TECHNOLOGY & TELECOMMUNICATIONS

IBM to Make Supercomputer to Check Nuclear Weapons: President Clinton announced that International Business Machines Corp. will build the world’s biggest and fastest computer to monitor the safety of the U.S. nuclear arsenal without the need to conduct nuclear tests. Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM, under a contract with the Energy Department, will build a machine 300 times more powerful than any in existence--starting in 1998 at the department’s Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California, Clinton said. Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary said the contract is worth about $93 million.