Visit our new Front Page Store . New Sign up for MyNews Receive headline news, full articles and breaking news via the Web or wireless device. China, eager for the pride and prestige of joining the U.S. and Russia as the only countries to put a person in space, is pressing to do so in a few years.
China also wants to grab a bigger share of the world satellite launch market.
Toshiba announced a video chip that could bring two-way video to your cell phone, the kind of stuff you used to read about in Dick Tracy. Another Japanese company said it had developed a vibrating wrist phone that could transmit messages simply by placing your fingertip in your ear. The same week, other inventors were announcing a germ-killing swizzle stick and tires with retractable tracks to adjust to road conditions. IBM announced a new hard drive no bigger than a 50-cent piece that can hold 340 MB of data. Thanks to the mapping of the human genome, work on new drug products like fusion inhibitors to fight HIV and a virus injection that will fight cancer is being speeded up.