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OB OY Le VEN? BREAKING AMERICA'S GRIP ON THE INTERNET ASIAN CURRENCY UNIT ON THE WAY would a” AN Asian currency unit is expected to be on trial by the middle of next year, paving the way for a future unified Asian cur- rency, reports International Finance News, citing a senior offi- cial of the Asian Development Bank. The unit will integrate the cur- rencies of 13 members, including mainland China, Japan and South Korea, to be an index to test their currency stability, the Shanghai- based newspaper said. Whether the Hong Kong dollar and New Taiwan dollar will be included is still under study. The Asian Development Bank will publish daily on its website the exchange rate of the Asian currency unit (ACU) to the US dollar, the euro and the currencies of members. The ACU will be modelled on the for- mer European currency unit, forerunner of the euro, adopting a basket of currencies to decide its value. (Source: Shanghai Daily, October 26, 2005) Yr would expect an announcement that would forever change the face of the Internet to be a grand affair—but unless you knew where he was sitting, all you got was David Hendon's slightly apprehensive voice through a plastic earbox. Hendon is the UK Department of Trade and Industry's director of business relations and was in Geneva representing the UK Government and European Union (EU) at the third and final preparatory meeting for November's World Summit on the Information Society. He had just announced a political coup over the running of the Internet. Representatives from the UK and US, old allies in world politics, sat just feet away from each other, but all looked straight ahead as Hendon explained the EU had decided to end the US Government's unilateral control of the Internet and put in lace a new body that would now run this revolutionary communications medium. The issue of who should control the Net ad proved an extremely divisive issue, and for 11 days the world's governments traded blows. For the vast majority of people who use the Internet, the only real concern is getting on it. But with the Internet now essential to countries’ basic infrastructure, the question of who has control has become critical. In the early days, the US Department of Commerce (DoC) pushed and funded expansion of the Internet, and when the Net became global the DoC created a pri- vate company, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), to run it. The DoC was due to relinquish that con- trol in September 2006, when its contract with ICANN ends. But an extraordinary u-turn by the US Government in June sent shockwaves around the Internet world when the DoC made it clear it intended to retain control of the Internet's root servers indefinitely. (Source: The Guardian, October 6, 2005) USA TO IMMUNISE DRUG COMPANIES FROM LIABILITY bill recently introduced in the US Senate, the "Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005" (S. 1873) aims to shortcut the testing procedures for new vaccines and drugs in case of a pandemic and to protect vaccine-makers from legal liability in case the drug causes adverse reactions. The US National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) has called the bill, which passed out of the US Senate HELP Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness the day after it was introduced, "a drug company stockholder's dream and a consumer's worst nightmare”. The proposed legislation will strip Americans of the right to a jury-heard court case if they are harmed by an experi- mental or licensed drug or vaccine that they are forced by the government to take whenever Federal health officials declare a public health emergency. The bill allows for the establishment of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA) as the single point of authority within the government for R&D into drugs and vaccines in response to bioterrorism and 6 = NEXUS "Oh, honey, you shouldn't have! A dozen bottles of the last of the world's oil!" www.nexusmagazine.com DECEMBER 2005 — JANUARY 2006