As you step out of the lift shaft onto the newsroom floor, you can sense the excitement around you. The air is filled with the quiet hum of electronic equipment, the clicking of keyboards, the low murmur of staff talking with each other. An intern, whose job is obviously to help visitors and keep them away from the staff, approaches you.

"Hello, and welcome to the news floor. Here we collect all the news that's happening locally, and prepare it for transmission to other worlds. We also collect all the news arriving from other worlds, sort and index it, and put it on the system-wide news net.

"You can usually find the latest news at the news desks. If you want to research older news items, you should visit the news archive."

Bullish Report on Shipping Industry Ignites Controversy

Breaking News

In its annual market analysis for the year, the Toscana Shippers Association is predicting massive growth in the interstellar shipping industry over the next two decades. The report attributes most of the growth to the recent - and higly controversial - move by the ITC to eliminate price controls on commodities purchased for interstellar trade.

Read the full article here.