2021年经济学人 脸书封禁特朗普账号延长至2023年（在线收听）

The world this week

本周国际要闻

Business

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The approval granted by America’s Food and Drug Administration to a new drug to combat Alzheimer’s disease was hailed as a breakthrough, even though the FDA conceded that the drug, aducanumab (to be marketed as Aduhelm), is not proven to work. It has shown success in reducing the build-up in the brain of a protein known as beta-amyloid, one of the possible causes of Alzheimer’s. Biogen must now conduct a large-scale clinical trial to determine whether it does also slow memory loss and cognitive decline.

美国食品和药物管理局（FDA）批准了一种治疗阿尔茨海默氏症的新药，尽管FDA承认这种阿杜卡努单抗（Aducanumab）药物还没有被证明有效，但它还是被誉为一项突破，该药物将以Aduhelm的名字上市。这种药物成功地阻断了大脑中β淀粉样蛋白的积累，β淀粉样蛋白可能是诱发老年痴呆症的病因之一。渤健现在必须进行大规模临床试验，以确定该药物是否也能减缓记忆丧失和认知衰退。

A consortium of private-equity funds, which includes Blackstone, reached an agreement to take a majority stake in Medline, a privately held supplier of medical equipment. At $34bn the deal is one of the biggest ever buy-outs involving private equity.

一个由私募股权基金组成的财团（包括黑石集团在内）达成了一项协议，收购Medline的多数股权，Medline是一家私人持有的医疗设备供应商。这笔价值340亿美元的交易是迄今规模最大的私人股本收购交易之一。

The American Senate passed a mammoth bill that aims to counter China’s rising expertise in technology. The legislation would, among other things, fund research in artificial intelligence and quantum computing and support the American chip industry. The House of Representatives will soon debate its version of the bill. Separately, Joe Biden ordered a security review of all apps based in countries such as China.

美国参议院通过了一项大规模的法案，旨在对抗中国日益增长的技术专长。该法案将为人工智能和量子计算领域的研究提供资金，并支持美国芯片产业。众议院很快将对该法案进行辩论。另外，拜登下令对中国等国家的所有应用进行安全审查。

Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority said it was investigating British Airways and Ryanair to see if the airlines broke consumer law by offering vouchers or rebookings instead of refunds to passengers who were unable to fly during lockdowns. The practice is unpopular. In America complaints about airlines refusing to refund were up by 5,500% in 2020.

英国竞争和市场管理局表示，正在调查英国航空公司(British Airways)和瑞安航空公司(Ryanair)，以确定这两家航空公司是否违反了消费者法，向在封锁期间无法出行的乘客提供代金券或重新订票，而不是退款。这种做法并不受欢迎。在美国，关于航空公司拒绝退款的客户投诉在2020年激增了5500%。

Facebook extended its suspension of Donald Trump for at least two years. As he is also permanently banned from Twitter, the former president will not have access to the social-media channels for America’s mid-term elections. From now on Facebook will hold material from any politician in the world to the same standards it applies to content from regular users, but will grant a “newsworthiness allowance” to some political posts that breach those standards. Its policy change did little to assuage its critics.

Facebook将特朗普社交账号的封禁时间延长了至少两年。由于他的Twitter账号也被永久拉入黑名单，这位前总统将无法使用社交媒体渠道来参与讨论美国中期选举。从现在开始，Facebook将按照普通用户的标准来接收来自世界各地的政治家发布的内容，但会对一些违反这些标准的政治帖文给予“新闻价值补贴”。这一策略变化并没有安抚到批评者的情绪。