RFID's adoption by the healthcare industry made progress this week with the announcement by AMTSystems of new pilot programs for its SurgiChip product. The SurgiChip, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in November, uses an RFID-based verification system to "prevent wrong-site, wrong-procedure and wrong-patient surgery." Industry analysts estimate that between five and eight surgeries per month are performed in which an incorrect part of the body is mistakenly operated upon. While only a very small percentage of the total number of monthly surgeries, those few mistakes can cause dreadful and traumatic outcomes.

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reporter's notebook To many, implanting radio frequency ID chips into humans is the face of impending Orwellianism. But to be honest, it looks like a mosquito bite.
Joseph Krull, an executive at Flanders, N.J.-based Virtual Corp., had a doctor stick an RFID tag from VeriChip under his skin on Jan. 10. The residual blemish amounts to a small red dot.

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California lawmakers are joining the national debate on the merit of incorporating electronic identification devices in driver's licenses, student IDs and passports.
A bill that would put strict limits on California's use of such devices in all state-issued identity documents is making its way through the state's legislature and was approved this week in a 6-to-1 vote by a senate judiciary committee. It's the first bill of its kind in the nation, said its author, state Sen. Joe Simitian.

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Syria has announced it is restoring relations with Iraq, after a break of more than two decades.
Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa told a regional foreign ministers' meeting in Turkey that ties would be resumed as soon as possible.
Diplomatic relations between the two states were severed in 1982 after Syria sided with Iran in its war with Iraq.
Analysts say security will be central to the new relations

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By Yossi Melman  
Even a thick layer of ceremoniousness and talk of making history yesterday could not hide Russian President Vladimir Putin's sarcasm and cynicism.
Putin's body language is restrained, and he makes one think of a spring about to be released, perhaps the result of his daily judo training. Apparently he cannot refrain from showing cynicism, even on the most formal occasions.

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Created: 29.04.2005 16:00 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:00 MSK
MosNews
The Russian nuclear fuel trader TVEL announced on Friday that fuel shipments for a Russian built nuclear reactor in Iran will start in the middle of 2005, six months before the plant becomes operational in early 2006.
TVEL’s vice president Anton Badenkov was quoted by the Russian news agency RIA-Novosti as saying that the construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant was progressing and that the nuclear fuel should be shipped to the site half a year before the unit is launched.

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