale well decline rates remained far above a 10 percent first-year decline a conventional well might experience, they marked a radical improvement compared with early years of hydraulic fracturing.

Harold Hamm's Continental Resources Inc (CLR.N), for example, has told investors its new wells in Oklahoma's SCOOP region are now producing 40 percent more oil six months into their lives than as recently as last year.

Today's production techniques use larger volumes of sand and pressurized fluids to frack more spots along longer well bores, to extract more oil from the wells. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/296vBtQ)

Pioneer fracks its wells every 15 feet today compared to every 60 feet in 2013. It costs extra $500,000 per well to do so, but its wells produce two-thirds more oil than just three years ago, boosting profitability, Pioneer said.

To be sure, not all producers are seeing slower decline rates and the newer, more stable shale wells make up only a fraction of all producing U.S. oil wells, so their impact on overall domestic output is for now limited.

The Eagle Ford shale in southern Texas has seen decline rates slightly increase, for example, according to NavPort data.

Abe talks with Cameron, Merkel on market stability www3.nhk.or.jp

US opens investigation into Tesla after fatal crash www.bbc.com

Global automakers express concerns over Brexit www3.nhk.or.jp

Mongolia's opposition MPP sweeps back to power on country's economic woes www.reuters.com

The main opposition Mongolian People's Party (MPP) swept back to power in landslide parliamentary elections, results from Mongolia's election committee showed on Thursday, after campaigning dominated by concern over slowing economic growth.

The transformation of the former Soviet bloc state since a peaceful revolution in 1990 has been a big draw for foreign investors eyeing its rich mineral resources, unleashing a boom from 2010 to 2012.

But an abrupt economic slowdown since 2012 has stirred controversy over the role of global mining firms such as Rio Tinto, which last month finally approved a $5.3-billion extension plan for the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine.

The MPP's victory will likely be a greeted as a tailwind for the economy and international miners, as the party's success in attracting investors when it last held power, from 2008-2012, led to the country being nicknamed "Mine-golia".

The MPP, which has governed for most years since the revolution, won an 85 percent majority with 65 seats in the 76-member parliament, taking back power from the Democratic Party, an unnamed official from Mongolia's general election committee told a press briefing.

The ruling Democratic Party won nine seats in Wednesday's vote, down from 37. Prime Minister Chimed Saikhanbileg, and the parliament's chairman, Zandaakhuu Enkhbold, were among those kicked out of their seats.

"The Mongolian People's Party's landslide win shows the public assigning clear blame for the country's economic woes to the outgoing Democratic Party government," John Marrett, an analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit, said in an emailed statement.

A late change of election rules hindered independents and small parties during the short 18-day campaign period.

One seat went to the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP), and one to an independent, popular folk singer Samand Javkhlan, who has taken up environmental causes.

RISING DEBT, MINING REVENUE SHORTFALLS

A vast country with just three million people, best known as the birthplace of Mongol emperor Genghis Khan, Mongolia had struggled in recent years to adapt to a downturn in fortunes.

Demand for coal and copper from giant neighbor China, and weak commodities prices have hit Mongolia hard.

The IMF forecasts economic growth of 0.4 percent this year, compared with 17.5 percent in 2011, the year before the Democratic Party took power.

Since 2012, Mongolia has borrowed billions of dollars in sovereign debt. In March, rating agency Moody's gave it a negative outlook, citing the rising debt burden, a projected widening of budgetary imbalances and mining revenue shortfalls.

The MPP has criticized the Democrats' economic management and the borrowing spree, promising to reassess spending and tighten fiscal management.

Mongolian bonds jumped on the election results. The $500 million sovereign bonds due 2021 surged 3 points to 105.25/106 cents on the dollar, and the $500 million bonds from Trade Development Bank due 2020 rose 2.25 points to 97.75/98.75.

More than half of Mongolia's people are under 30 and grew up in the post-Soviet period of rapid change in the land-locked democracy squeezed between autocratic China and Russia.

Begi, 22, gathered with other young voters outside the MPP's headquarters at around 2 a.m. to revel in their party's victory.

"I've been waiting for this for a long time. I couldn't believe the Democratic Party because they really ruined our country," he said.

Global stock markets rally as Brexit fears abate www.bbc.com