Data Collection: Vestager says EU will eye 'big data' concerns in merger probes

The European Union plans to take a harder look at whether the collection of vast troves of consumer data by big internet companies violates competition rules, competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said on Sunday (17 January).

"If just a few companies control the data you need to satisfy customers and cut costs, then you can give them the power to just drive rivals out of the market," Vestager told a conference of top European and US entrepreneurs and investors.

"If we analyse a merger, if we have a suspicion or concern when it comes to antitrust, if it comes to data, of course we will look at it," she said in a speech at an annual digital innovation conference in Munich. "It may be a competition problem."

Since taking over as Europe's top antitrust enforcer in 2014, Vestager has stepped up investigations into US web giants such as Google and Amazon to decide whether her agency should regulate them more tightly.

Vestager acknowledged that protecting consumer privacy goes beyond her agency's competition remit.

But she put online companies on notice that the vast power they exercise in online marketing and commerce should not make it too difficult for smaller businesses to compete in those areas.

"If a company's use of data is so bad for competition that it outweighs the benefit, then you may have to step in to restore the level playing field," she said of her role.

Read more: Vestager says EU will eye 'big data' concerns in merger probes | EurAct

GMO Labeling Endorsed by US Physicians but blocked by Chemical Industry Lobby - Ten Reason to avoid them

Is the Industry Lobby Bamboozling you about GMO's?

Even as the federal government pursues H.R. 1599, aka the “Deny Americans the Right to Know” (DARK) act, mainstream medicine is urging the government to abandon its resistance to GMO (genetically modified organism) labeling. 

They are bolstered by a recent announcement by the World Health Organization that glyphosate (the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer) is probably carcinogenic in humans. The genetic engineering ends up making crops resistant to the herbicide so more must be applied.

According to contributing doctors from Harvard, Mt. Sinai Medical Center and the University of Wisconsin reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine, “GM crops are now the agricultural products most heavily treated with herbicides, and two of these herbicides may pose risks of cancer.”

A recent notice in the same journal, “GMOs, Herbicides and Public Health,” reports: “The application of biotechnology to agriculture has been rapid and aggressive. The vast majority of the soy and [feed] corn grown in the United States are now genetically engineered. Foods produced from GM crops have become ubiquitous.”

Sixty-four countries, including Russia and China, have already adopted transparency in labeling laws, but U.S. Big Food and Big Ag lobbyists have stonewalled efforts domestically.\

EU representatives at the EU-US Trade Negotiations (TTIP) hopefully will not let this issue be swiped off the table by the American delegation.  As it is well known that the political establishment in the US Congress is very much influenced by the US Chemical and food Industry Lobby, which includes corporate giants like Monsanto, Dow Chemicals, Syngenta, Tyson, ADM and Cargill..

To put this in an order of magnitude: ADM and Cargill now control 65% of the world's trade in grain. Monsanto and Syngenta control 20% of the $60-billion market in bio-engineered seeds.

The EU better be aware that this US corporate lobby campaign to "patent nature" and control the world's food supply has been very successful,  Today, 85% of US corn is genetically engineered.

And if you need more convincing: Ten Reasons to avoid  GMO's  - Europe does not need GMO's

EU-Digest 

Overfishing: Marine Life Drops by Half since 1970

Floating Fish Processing ship

The nonprofit World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London have jointly determined that ind
ustrial-scale overfishing, pollution and climate change have killed half of all marine life over the last 40 years.

The Living Blue Planet Report cites that species essential to the global food supply are among the hardest hit, partially due to humans catching them faster than they can reproduce. Large swaths of coral reefs, mangroves and sea grasses have also died, further decimating fish populations.

Statistics show that the family of fish that includes tuna and mackerel has declined by 75 percent since 1970. The number of species is also declining; a quarter of all shark and ray species face extinction. Half of all coral has already disappeared, and the rest will vanish by 2050 if temperatures continue to rise at current rates.

“Coral reefs occupy less than 1 percent of the ocean surface, but they harbor a third of ocean species,” says French biologist Gilles Boeuf.

The WWF report argues that protected global ocean area should be tripled by 2020 and fish retailers should source from companies that follow certified best practice standards.

EU-Digest

Wealth: Richest 1% will own more than all the rest by 2016 - "time to fire our political representatives"

The combined wealth of the richest 1 percent will overtake that of the other 99 percent of people next year unless the current trend of rising inequality is checked, Oxfam warned today ahead of the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos.

The international agency, whose executive director Winnie Byanyima will co-chair the Davos event, warned that the explosion in inequality is holding back the fight against global poverty at a time when 1 in 9 people do not have enough to eat and more than a billion people still live on less than $1.25-a-day.

Byanyima will use her position at Davos to call for urgent action to stem this rising tide of inequality, starting with a crackdown on tax dodging by corporations, and to push for progress towards a global deal on climate change.

Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More, a research paper published today by Oxfam, shows that the richest 1 percent have seen their share of global wealth increase from 44 percent in 2009 to 48 percent in 2014 and at this rate will be more than 50 percent in 2016. Members of this global elite had an average wealth of $2.7 million per adult in 2014.

Of the remaining 52 percent of global wealth, almost all (46 percent) is owned by the rest of the richest fifth of the world’s population. The other 80 percent share just 5.5 percent and had an average wealth of $3,851 per adult – that’s 1/700th of the average wealth of the 1 percent.

Note Almere-Digest: Hope our politicians are reading this because they have completely failed on a local and global scale to remedy this ever increasing global problem. Finger pointing to others for this disaster is not acceptable.

Read more: Richest 1% will own more than all the rest by 2016 | Oxfam International

Life resuscitation: Animal brought back to life from 30-year deep freeze

More than one human -- deceased baseball star Ted Williams, for example -- has wondered whether freezing your body when you die might allow you to be revived in the future.

Perhaps Japanese scientists are beginning to find an answer.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, researchers at Japan's National Institute of Polar Research have resuscitated two tardigrades -- sometimes known as waterbears or moss piglets -- from a 30.5-year deep freeze.

It seems odd that animal-namers can't decide whether these tiny eight-legged creatures look more like pigs or bears. I'm going with waterbears.

The researchers first collected two waterbears in 1983 from an Antarctican moss sample. They then stored them at minus-20 degrees C (roughly minus-4 degrees Fahrenheit). They defrosted them in 2014.

After defrosting, it took one of the waterbears 29 days to return to what the researchers described as a normal condition. The other died after 20 days.

Perhaps when they do, we will learn something about the prospects for reviving humans. Or perhaps waterbears are simply special beings. And we're not.

Read more: Animal brought back to life from 30-year deep freeze

Population Decrease: Across Europe, more people are dying than being born - by Olivia Goldhill

Demographers have a name for when a population has more deaths than births: “Natural decrease.” It’s rarely discussed because “it is unusual in the modern era,” according to a recent research paper, but that’s about to change as natural decrease is becoming increasingly common across Europe, and in many parts of the United States.

In an article published in December’s issue of Population and Development Review, authors led by Kenneth Johnson of University of New Hampshire note that, “In Europe today there is virtually no overall population growth from natural increase.” There is only one country—Kosovo—with a population that is naturally growing by more than 1% per year.

By contrast, 17 European countries are experiencing natural decrease, including Russia, Germany and Italy. After analyzing census data from 2000 to 2010, the authors conclude:

“Deaths exceeded births in most counties of Germany, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic, as well as in Sweden and the Baltic states. Farther south, natural decrease was also occurring in the majority of the counties of Greece, Portugal, and Italy.”

Natural decrease doesn’t mean a country is in danger of dying out completely, but it can create major economic difficulties. A declining population will tend to grow older, leaving fewer people in the workforce. As the proportion of old people rises, younger workers must pay a higher tax burden to pay for higher retirement, pension, and healthcare costs.

Read more: Across Europe, more people are dying than being born - Quartz

EU-US Partnership: "The EU is increasingly unreliable and unpredictable" - by George Friedman

European Unity?

The United States has a partnership with Europe, but it can no longer think of NATO as the mechanism by which it is related to Europe, George Friedman told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

George Friedman the author of this report is an American political scientist and author. A former chief intelligence officer, he is the founder of Stratfor and was its financial overseer and CEO. He recently sold his shares in Stratfor and started Geopolitical Futures, a new global analysis company. 

Firstly, the US looks at Europe in the much broader context of Eurasia. So now we have a crisis that stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The Chinese are in crisis, Russia is in crisis, the Middle East is in terrific crisis, and now Europe is in crisis as well. So we are looking at a situation where an area with a population of 5 billion is transforming in ways we cannot anticipate.

An American looks at this not just as Europe, but as a range of problems in general. There are many American views of Europe, but my view is that the EU has failed, but there is no clear alternative. And we see the failure in the immigration issue, which we do not regard as a major issue because it is less than 0.5% of population shift, but Europe cannot make a decision on how to handle it.

This is not an unmanageable problem. You can decide not to let anyone in, and then you take measures to prevent that, or you decide to integrate them and you do certain things to make that happen. It is Europe’s inability to make a decision that is, from the American point of view, the most problematic.

It is problematic because the United States has a partnership with Europe. As important as the EU, and very much missing from this conversation, is NATO: the stresses that exist between the countries in the European Union also become present in NATO.

So for example, we have one relationship with the French, one relationship with the British, a very different relationship with the Germans and a completely different relationship with the Poles. We can no longer think of NATO as the mechanism by which we are related to Europe.

This is not a catastrophic situation for the United States, but it poses challenges to us in the Middle East, and it poses challenges with Russia, and we are looking at the Europeans as increasingly unreliable and increasingly unpredictable.

Note EU-Digest: a most interesting and revealing report, exposing the weaknesses of the EU, including: lack of loyalty among partners, disarray among member states in the decision making process, need for a strong central leadership,  ineffectiveness of NATO, and need for our own EU army. As the saying goes :"We, the EU, better fish or cut bait". 

Hope you are taking note ? - EU Citizens, EU Presidency,  EU Commission, EU Parliament,  and foremost all you 28 self-centered EU member states governments. Don't destroy this fantastic project of democracy we call the EU, which has brought us more than 60 years of  Democracy, Peace and Prosperity. We the people will hold you responsible. We can't turn the clock back. Time for action is now !
 
For the complete report click here: George Friedman: The EU is increasingly unreliable and unpredictable | EurActiv