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... GLOBAL NEWS ... NEWS nearly US$48 billion last year. Consumers spent nearly $5 billion in out-of-pocket expenses and nearly 300 million hours to resolve the problems created by identity theft. According to the survey, 67 per cent of the respondents said their credit card accounts had been misused in the past year. Another 19 per cent said thieves had tapped into their checking or savings accounts. Based on the survey results, the FTC estimates that, in the last 12 months, 3.23 million consumers discovered that new accounts had been opened and that other frauds such as renting an apartment or home, obtaining medical care or gaining employment had been committed in their name. (Source: New York Times, September 3, 2003) with biometric identifiers no later than October 26, 2004. (Source: The Register, July 22, 2003, http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/ 55/31885.html) For the latest information on the effects of vaccines on insulin-dependent diabetes and other autoimmune diseases, visit the Vaccine Safety website at http://vaccines.net. (Source: Classen Immunotherapies, Inc., USA, press release, May 27, 2003, via PRNewswire.com) at VACCINES LINKED TO EPIDEMIC IN CHILDHOOD DIABETES he prestigious peer-reviewed Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism published a study in late May by Dr J. Bart Classen, an immunologist at Classen Immunotherapies, and David Carey Classen, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Utah, providing support for a causal relationship between several common paediatric vaccines and the development of insulin- dependent diabetes. Their previously published work proved that the haemophilus vaccine, a common paediatric vaccine, caused a 25% rise in insulin-dependent diabetes in children under the age of seven. The Classens' research indicates most cases of diabetes caused by vaccines occur between 24 to 48 months after immunisa- tion of young children, but the delay can be shorter in older children with prior damage to their pancreas. The time delay between vaccination and diabetes corresponds exactly with work from several independent groups which showed a similar delay between the initiation of autoimmunity to the insulin- secreting islet cells and the development of diabetes. CAMERAMAN KILLED FOR FILMING SECRET MASS GRAVE OF US TROOPS n Sunday, August 17, US troops shot dead the award-winning Reuters cam- eraman Mazen Dana while he was filming near the US-run Abu Gharib prison in Baghdad. Nazmi Dana, the brother of Mazen Dana, says Mazen was murdered for dis- covering and filming mass graves of US troops killed in Iraqi resistance attacks. "The US occupation troops shot dead my brother on purpose, although he was wearing his press badge, which was also emblazoned on the car he was driving. "Mazen told me by phone a few days before his death that he'd discovered a mass grave dug by US troops to conceal the bodies of their fellow comrades killed in Iraqi resistance attacks," Nazmi said. "He also told me that he found many US troops covered in plastic bags in remote desert areas, and he filmed them for a TV program. We are sure that the American forces had killed Mazen knowingly, to pre- vent him from airing his finding." (Source: IslamOnline.net, August 20, 2003) SMART-CHIP BIOMETRICS FOR NEW US PASSPORTS senior US government official has laid out detailed plans for the timing and form of US government-issued bio- metric passports. Frank Moss, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Passport Services, presented his organi- sation's plans to evolve to a new, more secure "intelligent document" from today's paper-based passports at the Smart Card Alliance's Government Conference and Expo last week. "Our goal is to begin production by October 26, 2004," Moss announced. Current plans call for the new passport books to include a contactless smart chip based on the 14443 standard, with a mini- mum of 32 kilobytes of EEPROM storage. The chip will contain a compressed full- face image for use as a biometric. European biometric passports, by contrast, are planned to feature both retinal and fin- gerprint recognition biometrics on their smart cards. For US passports, the image and the passport information stored on the contact- less chip will be digitally signed to ensure the integrity of both the data and the pass- port itself. With this approach, "you can read a chip and confirm its validity, but you cannot create one. That is the beauty of public key technology,” said Moss. Under the US Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002, coun- tries whose citizens enjoy visa-free travel to the United States must issue passports SHOULD r= Beagle Rocke? i NEXUS 7 Se ritte OCTOBER — NOVEMBER 2003 www.nexusmagazine.com