Prof. Atsuto Suzuki (director of the Tohoku ILC Planning Office and president of Iwate Prefectural University) spoke with the media on the 19th to talk about his January visit to Europe. There he said he was planning to go to Europe in March in order to push forward negotiations on the ILC between European governments and Japan.
Read full translation provided by Iwate & the ILC website here.

Inside a cramped laboratory in Shanghai, China, physicist Ruxin Li and colleagues are breaking records with the most powerful pulses of light the world has ever seen.

ただし、競合相手もいる。国際協力の下で計画され日本が誘致を目指す国際リニアコライダー（ILC）と、CERNの将来円形衝突型加速器（FCC）だ。しかし中国は、野心の大きさと政治的・資金的支援の体制で群を抜く。加速器の建設は早ければ21年に、データ収集は28年までに開始される予定。(But, there are competitors. International Linear Collider, promoted by international collaboration to build in Japan, and CERN’s FCC. However, China surpass them in term of ambition, political and financial support. They intend to start construction as early as 2021, and collecting data by 2028.)

可以说，CERN 发明的万维网催生了第三次工业革命。

This month, a delegation of Japan’s non-partisan Federation of Diet Members for the ILC (FDMILC) visited France and Germany to talk with government officials about the ILC. Their main goal was to create a framework of international cooperation that would be vital in realizing the project. Prof. Atsuto Suzuki, head of the Tohoku ILC Planning Office and President of Iwate Prefectural University, also joined in on the trip.
Read full translation provided by Iwate & the ILC website here.

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)’s Panel of Experts on the ILC has reinstated their working group on elementary particle physics because of the recent changes to the ILC plan. They met at MEXT on January 18th for their first meeting since reinstatement.
Read full translation provided by Iwate & the ILC website here.

The project will greatly contribute to the development of the region and our reconstruction. This year is an important year for the project, so I’d like to put my efforts into petitioning the national government and other efforts that would support its realization.”
Read full translation provided by Iwate & the ILC website here.

Governor Tasso said, “We are in an important time right now for the ILC’s realization. We at the prefecture will accelerate the pace of our preparations.”
Read full translation provided by Iwate & the ILC website here.

With the ILC having been on the table for more than two decades, the linear-collider community is keen that the machine’s future is decided soon. (…) “The Linear Collider Board strongly supports the JAHEP proposal to construct a 250GeV ILC in Japan and encourages the Japanese government to give the proposal serious consideration for a timely decision,” says LCC director Lyn Evans.

In hopes of realizing the International Linear Collider (a huge particle collider to be built in the Kitakami moutains of Iwate), Ofunato City became the first town on the coast of Iwate to install an office for ILC matters.
Read full translation provided by Iwate & the ILC website here.

Meanwhile, as we look ahead, the potential construction of new experiments, such as an International Linear Collider, a next-generation ring-based proton collider, or even (if the technology arrives) a relativistic muon collider could lead us to the next frontiers in fundamental particle physics. It’s an incredible time to be alive.

This time, we once again visited the beautiful city in late October for Linear Collider Workshop 2017. While the Japanese national government has not moved on the project in the interim since LCWS 2016 in Morioka, we wanted to make sure that all of our friends abroad knew that Iwate and Tohoku are still working their hardest on making the ILC project come to fruition.

“It will be difficult for the national government to make a decision without the will of the people of Japan to build the project. The related parties in Tohoku will band together as one to support the creation of the master development and spillover economic effects, and will convey that widely to the rest of Japan. We will also continue to look for more opportunities to urge the national government to make their decision.”
Read full translation provided by Iwate & the ILC website here.

«Nous pensons que l’ILC permettra d’obtenir deux ou trois événements – la création du Higgs – toutes les cent collisions de particules; c’est vingt millions de fois plus qu’au LHC.» Et donc, la garantie d’un environnement propre et de mesures de haute précision. (…) Les promoteurs de l’ILC ont joué leur va-tout, en annonçant le 7 novembre une reconfiguration drastique du projet, et un coût réduit à 4,7 milliards de francs: son énergie ne sera plus que de 250 GeV.

東北地方で宇宙研究に使う次世代加速器「国際リニアコライダー（ＩＬＣ）」誘致に向けた動きが活気づいている。北上山地が誘致の有力候補地で、巨額の建設費用も従来より削減した案が固まり、誘致実現へアピールしやすくなった。(The movement towards attracting to the next generation accelerator “International Linear Collider (ILC)” for particle physics research in the Tohoku region is booming. The Kitakami Mountains are a promising candidate site, and the proposal to reduce the huge construction cost has also been settled and appealed for attracting attractiveness.)

Within, the winners have written about the necessity of the ILC project, and their hope that the Japanese government will host the project. It will be delivered to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe next month. Appearing in its pages are seven foreign scientists, including Dr. Barry Barish (…)
Read full translation provided by Iwate & the ILC website here.

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has reformed the Panel of Experts to once again deliberate on the ILC, taking into account this new information. The national government should make their decision on the ILC sometime in 2018.
Read full translation provided by Iwate & the ILC website here.

Planning the next big science machine requires consideration of both the current landscape and the distant future.