Month: June 2021

President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. (credit: John Thys/AFP/Getty Images)

The US has warned the EU against pursuing “protectionist” technology policies that exclusively target American companies, ahead of Joe Biden’s first presidential visit to Brussels.

The National Security Council, an arm of the White House, wrote last week to complain about the tone of recent comments about the EU’s flagship tech regulation, as debates are about to begin in the European parliament.

“We are particularly concerned about recent comments by the European Parliament rapporteur for the Digital Markets Act, Andreas Schwab, who suggested the DMA should unquestionably target only the five biggest US firms,” said the email, seen by the Financial Times and dated June 9.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Jonathan Kitchen)

As the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the country last year, the chief executive officers of 178 US healthcare companies saw their already lofty pay soar to even higher heights.

Collectively, the 178 CEOs took home $3.2 billion in 2020, according to a new analysis by Axios. Their median pay rose to $9 million, up from about $7.7 million in 2018 and $8 million in 2019. The 2019 US median household income was $68,703, according to the US Census Bureau. The Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that the 2020 national median income for families was $78,500.

Thirty health care CEOs made over $30 million each. That list includes the CEOs of Regeneron ($174 million), Eli Lilly ($68 million), Teladoc ($45 million), UnitedHealth Group ($42 million), and Quest Diagnostics ($34 million).

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  The OnePlus Nord N200. [credit: OnePlus ]

OnePlus' latest cheap phone launching in North America is the "OnePlus Nord N200 5G." The phone is a follow-up to the $180 Nord N100 from last year, and with OnePlus' customary yearly price increases, the N200 is up to a still-dirt-cheap $240.

Considering the $240 price, it sounds like you're getting a pretty capable entry-level phone. The phone has a 6.49-inch, 90 Hz 1080p display; 4GB of RAM; 128GB of storage; and a 5000 mAh battery with 18 W charging. The pictures show a side fingerprint reader, a USB-C port, and a headphone jack. The SoC is a Snapdragon 480, an 8 nm, eight-core SoC with four ARM Cortex A76 cores and four A55 cores.

The phone (and those specs) are official today, but for some reason, OnePlus isn't releasing a full spec list. For that, leaker Evan Blass fills in the blanks. Blass says the phone will have a 2400×1080 LCD, NFC, a microSD slot, and sub-6 GHz 5G support (not mmWave), which is expected at this price point. Blass' specs also fill in the details on the rear camera lineup, which features a 13MP main camera and two 2MP "Macro" and "Monochrome" cameras that we're going to call "purely decorative." Phone manufacturers think multiple cameras are an important selling point for phones, even if the additional cameras do almost nothing.