A BRITISH engineer has landed a UKPounds:1 million European grant to
develop a security system that reads veins in a hand like a bar code.
Developers of the system hope that it will become a standard security
measure, with banks the first users. Joseph Rice, 49, who devised the
scheme, has been working on the first crime-proof identification
programme since 1984. He hopes that the system will change the way
bank machines allow cash withdrawals.
Veins Check relies on infra-red cameras and the uniqueness of blood
vessels. The image of a person's hand would be logged on a computer
register. Mr Rice, 49, of West Bridgford, Notts, was awarded the
European grant with the support of Pronovus Ltd, of Nottingham, and
the British Technology Group. It is hoped that the project will be
launched in two years.
Mr Rice said his system would transform security. He said: "It could
be adapted to anything from credit card identification to group access
for corporations into buildings. We are also looking at the idea of a
'smart watch' that could read the veins and give individual-only
access to items such as computers, cars and your front door."
Peter Hawkes, of the British Technology Group, said: "Back in the
Eighties, Joe was the first person to identify the potential of veins.
We are excited because it has many advantages over other schemes.
Other ID methods can be flawed, such as cold affecting voice
recognition systems."
ITALIAN police, including the anti-terrorism branch, are bracing
themselves for possible attacks on the country's monuments and works
of art.
The alarm was raised after squatters sprayed graffiti on paintings
and walls in two churches in Viterbo, north of Rome, and damaged a
bas-relief by hurling bottles at it. Worried that the attacks may now
spread, Italy's Interior Ministry plans to set up patrols to protect
monuments in Rome, Venice and Florence. Restorers and art experts have
voiced concern over the damage already caused.
There are particular fears for a mid-15th-century polyptich of a
Madonna and Child with Saints, by Francesco D'Antonio Zacchi, entitled
Il Balletta, in Viterbo's 12th-century Church of St John. The upper
part of the work, considered a masterpiece of central Italian art, was
spray-painted in red with the word Sole, while the lower part was
defaced with a stripe in the same paint.
Sole in Italian means "sun". Police believe that the graffiti is a
reference to Soledad Roses, an Argentinian-born anarchist who recently
killed himself while under arrest in Turin. The normally sedate city
has become the centre of a squatter's movement.
Anatoli Vilkov, of the Russian Culture Ministry, displays two stolen
paintings, each worth about UKPounds:20,000, recovered after they
were offered for auction in London in 1996. Police are investigating
2,500 similar thefts of paintings, icons, rare books and cultural
treasures as a wave of crime has put much of Russia's priceless art
heritage at risk (Michael Binyon writes). Yuri Isayenko, a senior
investigator at the Interior Ministry, told a press conference that
about 30,000 artistic treasures and cultural artefacts had been
stolen in the past two decades, most in an "explosion of crime" after
the collapse of communism in 1991. Old coins and archaeological finds
also fetched high prices on the black market, he said. The Orthodox
Church is a particular target. Hundreds of village churches have been
plundered, with thieves threatening clergy and ransacking poorly
guarded places of worship in search of icons, vessels, vestments and
decorations. A spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchate said: "Recently
a thief tried to rob a church in Moscow while a service was going on,
and even got to the altar to steal censers before he was caught." The
treasures are usually smuggled abroad to be sold to rich Western
collectors. But so many icons have now left Russia that the Western
market is sated. Foreign connoisseurs are instead trying to buy
paintings and classical Russian art from the last century, Mr
Isayenko said. Russia has recently begun a vigorous campaign to
identify its stolen works, using courts and police channels to ensure
their return. Any stolen work worth more than $1,000 (UKPounds:600)
is now routinely reported to Interpol. The recovery of the two
UKPounds:20,000 paintings, which was reported on Tuesday, was a
modest victory. Mr Vilkov, head of the Culture Ministry's department
for the protection of cultural treasures, said the paintings had been
stolen from a museum in 1992 and were spotted at Sotheby's and
Christie's auctions in 1996. They had previously been sold at auction
in Finland, but no one had realised they were stolen.
