1. The European Parliament plans to hold hearings to invite CEO of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google’s Alphabet to attend in an attempt to crack down on the power of US tech giants. In the coming months, the European Parliament will advise on a proposed proposal by the European Commission, which requires the companies to compete fairly with their competitors and do more to deal with fake online news and harmful content, or face huge fines.

2. In 2020, South Korea’s national housing transaction prices rose 5.36%, the biggest increase in nine years. In 2021, house prices in South Korea continued to rise, with housing prices in the capital circle rising 0.31% month-on-month in the third week of January, the highest in eight years and eight months.

3. British Health Secretary: strict outbreak control across the UK has reduced the number of new virus infections, but the British health system is still under tremendous pressure. It is still too early for COVID-19 ‘s epidemic data to be low enough to let go of control.

4.The Norwegian government, the world’s largest sovereign fund with $1.078 trillion in global pension assets under management, is looking for Chinese traders. In addition, overseas long-term investors such as Canadian pensions have recently been conducting research one after another to recruit outstanding Chinese investment players.

5.Washington, D.C.: lift the ban on indoor dining in restaurants and allow local restaurants to eat indoors with an indoor capacity of 25%. The order came into effect at 5: 00 a.m. eastern time on January 22, officially ending a month-long ban on indoor dining spread by COVID-19 in Washington, D. C.

6.UＳ: in January, the initial value of PMI of Markit manufacturing industry reached a record high of 56.5, with a previous value of 57.1; the initial value of PMI of service industry was 57.5, expected 53.6, and the previous value was 54.8.

7.Recently, large-scale protests broke out again in many parts of the Netherlands against the government’s latest epidemic prevention measures, with demonstrators throwing firecrackers and other dangerous goods at the police and setting fire to a novel coronavirus testing center in a city in the central Netherlands. So far, more than 240 people have been arrested.

8.The journal Science published a paper by Takahashi Takehiro and others from the Department of Immunobiology, Yale University School of Medicine, focusing on “gender differences in immune response”. The researchers found that among novel coronavirus patients, men had a 1.7 times higher risk of death than women. The main reason is the sex chromosome: the X chromosome encodes a large number of important immune-related genes. 

9.South Korea’s Food, Medical and Drug Safety Agency revoked the license of Innotox, a botulinum toxin type A produced by South Korea’s Medetuo Company, for falsifying experimental materials. The measure came into effect on the 26th, and related products are also in circulation in China. In related industries in China, they are translated as Meditux, whose botulinum toxin products are often referred to as “powder” and “small golden bottles”. It is reported that botulinum toxin, also known as botulinum toxin, is often said to be the ingredient of facial slimming needle. (based on 2019, the market for Botox in South Korea reached 150 billion won, or about 880 million yuan. As the first company in South Korea to obtain a license for Botox, Meditol has a market share of 36%.)