Alexander Hellemans
Paris--CERN, the European particle physics center near Geneva, got a mixed message from its governing council last month. The council voted unanimously to put CERN's next grand project, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), on a "fast track." It should now be completed in a single stage by 2005--3 years ahead of the original schedule. But the council also agreed to a series of cuts in the rest of CERN's budget that could badly squeeze other experiments.