Of the 86 proposals submitted for the Science Verification (SV) of MUSE, a total of 49 proposals were allocated. The MUSE SV observations ran from 20–29 June 2014 and were executed in service mode by a dedicated team, although not all programmes have been completed. Additional SV time is currently under consideration for scheduling in August.

The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) groundbreaking ceremony took place on 19 June 2014. Part of the summit of the 3060-metre high Cerro Armazones was blasted in the first stage of levelling for the construction of the platform for the E-ELT dome. Full details can be found in the Release. Preparation of the site also includes laying of a paved road and construction of a service trench and will last about 14 months.

A vacancy has arisen for a support astronomer based at the Paranal Observatory, with up to 105 duty nights per year. Support astronomers contribute to visitor and service mode observing, instrument calibration and data quality assessment; they work in collaboration with one or more instrument teams. Paranal operations astronomers actively conduct astronomical research. Further details can be found on the ESO Recruitment portal; the deadline for application is 31 July 2014.

The ALMA Cycle 1 Early Science observing season ended in May 2014. As of 3 June, a total of 36 of the 198 High Priority (HP) projects (including Director's Discretionary Time) have been completed and delivered to the Principal Investigators. The unobserved components of the remaining 146 HP projects have been transferred to Cycle 2 where they will be executed in parallel with the Cycle 2 approved programme (see the Cycle 2 announcement).

The acceptance of the ALMA Cycle 2 software, required for Cycle 2 observations and paving the way for the start of Cycle 2 observation in early June 2014, will shortly be announced. Part of the Cycle 2 software is an on-line interface to the ALMA calibrator source catalogue, which will soon be available on the ALMA science portal. A brief description of the ALMA calibrator survey was recently published.

The User Support Department (USD) would like to thank all those Principal Investigators and their Phase 2 delegates who filled in the on-line User Satisfaction Survey. As of mid-March 2014, 155 responses were received from our targeted campaign. We have contacted, when possible, those respondents who provided detailed comments. A summary report of the User Satisfaction Survey is now available.

Access to reduced scientific data from the VLT X-shooter spectrograph is now provided from the Science Archive Facility. 33000 spectra of all kinds of sources obtained in ECHELLE,SLIT mode, from the beginning of X-shooter operations in October 2009 until the end of 2013, have been published. The X-shooter reduced data collection will grow with time in monthly release cycles as reduced products become available.

ESO Workshop, ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany, 24–28 November 2014

Recent years have seen a huge development in high-resolution techniques, which are critical to progress in many different areas of astronomy. These techniques can be divided into direct methods (e.g., adaptive optics, lucky imaging), interferometry (including speckle imaging and spectro-astrometry) and reconstruction methods (astrotomography). This workshop aims to bring together the different communities working in these fields increasing the synergies among them.

The science verification (SV) for the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) will take place on the nights of 20–29 June 2014. All community astronomers are kindly invited to participate in this opportunity to obtain early science with MUSE and thus to demonstrate the scientific capabilities of this unique instrument.

The research studentship programme provides an outstanding opportunity for Ph.D. students to experience the exciting scientific environment, at one of the world's leading observatories, for a period of up to two years.