By Marci Greenstein National Institutes of Health chief, Dr. Frances Collins was talking up his agency’s partnership with the Food and Drug Administration on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show last week.  The move is intended to speed up the process for getting drugs from laboratories to the marketplace.  What’s surprising is that this collaboration hasn't happened sooner.  How often have we heard about patients desperate to get drugs that are successful in clinical trials but are moving at a snail’s pace through the FDA’s regulatory maze?

The Wall Street Journal's Amy Schatz has an interesting dispatch from a Federal Communications Commission workshop yesterday where media investors said the time is now for the FCC to loosen their restrictions on media consolidation. At issue, is whether to lift or modify the cross-ownership ban, which means that ...

The Wall Street Journal's Amy Schatz previews the Federal Communication Commission's review of Comcast's likely purchase of NBC from General Electric. There are fears about the cable behemoth turning NBC into a cable channel or messing with local affiliates. But the greater, long-term concern, I think, is that this ...

The Wall Street Journal's Amy Schatz reports that the Obama administration Federal Communications Commission has a different approach to broadband internet access than the George W. Bush FCC. While Bush wanted less regulation, the current five-member FCC panel wants more in order to expand internet access for all Americans. ...

Joelle Tessler of the Associated Press reports that the FCC is planning to analyze the wireless telephone industry, possibly with an eye towards improving service and limiting exploitative practices of users by the nation's mobile phone providers.

The Federal Communications Commission began its public comment period yesterday for its BIG goal in the Obama administration: coming up with a plan by February 2010 to bring high-speed internet to the entire nation. As Cecilia Kang of the Washington Post reports, coming up with a broadband ...

There's never much ink spilled about the Federal Communications Commission, besides the occasional business article on telephone mergers. The Washington Post, which for the past month has profiled the future of federal agencies under Obama on A2, relegates a look at the FCC to A21 Federal Page status on a ...

The Washington Post’s Cecilia Kang reports this morning that Kevin Martin, the Federal Communications Commission chairman, is okay with a merger between XM and Sirius. The companies are not just the two biggest in satellite radio, but the only two in the market. FCC originally allowed XM and ...

The Federal Communications Commission is considering whether to get companies to bid on providing free internet service. The Wall Street Journal’s Amy Schatz reports that the FCC might auction off parts of the airwaves to internet service providers “with the stipulation that a portion of the network be set aside ...

The Justice Department yesterday said “Why not?” to the merger between XM and Sirius, the two biggest satellite-radio services. The consolidation awaits Federal Communications Commission approval, but the Washington Post’s Peter Whoriskey and Kim Hart report that the FCC is almost certain to give the green ...