It turns out the United States of America, also known as "those ruthless Morganites," won the race to complete the Human Genome Secret Project this past week. This bold move will thwart the well-considered plans of the tree hugging Gaian faction who was also working on the project. "We had to switch to Planetary Economics," Lady Deirdre Skye grumbled.

What impact will this precedent-setting event have on humanity? According to noted experts Brian Reynolds and Sid Meier: "The U.S. will gain one extra Talent per base which should lessen the chance of Drone Riots."

(From ABC News) IBM unveiled the fasted and most powerful supercomputer the world has ever seen today. Its name is ASCI White and it will be set up in a room the size of two basketball courts and use enough electricity to power 1,000 homes. This computer has a theoretical maximum speed of 12.3 trillion actions per second so it might even be able to run Trespasser: Jurassic Park at a decent clip.

"This will blow everything else away," said Jack Dongarra, director of the Innovative Computing Laboratory at the University of Knoxville, Tenn. "I mean, you've got what? A P3 750MHz? I could so smoke your ass in Quake 3 on this baby! The ASCI White could even run Deus Ex in Direct3D without breaking a sweat. It's just that powerful!"

Pundits estimate that home PC users may have this kind of power in as little as 12 years. "Just think about how good Lara Croft would look then!" Dongarra added.