Commission will start questioning its industry about competition with China and others on older-generation microchips.

Europe is widening its focus from high-tech to low-tech microchips as it fears a fresh challenge from Chinese subsidized firms to supply the electric vehicle boom. 

The European Commission will start to question microchip suppliers and customers about legacy chips and whether there is a dependency on China supplies, it told POLITICO in a statement, with first results expected by the end of summer.

Officials fear a challenge to the bloc's market power on so-called legacy microchips — older-generation technology used in cars, household appliances and medical devices. The move follows a similar one in the United States, where the government launched a survey on the topic in January.

The Calabrian 'Ndrangeta is known to be one of the most powerful crime organizations in the world. But now Italian authorities are trying to loosen its grip.

Italian police detained 109 suspected members of the 'Ndrangheta mafia in the Calabrian city of Cosenza on Tuesday.

A coalition of Italian law enforcement agencies targeted local members of Lanzino-Patitucci and Zingari clan as well as a customs and financial police officer. 

The raid was headed by anti-mafia prosecutors, with Carabinieri special police, as well as federal and local officers and the economic crimes unit involved. 

According to authorities, those arrested are suspected of drug trafficking, mafia association and extortion of shopkeepers and business people in the Cosenza area.

Rebecca Joynes allegedly became pregnant after having sex with one of her victims, known as boy B, Manchester Crown Court heard - she denies the allegations against her.

Rebecca Joynes denies having sex with the two boys but admitted, in Manchester Crown Court, to having broken safeguarding rules by being in contact with them on Snapchat and having them back to her apartment in Salford Quays.

The 30-year-old was already suspended from her job and on bail for alleged sexual activity with boy A, 15, when she allegedly took the virginity of a second boy, known as boy B, 16, who she later became pregnant by.

Joynes denies that any sexual activity took place with boy A - whose semen was recovered from her bedsheets.

Chinese police hunting international corruption targets were allowed into Australia by the federal police and subsequently escorted a woman back to China for trial, in a major breach of Chinese-Australian police protocols.

The revelations, contained in Monday night's Four Corners program about a former Chinese spy, prompted a sharp rebuke from federal politicians who are concerned the act may have undermined Australia's national security.

The Chinese police were permitted to enter Australia in 2019 to talk with a 59-year-old Chinese-born Australian resident.

The woman was targeted under a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) anti-corruption drive called Operation Fox Hunt, which relies on police from the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) to make arrests.

Her case is one of 283 cases documented by an international NGO, Safeguard Defenders, in its recent report, Chasing Fox Hunt.

While Fox Hunt is described by the CCP as targeting "economic criminals", human rights groups have said it is also used to silence dissidents and abduct people around the world.

River levels are on the rise again in the flood-stricken Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul after more heavy rains on the weekend.

The Taquari and Caí rivers have burst their banks and are causing fresh flooding in the interior of the state.

More than half a million people have been displaced from their homes and 147 are confirmed to have died in the floods.

Rescue workers continue to search for people who are missing.

The Biden administration has told key lawmakers it is sending a new package of more than $1 billion in arms and ammunition to Israel, three congressional aides said Tuesday.

It’s the first arms shipment to Israel to be announced by the administration since it put another arms transfer — consisting of 3,500 bombs — on hold this month. The administration has said it paused that earlier transfer to keep Israel from using the bombs in its growing offensive in the crowded southern Gaza city of Rafah.

Thousands of Israelis joined a far-right Independence Day march on Tuesday in the south, led by Jewish activists advocating for resettling Gaza and forcing Palestinians to leave the enclave.

Two activists participating in the march crossed the border into Gaza and were arrested by Israeli forces near the Erez crossing.

The march was supported by lawmakers speaking at the event, including two cabinet members: Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, who is a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of Otzma Yehudit.

Authorities in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia announced a two-day curfew and banned gatherings on Tuesday after violent unrest on the archipelago with decades of tensions between indigenous Kanaks seeking independence and colonizers’ descendants who want to remain part of France.

Reserves 10 times the North Sea’s output raise fears over drilling in protected region

Russia has found vast oil and gas reserves in the Antarctic, much of it in areas claimed by the UK.

The surveys are a prelude to bringing in drilling rigs to exploit the pristine region for fossil fuels, MPs have warned.

Reserves totalling 511bn barrels of oil – about 10 times the North Sea’s entire 50-year output – have been reported to Moscow by Russian research ships, according to evidence given to the Commons Environment Audit Committee (EAC) last week.

It follows a series of surveys by the Alexander Karpinsky vessel, operated by Rosgeo – the Russian agency charged with finding mineral reserves for commercial exploitation.

Antarctica is meant to be protected by the 1959 Antarctic Treaty that bans all mineral or oil developments. The UK’s interests are overseen by the Foreign Office – but it has been accused of ignoring the emerging crisis.

Human rights lawyers wonder who will issue vital documents now that Ecuador has closed its diplomatic missions on Mexican territory in protest over last month’s assault on the embassy in Quito

The recent assault by Ecuadorian police on the Mexican Embassy in Quito is also having an effect on the thousands of Ecuadorians who are in Mexican territory trying to cross into the United States.

As of May 16, the Ecuadorian consulates in the Mexican capital and in Monterrey will close their doors after the breakdown of relations between both governments. The move comes one month after Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa gave the order to break into the Mexican diplomatic mission to detain former vice-president Jorge Glas, who was seeking a safe conduct to Mexico as a political asylum seeker, but is now being held in at La Roca maximum security prison in Guayaquil.

Speaking in Kyiv, Mr Blinken said Washington has the power to seize Russian assets in the US and will use them to help rebuild Ukraine.

He also said that Ukraine is getting "closer to Nato".

Earlier, the top US diplomat told Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky that military aid is "now on its way".

"What Putin destroyed, Russia should - must - pay to rebuild. It's what international law demands. And it's what the Ukrainian people deserve," Mr Blinken said during his speech at Kyiv Polytechnic University.

"Our Congress has given us the power to seize Russian assets in the US, and we intend to use it," he said.

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Police are searching for fugitives they say ambushed a prison van to free a drug dealer known as "The Fly." At least two prison guards died and three more are seriously injured.

At least two French prison officers were shot dead and three injured on Tuesday in an ambush on a prison van, French police said on Tuesday.

Authorities launched a major manhunt after the attackers escaped alongside an unarmed inmate.

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The escaped inmate had been convicted of burglary and was also under investigation for a kidnapping and homicide case in Marseille, according to public prosecutor Laure Beccuau.

Brussels warns new curbs on civil society flout “European values” as protests grow in Tbilisi.

Georgian MPs approved controversial plans to brand hundreds of NGOs and media outlets as foreign agents on Tuesday, paving the way for the bill to become law despite growing domestic dissent and condemnation from the U.S. and EU.

In a vote, parliamentarians supported the proposals brought forward by the governing Georgian Dream party by 84 votes in favor and 30 against, after weeks of contentious debatethat saw several brawls break out in the assembly chamber and one senior lawmaker assaulted. Crowds gathered outside the graffiti-daubed parliament building with whistles, vuvuzelas and even hitting pots and pans in a bid to make themselves heard by the lawmakers inside.

Under the new rules, civil society groups receiving more than 20 percent of their income from abroad will be required to register as “organizations serving the interests of a foreign power,” a label that critics fear will be used to silence anti-corruption campaigners and others critical of the government.

Sensitive data from the EU’s police agency appeared for sale on a cybercrime forum.

The European Union's agency tasked with fighting cybercriminals suffered a hack of its own.

EU law enforcement agency Europol suffered a recent data breach in which hackers infiltrated internal platforms, it confirmed to POLITICO. The hackers posted data on an online forum popular with cybercriminal groups and said they sold data, some of which they claimed were classified records.

The group that infiltrated the platforms, IntelBroker, is a cybercriminal group known for stealing sensitive data that is thought to be behind recent hacks of General Electric and stolen sensitive military files belonging to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The White House has condemned an attack on an aid convoy heading to Gaza by Israeli settlers who threw packages of food into the road and set fire to the vehicles.

Video of the incident on Monday at Tarqumiya checkpoint, west of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, showed settlers blocking the trucks and throwing boxes of much-needed supplies on the ground. Photographs from the scene showed piles of damaged aid packages and drifts of rice and flour across the road.

Late on Monday, photos began circulating on social media showing the trucks on fire.

An unknown number of orcas have sunk a yacht after ramming it in Moroccan waters in the strait of Gibraltar, Spain’s maritime rescue service has said, in the latest in a series of similar incidents involving the animals.

The vessel, Alboran Cognac, which measured 15 metres (49ft) in length and carried two people, encountered the highly social apex predators, also known as killer whales, at 9am local time on Sunday.

The passengers reported feeling sudden blows to the hull and rudder before the boat started taking on water. After alerting the rescue services, a nearby oil tanker took them onboard and transported them to Gibraltar. The yacht was left adrift and eventually sank.

The incident is the latest example of recurring orca rammings around the Gibraltar strait that separates Europe from Africa and off the Atlantic coast of Portugal and north-western Spain. Experts believe them to involve a subpopulation of about 15 individuals given the designation “Gladis”.

The UN has denied that the estimated death toll of women and children in the war in Gaza has been revised downward, pointing towards a confusion between the total numbers of dead bodies recorded, and the number of those who have so far been fully identified.

After the Gaza health ministry’s revised totals of those killed first appeared on the website of the UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Ocha), they were quickly seized on as proof by pro-Israel media and commentators that the UN had previously been exaggerating the toll.

They showed 24,686 dead which appeared to be a downward revision from the figure of about 35,000 which had been reported earlier in May, with 7,797 children and 4,959 women confirmed dead, about half the toll cited in previous reports. But the UN said on Monday that estimated overall death toll remained about 35,000.

The European Union has completed the reform of its migration and asylum policy, a watershed moment that for a decade proved stubbornly elusive.

The tortuous and often explosive undertaking came to an end on Tuesday morning, as member states gathered to give the very final green light to the five regulations that make up the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, an all-encompassing overhaul that seeks to ensure all countries, regardless of location, shoulder their fair share.

Among other things, the New Pact envisions stricter rules to expand the screening of applicants, carry out health and security checks, speed up examination procedures and provide counselling free of charge. Its main novelty is a system of "mandatory solidarity" that would give governments three options to manage asylum seekers: relocate a certain number, pay €20,000 for each one they reject, or finance operational support.

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As expected, Poland and Hungary, the most ardent critics, voted against the entire package of legislation. Since the reform was presented in 2020, the two have consistently resisted the system of "mandatory solidarity," falsely claiming it would force them to accept migrants against their will.

Budapest opposes measures “that might have a negative impact on EU gas market” — a stance that could kill the EU’s effort to squeeze Moscow’s gas revenue.

The EU’s unprecedented effort to penalize Russia’s lucrative gas sector is already crashing into a familiar sanctions foe: Hungary. 

The country expressed significant reservations about the new proposal during initial conversations among ambassadors last week, according to several people in the room — refusing to oppose the measure outright but making its wariness evident. Hungary’s top envoy said his country would block any penalties that raise energy costs in Europe.

“We are going to analyze the package but do not support anything that might have a negative impact on [the] EU gas market,” the Hungarian official said during a meeting of diplomats on Wednesday, according to two diplomats with knowledge of the discussions.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday, marking the first visit of a Biden administration official to Ukraine following the long-delayed passage of US supplemental funding to the war-torn country.

The top US diplomat was meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and is due to deliver a speech later Tuesday to highlight the US’ continued support for Ukraine across the board, including militarily, economically, in the energy space, and on democratic institution building, according to a senior US official.

The visit comes as Russia continues its new push into northeastern Ukraine after making several major advances there over the past week – marking Moscow’s most significant gains since Kyiv’s forces recaptured Kharkiv in late summer 2022.

Blinken’s trip also comes weeks after US President Joe Biden signed a $95 billion foreign aid package that includes nearly $61 billion for Ukraine following a successful six-month campaign by the White House to build support in a House GOP conference increasingly resistant to sending more money overseas.