Capitol Riot Puts More Scrutiny on Big Tech
Lawmakers are expected to push to scale back technology companies’ liability shield From news of President Trump’s extraordinary phone call about Georgia’s election to his permanent ban from Twitter and a House plan to introduce an article of impeachment, WSJ’s Shelby Holliday recaps the historic week in Washington. Photo: Michael Reynolds/Shutterstock By Jan. 11, 2021 8:49 am ET
WASHINGTON The storming of the Capitol by supporters of President Trump is expected to turbocharge Congressional efforts to regulate big tech and many lawmakers are expected to focus on scaling back the liability shield that protects internet companies.
Chinese Management Companies are Suddenly Hot Property
One niche segment of China’s unloved property sector still has the government strongly in its corner By Jan. 11, 2021 5:50 am ET
The post-pandemic year is shaping up as a tricky one for Chinese companies in the great real-estate game at least the building part of it. Companies managing existing buildings, on the other hand, are suddenly shaping up as hot property themselves.
The MSCI China Real Estate index fell 16% last year as state media reported a new “three red lines” policy for home builders, new regulatory benchmarks for financial health, with the aim of controlling excessive debt. One niche segment of the industry, however, apparently still has the government in its corner. Ten government bureaus released policies last week supporting the property-management industry, including broadening service scope and more market-based pricing.
Dreamstime
BioMarin Pharmaceutical has been running the world’s largest clinical trial of a gene therapy in hopes of sparing hemophilia patients from frequent bleeding and chronic drug infusions. But the company suffered a rebuke last August, when U.S. regulators demanded a lengthier study before approval would be considered.
On Sunday, BioMarin (ticker: BMRN) released data on the first year of the continuing study of its Roctavian therapy. The data looked good. In 112 participants, the product was safe and a single treatment with the gene therapy reduced annual bleeding rates by 84%. That is better than the performance of today’s standard therapy, which periodically infuses a patient with artificial versions of the clotting factor that their defective genes can’t make. Like other gene-augmentation therapies, Roctavian adds working versions of the gene to a patient’s cells, to supply the correct instructions for production of the clotting protein.
Jan. 10, 2021 9:00 am ET
WASHINGTON Democrats’ control of the Senate will make it easier for them to reverse parts of outgoing President Trump’s agenda, adding to the Biden administration’s toolbox a little-known congressional procedure to erase executive-branch regulations.
Mr. Trump, like his predecessors, ramped up the pace of federal rule-making during his final months in office, in areas from immigration to the environment and financial regulation. The administration put out three to four times its usual volume of rules in recent months, according to estimates by Daniel Pérez, an analyst at George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center.
Such measures, known as midnight regulations, are often vulnerable to rollback by an incoming administration of the opposing party.