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Consumers in the European Union will soon have a single charger standard for a slew of mobile phones.

DigitalEurope, the continent's largest digital tech organization, has delivered a sample of a universal mobile phone charger to European Commission vice president Antonio Tajani. The EU said that the sample now paves the way for consumers to get their hands on devices that support the universal charger in the very near future.

"I welcome the rollout of new chargers for mobile phones based on the new EU standard," Tajani said in a statement accompanying the announcement. "This is … Read more

Can a country that gets nearly half of its electricity from burning coal really get 80 percent of its electricity from "clean-energy sources" in less than 25 years? According to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the answer is yes if the U.S. cranks up its "innovation machine."

The top energy-related headline from the State of the Union speech last night was President Obama calling for the U.S. to get 80 percent of its electricity from "clean-energy sources" by 2035.

Obama said the U.S. should invest in technology innovation in biomedical research, IT, … Read more

U.S. President Barack Obama set a target for power plants to produce mostly clean electricity by 2035--including power from sources like clean coal and natural gas--in his State of the Union address last night.

Obama also called for investment in clean technologies and urged Congress to eliminate billions of dollars in subsidies for oil companies.

"I don't know if you've noticed, but they're doing just fine on their own," Obama said about oil company profits. "So instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's."

Such a move, which … Read more

The State of the Union address this evening underscored the limitations of watching live video from the front pages of major U.S. publications on Apple's iOS devices and why Flash is the default video streaming technology.

In my case, I was trying to watch President Obama's speech on my iPad and found that almost every major U.S. national newspaper could not provide a live feed from their front door, generating messages like "this content is only available in Flash" or "This feature is optimized for Adobe Flash Player version 9 or higher." … Read more

In a digital heist reminiscent of a John le Carré novel, more than $9 million worth of greenhouse-gas emissions permits were stolen from the Czech Republic electricity and carbon trading registry this week and transferred to accounts in other countries, at the same time as the Prague-based registry office was evacuated due to a bomb threat.

That electronic theft, the latest in a series of security breaches affecting the market for carbon emissions, led the European Commission to suspend transactions in national European Union registries on Wednesday for a week.

"Three attacks have taken place since the beginning … Read more

An influential group of European politicians is protesting the U.S. government's attempt to pry WikiLeaks-related information out of Twitter, saying that EU privacy rules may have been violated.

The parliamentary maneuver expected tomorrow comes as London-based lawyers for WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange warned that their client could face illegal rendition to the United States, execution, or indefinite detention "at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere," and a U.K. judge set a two-day extradition hearing to start on February.

Tomorrow's parliamentary protest, calling on the EU to "ask the U.S. authorities for clarifications on the … Read more

Links from Friday's episode of Loaded:

Facebook suffered a brief outage yesterday but came back up with new photo features

Apple announces that the Mac Store with apps for Macs will launch on January 6

Yahoo layoffs will apparently result in the shutting down of several Yahoo services

The European Union is deepening its investigation into anti-competitive practices by Google

New Google Maps for Mobile on Android comes with 3D and allows for offline directions

An update to Hotmail lets you surf certain Web sites right inside your e-mail

An official PlayStation app is coming soon for Android and … Read more

China will soon overtake Japan as the world's second heaviest spender on research and development, according to a report from the Battelle Memorial Institute.

A nonprofit group that conducts scientific research, Battelle published its findings today as part of an article in its R&D Magazine. The article and its full supplementary report (PDF) looked at global R&D spending in general and across six specific segments--Information Technology, Electronics, Life Sciences, Aerospace/Defense/Security, Energy, and Advanced Materials.

Next year, China is expected to spend $153.7 billion on R&D, a big jump from $141.… Read more

Five LCD panel makers have been fined, and another has been cited, for what the European Union calls a "price fixing cartel."

LG Display, AU Optronics, Chimei InnoLux, Chunghwa Picture Tubes, and HannStar Display were fined nearly 649 million euros (about $856 million) by the European Commission, the EU's enforcement arm, for what it determined to be price fixing on LCD panels between October 2001 and February 2006. Samsung was also cited, but was immune from fines due to the company being "the first to provide information about the cartel."

Chimei InnoLux received the largest … Read more