Germany is to close its borders with neighbouring countries including France, the latest in a string of tough actions by EU member states to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

The European Commission said on Wednesday it will introduce new waste reduction targets and sustainability laws to ensure that products placed on the EU market are recyclable, repairable and designed to last longer, its latest plan to halve waste by 2030.

Intel on Tuesday said EU antitrust regulators got it wrong when they fined the chipmaker 1.06 billion euros ($1.2 billion) more than a decade ago for thwarting a British rival in a case that could affect Google and Qualcomm.

Europe's privacy rulebook does not create obstacles to taking action to curb the coronavirus epidemic but mass tracking of people's movements and contacts using smartphone location data would represent a clear violation.

It may be pressuring companies into using its radio frequency chips.

It's an effort to reduce e-waste.

"This non-biased and fact-based approach towards 5G security allows Europe to have a more secure and faster 5G network," Huawei said in a statement.

The EU followed Britain's example on Wednesday, allowing members to decide what part China's Huawei Technologies can play in its 5G telecoms networks and resisting pressure from Washington for an outright ban.

The EU's proposal for a temporary ban on facial-recognition technology won backing from Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai on Monday but got a cool response from Microsoft President Brad Smith.

The European Commission has revealed it is considering a ban on the use of facial recognition in public areas for up to five years.

The third outstanding antitrust case involving Google was finally resolved in 2019, but the EU has a whole new set of targets in its sights.

U.S. chipmaker Nvidia has not offered any concessions to EU antitrust regulators examining its $6.8 billion bid for Mellanox Technologies, the European Commission website showed on Friday.

The European Commission approved on Monday 3.2 billion euros ($3.53 billion) of state aid from seven European Union countries for research and innovation in battery technology.

EU antitrust regulators are investigating Google's collection of data, the European Commission told Reuters on Saturday, suggesting the world's most popular internet search engine remains in its sights despite record fines in recent years.

U.S. online retail giant Amazon is not liable for unwittingly stocking trade mark infringing goods for third-party sellers, but should be diligent in checking whether products are legal, an adviser to Europe's top court said on Thursday.

EU countries on Friday endorsed a tough line for selecting 5G suppliers, including vetting the domestic legal framework to which they are subjected, potentially dealing a blow to telecoms equipment market leader Huawei Technologies.

The warning from the EU's executive arm comes at time when the ECB has started a new round of stimulus to prop up fragile growth.

EU Council President Donald Tusk said he has received a letter from the British government requesting an extension of the Oct. 31 Brexit deadline.

The Brussels-based institution believes that part of Broadcom's business could be creating "serious and irreparable harm to competition."

The ruling could let EU nations override other countries' own laws, critics say.

Google emerged victorious in a landmark privacy case at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on Tuesday, after Europe's top court ruled that the US search-engine giant need not apply EU 'right to be forgotten' rules across all its global search results.

Apple will launch a legal challenge on Tuesday to a European Commission order to pay 13 billion euros ($14.4 billion) in Irish back taxes in a landmark case in the EU's crackdown on tax avoidance by multinational companies.

Facebook announced big plans to revolutionize payments in Europe with the launch of a virtual currency. But EU finance ministers see libra as a risk to monetary stability.

"She hates the United States perhaps worse than any person I've ever met," Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network in an apparent reference to EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

EU antitrust regulators want U.S. chipmaker Broadcom to scrap its exclusivity clauses with TV and modem makers to avoid irreparable harm to the market while they investigate whether this tactic and others are designed to block rivals.

Qualcomm may have to pay a second big fine to the European Union over antitrust concerns for how it handled sales of 3G chips for mobile hotspot and dongles, just over a year after the chip maker was issued a $1.23 billion financial penalty for illegally shutting out modem rivals from supplying Apple.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission says its probe will examine whether Google's processing of data in advertising transactions breaches EU privacy rules.

The European Commission's plan for a wifi-based standard for cars endorsed by Volkswagen faces a two-month delay as EU countries wait for legal advice on the proposal.

Google will have to pay publishers for news snippets and Facebook filter out protected content under new copyright rules aimed at ensuring fair compensation for the European Union's $1 trillion creative industries.

The probe will look into the Microsoft products and services used by the institutions and whether the contractual agreements between them and the U.S. software company are GDPR-compliant.

The European Union has published new guidelines on developing ethical AI.

Twenty-nine companies and research bodies will take part in the project, among them Robert Bosch, Infineon, STMicroelectronics, Osram, Carl Zeiss, GlobalFoundries and Murata.

On Wednesday, the European Union is expected to rule that Google illegally used the market dominance of its smartphone software, Android, to stifle competition, hitting the Alphabet-owned company with a hefty fine and aiming to change some of its business practices.

Once again European lawmakers are set to vote on a bill that promises to change the internet as we know it.

The European Commision (EC), the EU's legislative and regulatory arm, said its investigation, which lasted for more than two years, concluded that Qualcomm paid Apple billions of dollars to keep it from buying LTE baseband chips from Qualcomm's rivals, violating EU antitrust rules.

Qualcomm may win European Union approval for its takeover of NXP Semiconductors by the end of the year after striking a final deal with regulators on patent licensing issues, according to people familiar with the review.

Globalfoundries has asked European antitrust regulators to investigate market leader TSMC, accusing the Taiwan-based firm of unfair competition, an industry source said on Monday.

EU antitrust authorities have halted their scrutiny of Qualcomm's $38 billion bid for NXP Semiconductors after the companies failed to provide relevant information.