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Bank and credit union bosses say cash won’t be alone, with wallets and credit cards also likely to disappear too.

They told The Advertiser’s round table forum that cash and cards will be replaced by computer chips embedded in mobile phones, watches or other portable devices.

Australian Central chief executive Peter Evers believes cash will be replaced for most transactions in five-to-seven years.

“Cash will disappear as there will be other forms of carrying cash, stored value in your phone or whatever it might be. It will transfer automatically,” he said.

Nanotechnology refers to controlling matter at an atomic or molecular scale measured in nanometers, or millionths of millimeters. In the food industry, the technology has excited manufacturers as its potential uses are explored, including detecting bacteria in packaging, or producing stronger flavors and colorings.

But Dr Burdock claims that manufacturers lack understanding about how particles can change when they are shrunk to nano-size, and the current economic situation has exacerbated potential dangers, as some cost-cutting companies could look to cheaper, less reliable safety assessments.

Altered properties

One of the major safety worries about nanotechnology has been the suggestion that such small particles could feasibly cross cellular membrane barriers, meaning that an ingredient that is currently GRAS (generally recognized as safe) could become dangerous if it is nano-sized – a worry that Dr Burdock shares.

He told FoodNavigator-USA.com: “The problem is that a lot of food ingredient manufacturers are looking at ingredients and saying that a product is GRAS, but if it’s nano-sized it’s going to have different properties.

“The answer is that if you nano-size the particle you have to test it like a new substance. This is what could make nanotechnology the new asbestos.”

His views were echoed in a new report from the Investor Environmental Health Network (IEHN) released on Tuesday which discusses what it terms “disturbing asbestos-nanotech parallels”.

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, made legal history by agreeing to allow the trial to be heard by a judge alone.

It is the first time the power has been used since it came into force in 2007.

WHO raised the pandemic alert level to phase-6, indicating a global influenza pandemic involving the 2009 A/H1N1 strain. Baxter is in contact with WHO and other global public health authorities regarding the pandemic. A number of national public health authorities have existing pandemic agreements with Baxter that allow them to place orders for a vaccine now that a pandemic has been declared by WHO. These public health authorities will be evaluating their needs to determine their orders for vaccine supply. Despite the company’s existing obligations to supply vaccine under a pandemic phase-6 alert, Baxter is also committed to working with WHO to allocate a portion of the company’s commercial production to address global public health issues deemed most urgent.

The proposal, much of which will be subject to approval by Congress, sets out the biggest overhaul of market rules in more than seven decades, adding an additional layer of regulation for the biggest firms. It would create an agency for monitoring consumer financial products, make the Federal Reserve the overseer of companies deemed too big to fail, and bring hedge and private equity funds under federal scrutiny.

“This was a failure of the entire system,” Obama said in prepared remarks for a White House event with the leaders of the Treasury, Fed and other regulatory agencies. “An absence of oversight engendered systematic, and systemic, abuse.”

The announcement marks the beginning of what promises to be a political battle that’s likely to alter the president’s plan. Obama, who has called the “sweeping overhaul” of regulations one of his top domestic priorities, said wants to sign legislation to enact it by the end of the year.

“We agreed to take further steps in this direction, including, perhaps, by adjusting contracts and laws that already exist,” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told reporters in the Kremlin today after talks with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao.

Russia, the world’s biggest energy supplier, wants to start selling oil to China in rubles, said Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who is also chairman of OAO Rosneft, Russia’s biggest oil company. Energy sales in rubles are a “strategic” issue for Russia, he said, adding that oil exports to China over the next 20 years will surpass $100 billion.

Brazil, Russia, India and China agreed yesterday to push for more clout in global financial institutions during what Medvedev called BRIC’s “historic” first summit in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. China and Russia have called for a more diversified financial system to give emerging economies a bigger say in economic affairs, including the creation of alternatives to the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency.

‘Symbolic Value’

“Expanding the use of national currencies in mutual settlements is a separate, important task,” Medvedev said. China has the world’s biggest foreign-currency reserves, almost $2 trillion, while Russia is third with more than $400 billion.

The ruble weakened 0.1 percent to 31.2396 against the dollar in Moscow today after earlier strengthening as much as 0.4 percent. The yuan was little changed against the dollar on speculation China will prevent appreciation to avoid a prolonged slump in the nation’s exports.

It will take “at least a couple of years” to start converting the first contracts into domestic currencies, said Elina Ribakova, Citigroup Inc.’s chief economist in Moscow.

Today’s announcement has “important symbolic value,” she said. “If you take a 10- or 20-year perspective, trade between Russia and China will increase significantly.”

Total trade between the neighboring countries reached a record $56.8 billion last year, according to the Kremlin.

After today’s Moscow meeting, Russia and China signed an agreement worth $3 billion to cooperate in trade and investment in areas including light industries, high technology and energy.

U.S. Deficit

The dollar’s status has come into question as leaders of the BRIC nations consider substituting other assets for their dollar holdings amid a ballooning budget deficit that keeps the U.S. dependent on foreign financing. China alone owns about $744 billion of U.S. Treasury bonds among its $2 trillion of foreign- exchange reserves.

Russian central bank First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev’s comment on June 10 that Russia may sell some of its U.S. bonds to buy International Monetary Fund notes helped push 10-year yields on Treasuries to the highest level since October.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva today denied that BRIC leaders discussed buying each other’s bonds at the Yekaterinburg summit, after Medvedev’s top economic adviser said the matter might be discussed.

The purchase, which started at 10.16 a.m. (1416 GMT) and ends at 11 a.m. (1500 GMT), is part of the U.S. central bank’s emergency effort to keep long-term interest rates low.

The remarks, coming after US data showed a modest decline in Chinese investments in US government bonds, were in contrast to an earlier statement in Beijing which had said the recent sell-off was a routine transaction.

“China is implying to the US, more or less, that it should adopt a more pragmatic and responsible attitude to maintain the stability of the dollar,” He Maochun, a political scientist at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times.

According to US Treasury data issued Monday, Beijing owned 763.5 billion dollars in US securities in April, down from 767.9 billion dollars in March.

It was the first month since June 2008 that Beijing failed to purchase more US T-bills.

Zhang Bin, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said China’s move showed a more cautious attitude.

“It is unclear whether the reduction will continue because the amount is so small. But the cut signals caution of governments or institutions toward US Treasury bonds,” Zhang told Xinhua news agency.

China’s foreign ministry said Tuesday that its purchases of US Treasuries remained based on “security, liquidity and value preservation”.

For Zhao Xijun, deputy director of the Finance and Securities Research Institute of People’s University, China may have reduced its holding of US Treasuries simply because it needed the money.

Zhao said the sell-off could have been in order to pay for its own economic stimulus package.

Confirmation that the U.S. government had contacted Twitter came as the Obama administration sought to avoid suggestions it was meddling in Iran’s internal affairs as the Islamic Republic battled to control deadly street protests over the election result.

Twitter and Facebook have been used as a tool by many young people to coordinate protests over the election’s outcome.

President Barack Obama said earlier on Tuesday he believed “people’s voices should be heard and not suppressed” in Iran.

Obama, who has sought direct engagement with Iran, also said he did not want to be seen as “meddling” in Iranian internal affairs, given the two countries’ rocky history.

But his spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama has “deplored and condemned the violence that we’ve seen, and underscored that the world is seeing in Iran a yearning for change.”

Twitter Inc said in a blog post it delayed a planned upgrade because of its role as an “important communication tool in Iran.” The hour-long maintenance was put back to 5 p.m. EDT/2100 GMT, which corresponds to 1:30 a.m. on Wednesday in Iran.

The upgrade originally had been planned for Monday night in the United States, which would have cut daytime service in Iran on Tuesday.

The State Department declined to give immediate details of the contact with Twitter, which has been used particularly by young urban Iranians who are disputing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election last Friday.

“We highlighted to them that this was an important form of communication,” said a State Department official of the conversation the department had with Twitter officials.

Any sign of U.S. involvement in the actions of Twitter or any other social networking service could be seized on by Iran as U.S. interference in the electoral process.

Iranian officials declared that Ahmadinejad defeated his more moderate challenger, former prime minister Mirhossein Mousavi, in last Friday’s election, triggering massive street protests by Iranians questioning the election’s legitimacy.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly strongly rejected that contacts to Twitter amounted to meddling in Iranian internal affairs.

“This is about giving their voices a chance to be heard. One of the ways that their voices are heard are through new media,” Kelly told reporters.