  The regularized near-cloak via the transformation optics approach in the
time-harmonic electromagnetic scattering is considered. This work extends the
existing studies mainly in two aspects. First, it presents a near-cloak
construction by incorporating a much more general conducting layer between the
cloaked and cloaking regions. This might be of significant practical importance
when production fluctuations occur. Second, it allows the cloaked contents to
be both passive and active with an applied current inside. In assessing the
near-cloaking performance, comprehensive and sharp estimates are derived for
the scattering amplitude in terms of the asymptotic regularization parameter
and the material tensors of the conducting layer. The scattering estimates are
independent of the passive/active contents being cloaked, which implies that
one could nearly cloak arbitrary contents by using the proposed near-cloak
construction.
