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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In this week’s Roar: some good news on China tariffs with some bad news on China and COVID, congestion in Europe, the state of U.S. logistics – quantified, and a question of ethics in the supply chain. The White House is exploring options on how to put the squeeze on inflation and rolling back some of the tariffs on China may be one of them. It’s expected that sometime soon, President Biden will introduce suspensions on a list of tariffs—just...

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The new edition of the EU Tax Alert is available. With this publication we would like to keep you informed about the latest developments on EU tax law. We have summarized the highlights of this edition below. General Court judgment on the Commission’s State aid decision on the UK CFC rules (United Kingdom and ITV plc v Commission, T-363/19 and T-456/19) On 8 June 2022, the General Court delivered its judgment in the case United Kingdom and ITV plc v Commission...

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The UK government is proposing to amend its data privacy regime to make it easier for employers to comply with its requirements. The main points that would impact employers (if implemented) are that it would be easier to reject or charge a fee for vexatious subject access requests, as well as some of the compliance and paperwork hurdles being removed and replaced with a more “flexible” mechanism. It is possible that, if the EU determines that this lessens the UK’s data...

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Editor's Note: In the U.S. laws and regulation space, federal lawmakers formally introduced bipartisan comprehensive federal privacy legislation titled, the American Data Privacy and Protection Act. Meanwhile, California passed a bill intended to protect children's online privacy, and the California Privacy Protection Agency approved draft regulations. The FTC republished an advance notice of proposed rulemaking on artificial intelligence and algorithms, and a new trans-Atlantic framework was announced between the United States and the European Union. In U.S. litigation, Microsoft...

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After an extraordinary 36 hours that saw almost 50 MPs resign from Government, Boris Johnson eventually saw the end of the road of his premiership on Thursday. After refusing to resign just the night before, at 12.30pm he stepped out of 10 Downing Street to announce his resignation as Conservative Party Leader, setting in motion also the end of his tenure as Prime Minister.   Mr. Johnson, who had made a career out of surviving political scandals, finally ran out of...

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The economic landscape in Canada and around the world has changed rapidly in the second quarter of 2022. After a strong start to M&A activity in the first three months of the year, concerns about a global recession are now top of mind for companies and investors. So what does this mean for Canada's M&A landscape? And what's coming next? Key Highlights Concerns of global recession top of mind in uncertain economy Q2 M&A volume down slightly, mid-market remains robust Pricing of...

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On 30 June 2022, the European Parliament and the European Council reached agreement on the final text of the Foreign Subsidies Regulation. Adding to the regulatory burdens, this Regulation creates a notification obligation for companies that receive subsidies from non-EU governments in transactions or public procurement procedures. As stated in an earlier newsletter article, the European Commission proposed the FSR to close a regulatory gap and create a level playing field between European and foreign-backed companies active on the internal...

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