On Saturday, the National People’s Congress of China enacted a measure establishing a new intellectual property court in the southern island of Hainan. China has sought to strengthen Hainan’s position as a global free trade port in the South China Sea, competing with other shipping centers in the area such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and [...]

The US Senate Tuesday passed the Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act, repealing healthcare insurers’ federal antitrust immunity. The House of Representatives previously passed the law in September, and Senate approval will now send it to President Trump to sign. Many insurers were granted an exemption from federal antitrust law in 1945 with the passage of [...]

China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) published new rules governing foreign investment on Saturday that establish an approval process for foreign investment in industries critical to national security, including energy and infrastructure. In a Chinese-language Q&A, the Commission defended the new rules as not protectionist, arguing that major European and North American economies, including [...]

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined Twitter Tuesday due to Twitter’s failure to timely report a breach of users’ private tweets between September 2017 and January 2019. Approximately 88,000 accounts were identified as having their tweets publicly available, despite the accounts being marked private. The €450,000 fine was calculated in accordance with EU precedent and is [...]

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted Monday to issue an order requiring nine major social media and video streaming companies to report on their use of consumer data. The order, issued pursuant to section 6(b) of the FTC Act, requests information pertaining to five subjects: 1) the collection of consumer data, 2) the use [...]

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Friday that the US Department of State would place new visa restrictions on Chinese Communist Party officials and others participating in propaganda or influence campaigns affiliated with the Party’s United Front Work Department. The United Front Work Department is a department within the party that reports to the [...]

The British Foreign Office released its twice-annual report on Hong Kong Monday, in which Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab suggested removing British judges from the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal. This is the most recent step in the deterioration of Sino-British relations over the status of Hong Kong since the 1997 handover of the former [...]

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled 5-2 Tuesday that the Trump campaign’s election observers were not entitled to observe Philadelphia’s ballot counting at close range. Throughout the ballot counting process, Trump campaign observers were allowed to stand within 20 feet of election workers processing ballots. However, campaign lawyers claimed that this was not sufficient to allow [...]