Amazon has offered to limit its use of marketplace seller data and make changes to 'Buy Box' rankings in a bid to settle antitrust concerns in the European Union, the Commission confirmed today. From a report: It has also offered to revise how sellers can quality for inclusion to Prime; and allow them to choose their own delivery firm and negotiate terms directly with the carrier, as well as committing not to use any data obtained via Prime about the terms and performance of third party carriers for its own competing logistics services. In recent weeks, reports by Reuters and the FT had suggested Amazon would offer to share more data with rivals and give buyers a wider choice of products in order to settle the EU's action.

Early last month, TikTok users across Europe were told that, starting July 13th, the platform would begin using their on-app data to serve up targeted ads, even if those users didn't consent to the practice. Now, less than a day before that change would have rolled out European Union-wide, it looks like the company's reconsidering things a bit. Gizmodo reports: A company spokesperson told TechCrunch on Tuesday that TikTok is "pausing" the update while it "engage[s] on the questions from stakeholders," about the way it handles personalized ads. And needless to say, there are quite a lot of questions about that right now -- from data protection authorities in the EU, from lawmakers in the US, and from privacy experts pretty much everywhere.

For context: until this point, European users that opened the TikTok app needed to offer express consent to let the company use their data for targeted ads. This update planned to do away with the need for that pesky consent by on a legal basis known as "legitimate interest" to target those ads instead. In a nutshell, the "legitimate interest" clause would let TikTok process people's data, consent-free, if it was for a purpose that TikTok deemed reasonable. This means the company could say, for example, that because targeted ads bring in more money than their un-targeted equivalent, it would be reasonable to serve all users -- consenting or otherwise -- targeted ads. Reasonable, right?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Europe's common currency edged closer toward parity with the US dollar Monday as energy concerns and the risk of recession weighed on the outlook for the euro area, while risk aversion fueled a broad rally in the greenback. The euro dropped as much as 1.3% to $1.0053, eclipsing its low from last week. The last time it was this low was back in 2002. The currency's downward spiral has been swift and brutal, given it was trading around $1.15 in February. A string of increasingly-large Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes has supercharged the dollar, while Russia's invasion of Ukraine has worsened the outlook for growth in the euro zone and pushed up the cost of its energy imports.

George Saravelos, global head of FX research for Deutsche Bank, told Bloomberg Surveillance Monday he could see the euro moving under parity, especially in the scenario of a "complete gas shutoff" from the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. The bank is pricing the euro to move in between a range of 0.95 to parity against the dollar, he said. "I really wouldn't say 0.95 would be unreasonable," Saravelos said. "Even if this gas returns in terms of full flow after the maintenance period, the (risk) premium is unlikely to go away. And I think that's a critical thing that's changed over the past few weeks."

"Lawmakers in the European Union voted to include nuclear power and natural gas in the bloc's list of investments deemed sustainable," reports the Wall Street Journal, in a move the EU hopes leads to greater funding for a transition away from coal: Burning natural gas produces about half the carbon dioxide that is generated by coal, and nuclear-power plants don't produce carbon dioxide when they are operating. But environmentalists, lawmakers and some investors have argued the plan risks diluting investments in other projects such as renewable energy.
More U.S. political leaders are also warming to nuclear power, reports the New York Times, "driven by the difficulty of meeting clean energy goals and by surging electricity demands." The Biden administration has established a $6 billion fund to help troubled nuclear plant operators keep their reactors running and make them more economically competitive against cheaper resources like solar and wind power.... In addition to the $6 billion fund, the administration is providing $2.5 billion for two projects meant to demonstrate new nuclear technology, in Washington State and Wyoming. A separate bipartisan measure introduced last year is aimed at preserving and expanding nuclear energy in the United States. The bill, whose backers include Senators Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, and Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, would provide financial assistance like tax credits, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit tax policy organization....

The rising costs of other sources of power have made nuclear energy more competitive around the world, including in the United States, which has the largest fleet of nuclear plants of any country. They produce about 20 percent of the nation's electricity and 50 percent of the clean energy. The United States maintains 92 reactors, though a dozen have closed over the last decade — including, a month ago, the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan, about 55 miles southwest of Grand Rapids.... Industry leaders recognize that the age of new large-scale nuclear plants in the United States has passed, chiefly because of runaway costs... But many in the industry say smaller reactors that can be expanded over time offer promise of avoiding long delays and high cost. These reactors, they say, can be built in factories and delivered to approved sites. And the reactors' high-temperature steam could also yield significant amounts of hydrogen, a carbon-free alternative fuel to natural gas.

The project locations can plan for as many as a dozen units but start with just one. But a plant with 12 units would produce half the electricity or even a little less than many other large nuclear facilities.

None of the smaller reactors have been certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which approves licenses and operations of the nation's nuclear power plants. But NuScale Power, a company that designs and markets small reactors in Oregon, expects to receive certification of its design by the end of the summer. A developer then would need approval for a license to build and operate the unit. Thomas Mundy, chief commercial officer for NuScale Power, said his company's product could be built and put into use in about three years, a fraction of the time it takes to build larger reactor units. And the cost, Mr. Mundy said, is competitive with new natural gas facilities at a levelized cost — the electricity price needed to break even at the end of the plant's life — of $45 to $65 a megawatt-hour.

EU antitrust regulators are investigating the video licensing policy of the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), whose members include Alphabet Google, Amazon, Apple and Meta , the European Commission said on Thursday. Reuters reports: Founded in 2015, the group aims to create a new standard software for streaming higher-quality 4K video on browsers, devices, apps, and gaming, known as AV1. While the AV1 software is not yet adopted widely, Netflix and YouTube have started using it for some customers, and browsers such as Google Chrome and Firefox have started to support the new format. Intel, Huawei, Mozilla, Samsung and Nvidia are also AOM members, according to its website.

In a questionnaire sent to some companies earlier this year and seen by Reuters, the EU watchdog said it was investigating alleged anti-competitive behavior related to the license terms of AV1 by AOM and its members in Europe. "The Commission has information that AOM and its members may be imposing licensing terms (mandatory royalty-free cross licensing) on innovators that were not a part of AOM at the time of the creation of the AV1 technical, but whose patents are deemed essential to (its) technical specifications," the paper said. It said this action may be restricting the innovators' ability to compete with the AV1 technical specification, and also eliminate incentives for them to innovate.

The questionnaire also asked about the impact of an AOM patent license clause in which licensees would have their patent licenses terminated immediately if they launched patent lawsuits asserting that implementation infringes their claims. Companies risk fines of up to 10% of their global turnover for breaching EU antitrust rules.

Lindsay Clark, reporting for The Register: Surprising no one who witnessed the politician back cable cars as a revolution in river crossing or a garden bridge as an innovation in inner-city expansion, the outgoing Prime Minister leaves behind a set of science and technology projects which are either yet to be completed or completely off the wall. Dangling plans include his ambition to accelerate the arrival of productive nuclear fusion -- a technical breakthrough which always promises to be 20 years off. In 2019, Johnson praised the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxford, only for others to reveal the organization benefited from large chunks of funding from the European Union, the powerful political and economic bloc Johnson so passionately persuaded the UK to leave.

Fission is also a favorite. Johnson has been vocal in backing small modular reactors, a technology from jet engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce. A study has claimed some miniaturized fission units produce as much as 35 times more waste to generate the same amount of power as a regular plant. The UK is also in the throes of an attempt to mimic the US's success with DARPA -- the defense-led science unit which played a role in the development of the internet. As of last year, Aria -- the Advanced Research and Invention Agency -- hadn't even begun to happen despite five years passing since the UK decided to leave the EU. Now reports suggest the launch of the agency will be delayed until at least the end of this year. Meanwhile, UK scientists are being cut off from European funding, post-Brexit.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Conversation: Five young people whose resolve was hardened by floods and wildfires recently took their governments to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Their claim concerns each country's membership of an obscure treaty they argue makes climate action impossible by protecting fossil fuel investors. The energy charter treaty has 52 signatory countries which are mostly EU states but include the UK and Japan. The claimants are suing 12 of them including France, Germany and the UK -- all countries in which energy companies are using the treaty to sue governments over policies that interfere with fossil fuel extraction. For example, the German company RWE is suing the Netherlands for 1.4 billion euros because it plans to phase out coal. The claimants aim to force their countries to exit the treaty and are supported by the Global Legal Action Network, a campaign group with an ongoing case against 33 European countries they accuse of delaying action on climate change. The prospects for the current application going to a hearing at the ECHR look good. But how simple is it to prize countries from the influence of this treaty?

The energy charter treaty started as an EU agreement in 1991 which guaranteed legal safeguards for companies invested in energy projects such as offshore oil rigs. Under Article 10 (1) of the treaty, these investments must "enjoy the most constant protection and security." If government policies change in order to curtail these projects, such as Italy's 2019 decision to ban drilling for oil and gas within 12 miles of its coast, the government is obliged to compensate the relevant company for its lost future earnings. The legal mechanism which allows this is known as an investor-state dispute settlement. A letter to EU leaders signed by 76 climate scientists (PDF) argues this could keep coal power plants open or force governments into paying punishing fees for shutting them down, at a time when deep and rapid cuts to emissions are desperately needed.

Money spent compensating fossil fuel investors will deprive investment in renewable energy and other things vital to the green transition, such as public transport. While withdrawing from the energy charter treaty is possible for any country to do, losing the benefits of membership -- such as fewer duties and taxes on imports of oil and gas -- will make it a difficult decision. Furthermore, the obligations of countries that have been signatories to the treaty are not nullified upon exiting it, but instead linger for 20 years thereafter. Investors can still bring disputes against former members and, if successful, must be compensated by the state in question. Russia and Italy withdrew from the energy charter treaty in 2009 and 2016 respectively, and continue to face multiple claims.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN Travel: Breakfast in Paris, lunch in Frankfurt and dinner in Vienna -- all without the hassle and frustration of flying. Imagine a network of modern, super-fast and comfortable trains hurtling between every major city in the European Union, providing a reliable, comfortable and sustainable alternative to air travel. That was the vision outlined by rail industry leaders in Lyon, France, on June 29, amid ambitious European plans to double high-speed rail use by 2030 and triple current levels by 2050. Only a massive -- and accelerated -- expansion of the high-speed network can achieve these hugely ambitious targets, but are they a realistic and affordable proposition?

Unlike many parts of the world, Europe already has thousands of kilometers of dedicated high-speed railway. France's world-famous TGVs, Germany's ICE and Spain's AVE have transformed rail travel over the last 40 years, but they remain largely focused on domestic markets. That's no surprise. When countries are investing billions of euros in new infrastructure, political pressure to squeeze out the maximum benefit for taxpayers is inevitable. Building lines across international borders, even within the European Union, creates tension over who pays for what, how the contracts are allocated, conflicting national standards and regulations and a host of other obstacles. For decades it's been too easy to kick difficult projects down the road until they become someone else's problem.

Now a body of European organizations have committed to a new study highlighting the numerous benefits of an expanded high-speed rail network connecting national capitals and major cities. These include the European Commission, the Community of European Railways, the European Rail Supply Industry and ALLRAIL, which represents non-state-owned railways. Most importantly the group will investigate how to pay for tens of thousands of kilometers of new lines and how a radical transformation of the continent's rail network can help the EU deliver on its "Green Deal' objective of carbon neutrality by 2050. Some of that expansion will come on new routes that are planned or under construction but many more will be needed to facilitate the vision of European leaders. "According to EU statistics, 17 of the 20 busiest air routes in Europe cover distances of less than 434 miles (700 kilometers) -- exactly the kind of distances where city center-to-city center trains can offer faster, cleaner and more sustainable journeys -- if the right infrastructure exists," adds CNN.

"And according to Alberto Mazzola of the Community of European Railways, carbon emissions trading could be a key tool in funding the massive investment required to complete a Europe-wide high-speed rail network." A Paris-Berlin flight generates at least six times the CO2 emissions of a similar train journey, notes the report. Meanwhile, flights of less than 621 miles between and within European countries are estimated to create 28 million metric tons of CO2 every year.

"Excess carbon emissions from airliners, trucks and cars are currently charged at 50 euros per ton in the EU, but this could soon rise to 80 euros per ton," reports CNN. "If just 10% of that revenue is re-invested in transport it could add around 8 billion euros a year to the pot for rail upgrades."

Europeans risk seeing social media services Facebook and Instagram shut down this summer, as Ireland's privacy regulator doubled down on its order to stop the firm's data flows to the United States. From a report: The Irish Data Protection Commission on Thursday informed its counterparts in Europe that it will block Facebook-owner Meta from sending user data from Europe to the U.S. The Irish regulator's draft decision cracks down on Meta's last legal resort to transfer large chunks of data to the U.S., after years of fierce court battles between the U.S. tech giant and European privacy activists.

The European Court of Justice in 2020 annulled an EU-U.S. data flows pact called Privacy Shield because of fears over U.S. surveillance practices. In its ruling, it also made it harder to use another legal tool that Meta and many other U.S. firms use to transfer personal data to the U.S., called standard contractual clauses (SCCs). This week's decision out of Ireland means Facebook is forced to stop relying on SCCs too. Meta has repeatedly warned that such a decision would shutter many of its services in Europe, including Facebook and Instagram.

British scientists and academic researchers have been dealt a blow after 115 grants from a flagship EU research programme were terminated because of the continuing Brexit row over Northern Ireland. From a report: One academic said he was "relieved" to be exiting the country and feared the UK was going down a "dark path" like Germany in the 1930s. One hundred and fifty grants were approved for British applicants after the then Brexit minister, David Frost, successfully negotiated associate membership of the $95.3bn Horizon Europe programme but most will now be cancelled. Beneficiaries in the UK were told by the European Research Council (ERC) that unless associate membership had been approved by 29 June, the grants would not be available unless the researchers moved their work to a European institution.

Ratification of the membership has been in abeyance because the UK has not implemented the Brexit trading arrangements agreed under the Northern Ireland protocol. With the deadline passed, it has emerged that just 18 of the 150 academics will take up the grants but must move to an EU institution to get the funds. Thiemo Fetzer, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick who was approved for $1.53m of funding for research into media and geopolitics, confirmed he was one of the 18 who had reluctantly decided to move to the EU. He said: "I am relieved as this whole Brexit process has eroded my trust in the UK's institutions and this Horizon Europe association was just another incarnation of this."

A Google-backed ad company called Glance is looking to launch in the US, and it brings media content, news, and casual games to Android lock screens. Android Police reports: If you're not familiar with Glance, you can count yourself lucky. The lock screen platform is part of the pre-installed software on many, if not most, Android phones sold in India and other Asian markets, and it has also made its way to the EU on a few select brands. Glance says that since it was launched in 2019, it has become part of over 400 million sold smartphones. The service has taken it upon itself to monetize the lock screen, pushing news and ad feeds right into people's faces before they even unlock their phones. It's a subsidiary of Indian advertising behemoth InMobi, focusing on mobile-first ads.

According to a TechCrunch report, the service is looking to launch in the US within the next two months. The company is negotiating with US carriers to look into partnerships and to become part of the out-of-the-box experience of "several smartphone models by next month." In contrast to Asia, where the company is working directly with smartphone manufacturers, Glance seems to focus on carriers in the US. This makes sense, given the iron grip mobile operators have on the smartphone market.

Based on my experience with Glance on a few Vivo review units (like the Vivo X80 Pro), the lock screen feed tries hard to become part of your routine. Occasional notifications and swipe suggestions on the lock screen nudge you to interact with it. Once you give in and open the feed, it will override your lock screen wallpaper with its content, making you change back to your preferred wallpaper manually. [...] As for the US launch, there is no word on what exactly the feed is going to look like. We would expect a healthy middle ground between the Indian and the European version in the beginning as to not put off people, though it wouldn't be surprising if the company quickly turns things up given that consumer protection is weaker in the US than in the EU. One thing is certain: An entry in the US market will give Glance the opportunity to access users with more money to spend than many in Asian countries. This should allow Glance to ask advertisers for higher prices, allowing the company to grow even faster.

EU lawmakers gave the thumbs up on Tuesday to landmark rules to rein in tech giants such as Alphabet unit Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft, but enforcement could be hampered by regulators' limited resources. From a report: In addition to the rules known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), lawmakers also approved the Digital Services Act (DSA), which requires online platforms to do more to police the internet for illegal content. Companies face fines of up to 10% of annual global turnover for DMA violations and 6% for DSA breaches. Lawmakers and EU states had reached a political deal on both rule books earlier this year, leaving some details to be ironed out. The European Commission has set up a taskforce, with about 80 officials expected to join up, which critics say is inadequate. Last month it put out a 12 million euro ($12.3 million) tender for experts to help in investigations and compliance enforcement over a four-year period. EU industry chief Thierry Breton sought to address enforcement concerns, saying various teams would focus on different issues such as risk assessments, interoperability of messenger services and data access during implementation of the rules.

The Associated Press reports on a massive new 150-foot (45-meter) tower going up in Berlin — just to hold 56 million liters (14.8 million gallons) of hot water that "will help heat Berlin homes this winter even if Russian gas supplies dry up..."

"[T]he new facility unveiled Thursday at Vattenfall's Reuter power station will hold water brought to almost boiling temperature using electricity from solar and wind power plants across Germany. During periods when renewable energy exceeds demand the facility effectively acts as a giant battery, though instead of storing electricity it stores heat..." "It's a huge thermos that helps us to store the heat when we don't need it," said Tanja Wielgoss, who heads the Sweden-based company's heat unit in Germany. "And then we can release it when we need to use it.... Sometimes you have an abundance of electricity in the grids that you cannot use anymore, and then you need to turn off the wind turbines," said Wielgoss. "Where we are standing we can take in this electricity."

The 50-million-euro ($52 million) facility will have a thermal capacity of 200 Megawatts — enough to meet much of Berlin's hot water needs during the summer and about 10% of what it requires in the winter. The vast, insulated tank can keep water hot for up to 13 hours, helping bridge short periods when there's little wind or sun....

Berlin's top climate official, Bettina Jarasch, said the faster such heat storage systems are built, the better. "Due to its geographic location the Berlin region is even more dependent on Russian fossil fuels than other parts of Germany," she told The Associated Press. "That's why we're really in a hurry here."
"While it will be Europe's biggest heat storage facility when it's completed at the end of this year, an even bigger one is already being planned in the Netherlands."

"A metallic NATO is starting to take shape," writes the senior metals columnist at Reuters, "though no-one is calling it that just yet." The Minerals Security Partnership is in theory open to all countries that are committed to "responsible critical mineral supply chains to support economic prosperity and climate objectives". But the coalition assembled by the United States is one of like-minded countries such as Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Germany with an Asian axis in the form of Japan and South Korea. [Also the European Commission, as well as Finland and Sweden.]

It is defined as much as anything by who is not on the invite list — China and Russia.

China's dominance of key enabling minerals such as lithium and rare earths is the single biggest reason why Western countries are looking to build their own supply chains. Russia, a major producer of nickel, aluminium and platinum group metals, is now also a highly problematic trading partner as its war in Ukraine that the Kremlin calls a "special military operation" grinds on. A previously highly globalised minerals supply network looks set to split into politically polarised spheres of influence, a tectonic realignment with far-reaching implications. The United States and Europe have realised that they can't build out purely domestic supply chains quickly enough to meet demand from the electric vehicle transition....

The process was already well underway before the U.S. State Department announced the formation of the Minerals Security Partnership on June 14. U.S. and Canadian officials have been working closely as Canada fleshes out a promised C$3.8 billion ($3.02 billion) package to boost production of lithium, copper and other strategic minerals. European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic has just been in Norway to seal "a strategic partnership" on battery technologies and critical raw materials.
The article points out America's Department of Defense is already investing $120 million in a new plant for heavy rare earths separation — and has chosen an Australian company as its partner.

Shortly thereafter the Defense Department noted an online disinformation campaign against its new partner (according to U.S.-based cybersecurity firm Mandiant), disinformation which Reuters describes as "a pro-China propaganda campaign" using fake social media accounts to try to stir up opposition.

Amazon has agreed to simplify the process required for cancelling its Prime membership subscription service across its sites in the European Union, both on desktop and mobile interfaces, following a series of complaints from regional consumer protection groups. From a report: The coordinated complaints about Amazon's confusing and convoluted cancellation process for Prime were announced back in April 2021 -- so it's taken just over a year for the e-commerce giant to agree to change its ways.

Following the engagement with EU regulators, the Commission said today that Amazon started to make some revisions to the Prime web interface -- such as labelling the cancel button more clearly and shortening the explanatory text -- but today's announcement is that it has agreed to further simplify the experience by further reducing the text so consumers do not get distracted by warnings and deterred from cancelling.

The UK is rattling off a series of international science agreements with a message to the European Union: if you don't want our money, we'll do deals elsewhere. From a report: Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed a memorandum of understanding with his New Zealand counterpart, Jacinda Ardern, on Friday, aimed at easing UK access to the Pacific nation's quantum and agricultural technology. The UK has already negotiated similar agreements with Israel, Switzerland and Canada -- as well as EU member Sweden, and is hoping to seal more with Japan, Singapore, South Korea and certain US states. The drive comes as the government seeks to diversify the country's scientific collaboration after the UK was frozen out of the EU's $96 billion Horizon research program because of tensions stemming from Britain's plan to override the part of the Brexit deal governing Northern Ireland. The majority of the UK's international science budget -- around $18 billion -- is usually spent helping to fund Horizon.

The EU has moved to rein in the "wild west" of crypto assets by agreeing a groundbreaking set of rules for the sector, adding to pressure on the UK and US to introduce their own curbs. From a report: Representatives from the European parliament and EU states inked an agreement late on Thursday that contains measures to guard against market abuse and manipulation, as well as requiring that crypto firms provide details of the environmental impact of their assets. "Today, we put order in the wild west of crypto assets and set clear rules for a harmonised market," said Stefan Berger, the German MEP who led negotiations on behalf of the parliament. Referring to the recent slump in cryptocurrency prices -- the total value of the market has fallen from $3tn last year to less than $900bn -- Berger added: "The recent fall in the value of digital currencies shows us how highly risky and speculative they are and that it is fundamental to act." The markets in crypto assets (MiCA) law is expected to come into force at about the end of 2023. Globally, crypto assets are largely unregulated, with national operators in the EU required only to show controls for combating money laundering.

A Wednesday meeting secured a final deal on anti-money laundering legislation for crypto transfers and largely overturned a proposal from the EU Parliament to impose laundering checks on all payments to private wallets. CoinDesk reports: The final proposals will mean customer identity needs to be verified for even the smallest crypto transfers, if it's between two regulated digital wallet providers -- but payments to unhosted private wallets will largely be left out of laundering checks. EU lawmakers and government representatives have been meeting over the last three months to hash out a political deal on the bill, which was introduced in July 2021 by the European Commission. Two sources leaving the meeting, who asked not to be named, told CoinDesk a deal had been reached on the legislation after just over an hour of talks.

Just under an hour following the publication of this article, EU lawmaker Ondrej Kovarik confirmed the provisional deal in a tweet, saying that it "strikes the right balance in mitigating risks for fighting money laundering in the crypto sector without preventing innovation and overburdening businesses." Outside the meeting room, Kovarik told CoinDesk that negotiators had found a "good balance" that would not prevent innovation. "It will allow the further development of crypto in Europe," Kovarik said.

For the rules on transfers to unhosted wallets, Kovarik said the final result had "moved quite far from the initial proposal of the European Parliament" -- something likely to be met by a sigh of relief by many in the industry. Kovarik said those unhosted wallet rules would only apply when transfers were made to a person's own private wallet, and only when the value was over 1,000 euros ($1,052). [...] Lawmakers and governments overturned European Commission plans to exempt small transactions, arguing that price volatility and the ability to break up payments into smaller chunks would make it unworkable for crypto. Further reading: Crypto Rules To Make Europe a Global Leader As Prices Plunge (The Associated Press)

Brazil's telecoms regulator Anatel has launched a public consultation on a proposal to make USB-C chargers mandatory for all smartphones sold in the country. The Verge reports: It's the latest example of lawmakers and regulators turning to USB-C as a common charging standard for phones. The EU passed a law on the matter earlier this month, making USB-C mandatory for a range of electronic gadgets (including smartphones) by the end of 2024, and in the US some Democrat politicians are pushing for similar legislation. "Aware of the aforementioned movements in the international market, Anatel's technical area evaluated the topic and presented a proposal with a similar approach for application in the Brazilian market," said Anatel in a blog post (English translation via Google Translate).

In documents supporting the public consultation, Anatel said the advantages for making USB-C mandatory were primarily reducing e-waste and increasing convenience for customers. Disadvantages included higher costs to enforce the regulation and the possibility the law would discourage companies from developing new, better standards. Anatel says its public consultation will run until August 26th.

The Dutch joined Germany and Austria in reverting to coal power on Monday following an energy crisis provoked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. France 24 reports: The Netherlands said it would lift all restrictions on power stations fired by the fossil fuel, which were previously limited to just over a third of output. Berlin and Vienna made similar announcements on Sunday as Moscow, facing biting sanctions over Ukraine, cuts gas supplies to energy-starved Europe. "The cabinet has decided to immediately withdraw the restriction on production for coal-fired power stations from 2002 to 2024," Dutch climate and energy minister Rob Jetten told journalists in The Hague. The Dutch minister said his country had "prepared this decision with our European colleagues over the past few days."

Germany however said it still aimed to close its coal power plants by 2030, in light of the greater emissions of climate-changing CO2 from the fossil fuel. "The 2030 coal exit date is not in doubt at all," economy ministry spokesman Stephan Gabriel Haufe said at a regular news conference. The target was "more important than ever," he added.

Austria's government meanwhile announced Sunday that it would reopen a mothballed coal power station because of power shortages arising from reduced deliveries of gas from Russia. The authorities would work with the Verbund group, the country's main electricity supplier, to get the station in the southern city of Mellach back in action, said the Chancellery. The European Commission noted Monday that "some of the existing coal capacities might be used longer than initially expected" because of the new energy landscape in Europe.