At a meeting held in February at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) announced that an international steering committee would be set up to promote a 500 GeV linear collider. This move reflects a growing consensus in the global high-energy physics community that such a machine should be the next major facility to follow CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Reports published by the Asian and European Committees for Future Accelerators and the US High-Energy Physics Advisory Panel all recommended a 500 GeV electron-positron linear accelerator, designed, built and operated as a fully international collaboration. The committee will be made up of members from separate Asian, European and North American steering groups, with more members from other countries. Its first meeting will be held during the 31st International Conference on High Energy Physics in Amsterdam this July.
