Nothing much new or earthshaking, at least not at first. Among the NAN states, Salish-Shidhe and Tsimshian are still slagging each other off in council meetings, and threatening war over some new resource-allocation scheme. Pueblo doesn’t like Ute now, while Sioux—the old enemy—seems to be the flavor of the week. In Europe, the Serbs and the Croats are at it again, and everybody still hates the Israelis. Three universities are holding celebrations of the one-hundredth anniversary of some slag named Tolkien publishing the first book in some trilogy or other, and an Atlanta Neo-Anarchist group wants to declare a "Day of Shame" about the activities of someone called McCarthy, also from a fragging century ago. (Get with the present, will you?) The biz news boils down to the megacorps still giving it to the consumer up the hoop. No mention of TIC, Bio-Logic, Lightbringer, or Novalis Optical Technologies, but that’s no big surprise.