News Headlines - 11 August 2012

▽BBC News - Tia Sharp: Grandmother Christine arrested over murder

The grandmother of 12-year-old Tia Sharp has been arrested on suspicion of murder.

▽Romney campaign confirms Paul Ryan as running mate | Reuters

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has picked Congressman Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate, the Romney campaign confirmed on Saturday.

▽Google to punish piracy sites in search rankings | CNET UK

The search giant will downrank sites hit by valid copyright claims, it announced in a blog post. Its new algorithm will take into account the number of valid copyright notices a site has received, and shunt the worst offenders down the rankings. Whether this is a genuine attempt to curb the pirates, or just to appease the studios threatening to sue Google, depends on your point of view.

▽Japan Raises Sales Tax to Tackle Debt - WSJ.com

Japan, burdened with the highest debt load of any developed nation, on Friday took its biggest step in years to contain the problem, approving a plan to double the national sales tax by 2015.

▽UK recession not as deep as feared on improved construction data - Telegraph

Britain's recession might not be as deep as feared after better-than-expected construction figures raised the chance that official GDP figures for the second quarter would be revised up.