Rice researchers, in collaboration with a team led by Gyou-jin Cho at Sunchon National University in Korea, have come up with an inexpensive, printable transmitter that can be invisibly embedded in packaging. It would allow a customer to walk a cart full of groceries or other goods past a scanner on the way to the car; the scanner would read all items in the cart at once, total them up and charge the customer's account while adjusting the store's inventory. 

More advanced versions could collect all the information about the contents of a store in an instant, letting a retailer know where every package is at any time.

"We are going to a society where RFID is a key player," said Cho, a professor of printed electronics engineering at Sunchon, who expects the technology to mature in five years. Cho and his team are developing the electronics as well as the roll-to-roll printing process that, he said, will bring the cost of printing the tags down to a penny apiece and make them ubiquitous.

RFID tags are almost everywhere already. The tiny electronic transmitters are used to identify and track products and farm animals. They're in passports, library books and devices that let drivers pass through tollbooths without digging for change.

But RFID tags to date are largely silicon-based. Paper or plastic tags printed as part of a package would cut costs dramatically. Cho expects his roll-to-roll technique, which uses a gravure process rather than ink-jet printers, to replace the bar codes now festooned on just about everything you can buy.

With Afghanistan and Iraq casting a shadow over his popularity at home in Britain, Blair's focus has increasingly shifted across the Atlantic, to where the nexus of faith and power is immutable and he is feted like a rock star.

According to the annual accounts of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, a UK-based charity that promotes cohesion between the major faiths, the foundation is to develop a US arm that will pursue a host of faith-based projects. The accounts show that his foundation has an impressive - and, in at least one case, controversial - set of faith contacts. Sitting on some £4.5m in funds as of April last year, mostly gathered through donations, it is now well placed to make its voice heard.

The foundation's advisory council of religious leaders includes Rick Warren, powerful founder of the California-based Saddleback church. It attracts congregations of nearly 20,000 and is reportedly one of the largest in the US. Warren, who has addressed the UN and the World Economic Forum in Davos, has been named one of the "15 world leaders who matter most" and one of the "100 most influential people in the world".

Also on the council is David Coffey, president of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA), a Virginia-based network of churches that spans the globe and is particularly active in the US.

The accounts also shine a light on the close connections the foundation now enjoys with major political institutions in the US. "With the Washington-based Centre for Interfaith Action, the foundation supported a meeting of major international organisations active in faith-based approaches to combating malaria (plus the White House, World Bank, UN, World Health Organisation) to co-ordinate international efforts," the accounts state.

Hill, 36, was at a pub in South Jordan on Monday for the launch of his "Beer and Bible" meeting. It was a soft launch with five people but he expects it to "blow up" in the months ahead, he told The Christian Post.

The combination of beer and Bible may not sit well with many Christians but for Hill, it's about going where the non-religious crowd is gathered, building relationships and talking about Jesus.

"We go where the people are like Jesus did, and of course we are criticized," said Hill, who had half a beer Monday night. "This is the hardest place in the country to plant a church. They will not come to us. We have to be Jesus and go to them."

Hill hopes to launch a church in September, if God allows. For now, he and his team of "warriors" are sticking to the pubs and other public places to engage people with love and community in Jesus' name.

And for those in the area who aren't into beer but may be curious about the Bible or have life questions, Hill is hosting a separate meeting called Alpha, a "10-week gathering that involves a meal, fellowship and discussion of what Christians believe in a very non-threatening way." Alpha launched on Tuesday.

On 18 February, the government made 25 March a national Christian-Muslim Day, something that has never occurred before in the history of Christian-Muslim relations. The decision was confirmed two days later during a meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and Prime Minister Hariri in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.

Dar-al-Fatwa Secretary General Sheikh Mohammed Nokkari, one of the main promoters of the joint festivity, said he hopes that such a holiday would spread to other parts of the world, adding that it was fitting that it should begin in Lebanon, which the late Pope John Paul II had described as "a message of pluralism for the East and the West."

For the Muslim clergyman, Mary is "the best woman ever, here (on earth) and in eternity" for "she's above all women", a symbol of unity between the two faiths. The Council of Maronite Bishops praised the government's decision, saying it "helps in bringing hearts together".

For the bishops, the celebration "is a unique event which deserves praise" for "it shows the face of Lebanon (as) 'the message'" as well as "the place and honour occupied by the Virgin Mary in Christianity and Islam."

For Joseph A. Kechichian, a commentator for Dubai-based GulfNews, the very creation of a joint Muslim-Christian is "an unprecedented event in contemporary history," going "beyond the symbolic political gesture" because it "opens a new page in the country's history".