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Citing unnamed sources, Reuters news agency has reported EU anti-trust regulators on Thursday are set to slap a second large fine onto the world's biggest chipmaker, Qualcomm. The European Commission had already imposed a €997m fine last year for undercutting the competition from Intel by paying iPhone-maker Apple to use only its chips.

The Republic of Ireland has said it will oppose any plans by the European Union to end daylight savings, where clocks are moved forward one hour in spring and back again in autumn. Dublin says Brexit could leave the island of Ireland caught between two time zones. The European Parliament earlier this year voted in favour of ending the practice of daylight saving time from 2021 onwards.

Warsaw and Budapest are boasting about their support for von der Leyen after the german is confirmed only by a small margin of MEPs, but the illiberals should not expect the softening of rule of law scrutiny.

The first-ever female president of the European Commission wants half of her team of commissioners to consist of women. But most of the commissioners put forward so far by EU member states so far have been male.

EU states ought to undergo a yearly "Rule of Law Review Cycle" to help stop countries such as Hungary, Poland, and Romania from backsliding on EU norms, the European Commission has said.

The European Commission is to propose annual rule-of-law reviews on all EU states, but Poland is "optimistic" that Ursula von er Leyen will let it off the hook.

The vote on von der Leyen showed the fundamental change in EU politics. The rise of the European Parliament, the power of political parties, and the fragmentation of politics, are new realities to be taken into account.

Golden Dawn has elected one of its most prominent members to the EU parliament, the former MP Ioannis Lagos.

Appalled over Coca-Cola sponsoring the recent Romanian EU presidency, MEPs have asked Finland, the new holders of the rotating post, to put an end to such practices. But Helsinki, whose presidency is sponsored by BMW, has no such plan.

Five years after the MH17 tragedy we are still facing the question: will Russia be punished for 298 innocent victims? Will all those involved be brought to justice?

The European Commission's top civil servant, German lawyer Martin Selmayr, will step down following German minister Ursula von der Leyen's advent as commission president. An EU spokeswoman confirmed the news to German website dw.com after Selmayr himself dropped hints to the politico.eu site. His departure is designed to alleviate the image of German EU domination. His prior appointment also broke the commission's own staff regulations.

Monday's EU decision not to reimpose sanctions on Iran was like "the European appeasement of the 1930s" of Nazi Germany, Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has said. "There are those in Europe who won't wake up until Iranian nuclear missiles fall on European soil," he added, in comments branded "ridiculous" by Tehran. Iran recently broke a nuclear arms control pact, but its violations were minor and reversible the EU said.

EU anti-trust commissioner Margrethe Vestager is to open a probe into whether US online retailer Amazon abused information gleaned from other traders who use its website, two EU sources told the Financial Times newspaper. The move risks further annoying US president Donald Trump, who earlier accused Vestager of "hating" America because her investigations had led to a €4.3bn fine on US tech giant Google and a €13bn one on Apple.

France has ditched its candidate Jean-Francois Bohnert to be the EU's first public prosecutor in favour of Romania's Laura Kovesi, the Financial Times newspaper reports. A French official said the move "will ... allow the rapid establishment" of the new office, which is to go after fraud on EU subsidies. "The French government will ... support Laura Kovesi," Dan Ciolos, a senior Romanian liberal MEP, also said.

Oil and gas drilling leases granted by US president Donald Trump on 378m acres of publicly-owned land since he came to power could dump more CO2-type gasses in the air than all 28 EU countries do in a year, according to American NGO the Wilderness Society. The US operations could emit up to 4.7bn metric tonnes of CO2-equivalents, compared to the total EU count of 4bn in 2014, it warned.

The EU's goods trade surplus with the US for the first five months of 2019 rose to €62.1bn from €55.4bn in the same period last year. The increase could stoke tensions after the US already imposed tariffs on some EU exports to get the numbers down. At the same time, Europe's trade deficit with China grew to €76.7bn from €69.2bn, amid complaints China unfairly restricts market access for foreign firms.

Israeli plans to demolish 10 Palestinian apartment buildings on the edge of Jerusalem were part of a "policy that undermines the viability of the two-state solution", EU diplomats in Jerusalem and Ramallah have said. Several other buildings faced a similar fate, Palestinian authorities noted. But they should be pulled down because they were built too close to Israel's wall around the occupied city, an Israeli court has ruled.

The EU "is ready to start work toward applying targeted measures for those members of the security forces involved in torture and other serious violations of human rights" in Venezuela, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Tuesday. Spain had pushed for sanctions over allegations that Rafael Acosta, a navy captain and opposition figurehead, had been tortured to death in custody. "She [Mogherini] threatens us with loathsome comments", Venezuela said.

The leader of Germany's ruling CDU party, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, is to replace Ursula von der Leyen as German defence minister following von der Leyen's elevation to the European Commission presidency, German officials have said. Kramp-Karrenbauer previously said she did not want a new post, but the ministerial job could give her the experience and exposure she would need to contest federal elections in 2021 when German chancellor Angela Merkel leaves.

Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday obtained a narrow majority of support in the European Parliament to become the first-ever female president of the European Commission.