The European Commission next week will publish an EU-wide emergency plan to reduce gas use this winter. The initiative comes in light of the Russia’s significantly reduced gas deliveries, as well as the increasing likelihood that Gazprom will not restore deliveries after the planned maintenance period of the Nord-Stream 1 pipeline.  Among others, the plan to reduce gas usage includes recommendations for limit heating in public buildings and offices to only 19°C and cooling to 25°C, as well as measures...

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As predicted, the United States Supreme Court issued its final decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning the landmark 1973 case Roe v. Wade, which held the U.S. Constitution protected the right of women to terminate a pregnancy prior to the date of viability. The June 24, 2022, Supreme Court decision holds there is no such Constitutional right, and gives the power to regulate the legality of abortions back to the individual states 50 years after Roe....

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Two major delegated acts will come into force that amend the MiFID II framework in order to integrate sustainability risks and factors into banks’ organisational requirements, rules of conduct and product governance obligations. In the coming weeks and months, two major delegated acts will come into force that amend the MiFID II framework in order to integrate sustainability risks and factors into banks’ organisational requirements, rules of conduct and product governance obligations. I. Legal requirements Banks will have to abide by...

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Cutting down on electronic waste and reducing hassle for consumers are the aims of the EU’s proposed switch to a single charger for small electronic devices. The USB-C will become the standard port for all phones, headphones, tablets, cameras and portable speakers chargeable via a wired cable by late 2024 or early 2025. This will eliminate the need for consumers to have different chargers for different devices. The rules will also harmonise charging speed of new devices and introduce...

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At the recently concluded Bureau of Industry and Security Update Conference in Washington, D.C., Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement, Matthew Axelrod, announced four significant policy changes affecting export enforcement, which are focused on increasing the consequence of an export violation and strengthening the efforts of the Office of Export Enforcement to keep sensitive U.S. technologies out of the hands of the those that may pose national security threats to the United States. Below, we summarize the policy changes outlined in...

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Historically, power resilience was primarily achieved by utilizing a variety of infrastructure hardening methods; however, as grid modernization has propagated through the industry, even more advanced approaches are being sought to enhance system resiliency. The concept of unwinding the centralized generation model by collocating generation assets with their load centers is seen as a logical choice to limit system failure exposure by bypassing the extensive transmission and distribution infrastructure needed to serve load from centralized generation sources. The use...

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