Coldplay announce Australian tour dates

BRITISH rockers Coldplay will return to Australia for the first time in two years next February as part of their Viva La Vida tour, in support of their album of the same name.

The album has topped the charts in Britain, Australia and the United States.

The UK band will kick off the four-city jaunt on February 27 at the Burswood Dome in Perth, before playing in Melbourne on March 3 and 4.

They will then move to Brisbane Entertainment Centre for two shows on March 8 and 9, before finishing up at Sydney’s Acer Arena on March 11 and 12.

Coldplay has not toured Australia since June 2006, when they sold out a total of ten arenas shows and played to more than 100,000 people.

A pre-sale for all shows will start at 9am local times on November 27.

Tickets go on sale to the general public via Tickets on December 4.

Visitors plan to unpack lots of fun

The line of teenagers out the door of the Headland Tropicana Resort yesterday said it all – Schoolies are here.

Some, like Lucy Stevenson and her friends, wasted no time heading straight to Mooloolaba to check it out.

“We’re going to go shopping, swimming at the beach, having fun, barbecues, nights out, a bit of partying and dancing,” she said of the week ahead.

About 25 teenagers from her school, Holland Park High, had decided to spend Schoolies Week in Alexandra Headland instead of going to the Gold Coast.

“We’ll have as much fun but it’s not as crazy and crowded and dangerous,” she said.

“My sister went to Schoolies on the Gold Coast and one of her friends got a syringe in her foot at a beach party – we’d rather not risk that type of thing.

“We just wanted to come and hang out. We didn’t want anything bad to happen.”

It was a similar story for Hannah Liebke, whose parents drove her across from Toowoomba.

“We didn’t think anything was on to do with Schoolies here,” she said.

“We just want to relax, go to the beach, have swims and go shopping.”

Obama outlines plan to create 2.5M jobs

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday outlined his plan to create 2.5 million jobs in coming years to rebuild roads and bridges and modernize schools while developing alternative energy sources and more efficient cars.
“These aren’t just steps to pull ourselves out of this immediate crisis; these are the long-term investments in our economic future that have been ignored for far too long,” Obama said in the weekly Democratic radio address. The economic recovery plan being developed by his staff aims to create 2.5 million jobs by January 2011, and he wants to get it through Congress quickly and sign it soon after taking office.
He called the plan “big enough to meet the challenges we face” and said that it will jump-start job creation but also “lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy.”
Aides said the economic plan outlined Saturday went further that the president-elect has gone before.
A trio of crises — housing, credit and financial — have badly damaged the economy, and financial analysts have projected the country’s economic hardships will continue through much of 2009.
Obama acknowledged Saturday that evidence is growing the country is “facing an economic crisis of historic proportions.” He noted turmoil on Wall Street, a decrease in new home purchases, growing jobless claims and the menacing problem of deflation.
He said he was pleased Congress passed an extension of unemployment benefits this week, but added, “We must do more to put people back to work and get our economy moving again.”
Figures out this week showed new claims for jobless aid had reached a 16-year high. “If we don’t act swiftly and boldly, most experts now believe that we could lose millions of jobs next year,” Obama said.
He cautioned, “There are no quick or easy fixes to this crisis, which has been many years in the making, and it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.” But Obama said Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, “is our chance to begin anew.”
Obama said getting congressional approval for his broad economic plan will not be easy.
“I will need and seek support from Republicans and Democrats, and I’ll be welcome to ideas and suggestions from both sides of the aisle,” he said. “But what is not negotiable is the need for immediate action.”
Across the country, Americans “are lying awake at night wondering if next week’s paycheck will cover next month’s bills,” people are showing up at work to clear out their desks and retirees are watching their life savings disappear, Obama said.
On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that claims for unemployment benefits jumped last week to 542,000. That marked the highest level since July 1992 and provided fresh evidence of a rapidly weakening job market that is expected to get even worse next year.
In this country’s darkest hours, the American people have risen above their divisions to solve their problems, he said.
“We have acted boldly, bravely, and above all, together,” Obama said. “That is the chance our new beginning now offers us, and that is the challenge we must rise to in the days to come. It is time to act. As the next president of the United States, I will.”
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On the Net:
Video link to Obama’s address: www.change.gov

Happy Birthday: Space station celebrates 10 years

Happy Birthday Space station celebrates 10 years

In this Nov. 20, 1998 file photo, the Russian booster rocket Proton takes off from the launch pad at the Baikonur rocket base in Kazakhstan. The 24-ton Zarya control and cargo module, designed to serve as a space tugboat in the early stages of the international space station project, providing propulsion, power and communications, was launched atop the booster rocket. On Nov. 20, 1998, the first part of the space station was launched by the Russians from Kazakhstan. NASA followed up two weeks later with piece No. 2 carried up by a space shuttle. Astronauts and cosmonauts moved in two years later, and the rest, as they say, is history. (AP Photo, file)

Location: CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.

NASA couldn’t have staged it any better: 10 people in orbit for Thursday’s 10th anniversary of the world’s most elaborate and expensive housing project, the international space station.

On Nov. 20, 1998, the first part of the space station was launched by the Russians from Kazakhstan. NASA followed up two weeks later with piece No. 2 carried up by a space shuttle. Astronauts and cosmonauts moved in two years later, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The space station has grown into a behemoth outpost 220 miles up, home to three people at any given time _ soon to be six.

Thanks to the newly arrived shuttle Endeavour, the space station now has five sleep stations, two baths, two kitchens and two mini-gyms. All told, there are nine rooms, three of them full-scale labs.

Three-quarters complete, the total mass is 627,000 pounds. NASA says it’s about the size of a five-bedroom house.

Some other fascinating factoids: The space station has traveled 1.3 billion miles, orbited Earth more than 57,300 times, hosted 167 people from 15 countries, and served up more than 19,000 meals.

The space station has taken longer for NASA and its international partners to build, cost more money and produced less science than originally envisioned. But that hasn’t spoiled the celebrations going on all over the world _ and off.

For the record, the linked Endeavour and space station sailed past the 10-year mark at 1:40 a.m. EST Thursday while the astronauts slept. Mission Control marked the occasion by showing video of the first rocket’s launch in 1998.

“After 10 years, we wish the international space station a happy birthday and we hope to see many, many more,” Endeavour commander Christopher Ferguson said in a taped message from the orbiting complex.

Before rocketing away aboard Endeavour last Friday, astronaut Donald Pettit noted that every major engineering marvel has had its share of dragged-out schedules, budget overruns, controversy, even scandal.

“How long did it take us to build the Panama Canal, Brooklyn Bridge?” Pettit said.

As for the space station, “We’re 10 years down the road, and it still isn’t built. It’s almost built. And it’s an amazing, wonderful piece of technology that once it’s done, people probably won’t even think too much about how long it took to build,” said Pettit, who called the complex home for five months in 2002-2003.

To date, it’s taken 80 rocket launchings from Florida, Kazakhstan and French Guyana (the launching site for the European Space Agency’s cargo carrier) to make and staff the space station.

The price tag, from start to finish, is often quoted at $100 billion. That includes money spent not only by the United States and Russia, but also Canada, Japan and the 18-nation European Space Agency. NASA disputes that amount and estimates its share at $44 billion, including shuttle launch costs.

As for delays, the 2003 Columbia disaster set space station construction back by a few years. So did Russian financial problems in the 1990s that significantly delayed the launch of the first crew’s living quarters.

Its objective also has shifted over the years. NASA views the space station as essentially a place to learn more about astronaut health and other issues that could make or break future expeditions to the moon, Mars and beyond. Before, the emphasis was supposed to be on basic scientific experiments, like protein crystals and cell tissue.

Managers like to point out that the technical problems that have cropped up in orbit over the years _ a torn solar wing and jammed solar wing-rotating joint to name a few _ are lessons learned for deep-space travel.

The Russians, meanwhile, have used the space station as a cash cow, selling rocket rides to the occasional millionaire tourist to help keep their program going.

NASA expects to wrap up space station construction in 2010 when the three remaining space shuttles are retired. Astronauts then will have to hitch rides on Russian spacecraft until NASA’s new rocketship is available to crews, most likely in 2015. That gap is an unavoidable thorn in NASA’s side; it’s possible the projected five-year hiatus in human launchings from U.S. soil could be whittled a little.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who expects to be replaced in the Obama administration, has said repeatedly that the space agency does not have the money to keep flying the shuttles beyond 2010 if it wants to keep its new rocketship and moon exploration plans on track.

“The moon is not the end goal, just like the space station is not the end goal,” Griffin noted. “The moon is a stepping stone on the way out.”

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On the Net:

NASA:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

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