On February 3, 2007, in Tokyo, the European Union (EU) and the Japanese government signed the "Broader Approach" agreement that was initialed in November 2006. This agreement defines a "privileged partnership" between the EU and Japan to collaborate on other fusion activities to complement ITER. The activities are expected to cost about 340 million Euros over 10 years. Three large projects will be carried out in Japan under this agreement: design of an international fusion materials test facility; the establishment of a international fusion energy research center; and an upgrade of the JT-60 tokamak. Participation in each research project will be open to the other ITER Parties.

The Design Review of ITER was started in November 2006. Since then a series of meetings have been taking place within and between eight Working Groups. A work plan to resolve remaining ITER design issues will be presented to a special Technical Advisory Committee in April.

China has established the ITER China Office affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology. The Office will soon be transformed into the Chinese ITER Domestic Agency, which will have legal responsibility for the implementation of Chinese ITER fusion activities.

ITER-India has launched a website at http://www.iter-india.res.in

An ITER Summer School in Tokamak Physics will be held 16-20 July 2007 at the Universite de Provence, France. The goal is to offer advanced graduate students and recent PhDs a completer picture of both the theoretical and experimental aspects of tokamak physics.

Plans are underway to open the ITER International School in September 2007, to provide for the education of the children of families assigned to the ITER project.

The Dutch company DeMaCo has been awarded a contract by the European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA) for the construction of a full scale prototype of the ITER cryogenic vacuum pump over the next 18 months. ITER will contain ten such pumps.

More information on ITER progress is available at http://www.iter.org A subscription to the monthly ITER newsletter can be obtained without charge by sending a request to mark.westra@iter.org