6A
Monday, September 18, 1995
NATION/WORLD
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Currency makeover to have dollar users seeing double
Two faces, color-shifting ink could thwart counterfeiters The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — American currency is about to get a facelift, a high-tech overhaul to thwart counterfeiters that will have holders of green-backs seeing double.
Two portraits of an American historical figure will be on each bill, but you'll have to hold the bill up to the light to see one of them.
It will be the first distinct new look for U.S. paper money in 66 years, a redesign that some experts consider long overdue. The changeover will begin early next year with the $100 bill, a favorite of forgers. Existing bills will remain in circulation.
"We have an interest in protecting the integrity of our currency," said Treasury Under Secretary John Hawke Jr. "As technology develops the potential for more sophisticated counterfeiting, it gives us increasing cause for concern."
The most visible change will be to shift portraits off center.
An enlarged portrait of Benjamin Franklin will be moved to the left on the $100 bill, making room for a new watermark engraving. The watermark portrait, visible when the bill is held up to the light, is one of several new security features.
Officials said the watermark would be extremely difficult to duplicate.
Eventually, similar redesigns for the portraits will appear on nearly all smaller denominations
will appear on nearly all smaller denominations — Ulysses S. Grant on the $50 bill, Andrew Jackson on the $20, Alexander Hamilton on the $10, Abraham Lincoln on the $5, and, of course, George Washington on the $1.
Treasurer Mary Ellen Witrow has said borders on the new bills would be simplified, with geometric designs replaced by an assortment of lines and dots that are intended to foil counterfeiters.
Also, color-shifting ink will be used so that the greenback will take on a different hue when viewed from an angle. And government printers may use computer-designed patterns that are made to turn wavy when copied improperly.
About $390 billion in U.S. paper currency is in circulation, some two-thirds in foreign countries. U.S. officials decided not to recall old bills because it could disrupt foreign economies.
The Secret Service has said there might be three times as much counterfeiting conducted abroad as in the United States.
Robert Leuver, a former director of the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, doubts that anti-counterfeiting measures will work as long as old-style bills remain in circulation.
"If they exist as legal tender, people can counterfeit them," he said. "You copy whatever is easy to counterfeit."
Residents will decide whether the province will split from country
Polls show Quebec voters split evenly about secession
The Associated Press
MONTREAL — Somehow it's all very Canadian; a war of secession in which name-calling substitutes for violence. But civility is under strain as Quebec heads for an independence referendum in six weeks.
Quebec's separatists were supposed to be floundering by now, according to the political wisdom that prevailed earlier this year in the rest of Canada. Instead, opinion polls show a virtual dead heat as 4.9 million Quebec voters — about 82 percent of them French-speaking — prepare to vote Oct. 30.
"For this first time, English-speaking Canada is realizing the 'Yes' side could win," said Monique Simard, a top-ranking organizer of the independence campaign. "The 'No' side had been very confident, and suddenly they're realizing that every vote counts."
What had been a wearisome constitutional debate grows more pass-
sionate by the day. Dramatic "Oui" and "Non" billboards plead for votes. Allegations of racism and treason multiply. The Canadian dollar plummetts in response to rumors of separatist gains.
For decades, French-speaking Quebec residents have nursed frustrations and struggled with divided loyalties. Most have some fondness for Canada yet feel themselves victims of broken promises by English-speakers who never fully acknowledged Quebec's distinctive nationhood, rooted in its beginnings as a colony founded by France.
"Canadians and Quebecois don't live very close to each other, geographically or psychically," said Desmond Morton, director of the Institute for Canadian Studies at Montreal's McGill University.
To Canadians elsewhere, the common feeling is that Quebec already has benefited from special treatment, notably federal permission to impose French as the province's sole official language, Jean-Marc Leger, head of a Montreal polling firm, said 80 percent of Canadians outside Quebec think the province deserves no special treatment.
Within Quebec's French community there is virtual unanimity that the province merits unique status. The split is about whether to seek this special status as part of Canada or as a sovereign nation.
The federal government, headed by Quebec-born Prime Minister Jean Chretien, insists the separatists will lose. Chretien, fond of citing surveys that rank Canada as the world's most livable nation, asks why anyone would want to leave and refuses to speculate publicly about the consequences of a "Yes" victory.
The consequences probably would be shattering. Chretien would face pressure to resign, and Canada would be forced into awkward negotiations with Quebec over such issues as sharing the national debt and rearranging internal trade.
"Voting 'Yes' is a risky adventure that will bring economic upheaval," said Daniel Johnson, leader of the Quebec branch of Chretien's Liberal Party. He contends separation would saddle Quebec's residents with higher mortgage and car payments.
Simard said she was well aware of the exasperation of English-speaking Canadians.
"There is a profound ignorance about what Quebec is all about," she said.