V FESTIVAL 2007 VANCOUVER

For the second year Canada will enjoy a great festival sent to us from England. The V Festival is a annual music festival that was launched by the Virgin Group in England back in 1996. The festival plays host to a variety of bands that offer a wide range of music and is held at two sites in England, usually Chelmsford and Staffordshire . The bands flit between the two sites entertaining thousands of revellers. The V Festival used to be named V96 and so on depending on the year until in 2003 it was renamed simply 'V' as this was how it was known.

In September 2006 the first V Festival to be held in Canada took place and was hosted in Toronto. 2007 will see Canada host two festivals, one in Toronto again and the other in the city of Vancouver.

The Vancouver festival is to take place on May 20th and May 21st at the Thunderbird Stadium in the UBC grounds. There will be two stages with about thirty artists, many of which will be confirmed nearer the time. The following bands have been confirmed so far. Day one of the festival will see the bands My Chemical Romance and Billy Talent who are a young band which have just released their second album. Day one will also see Muse who since playing at Glastonbury in 2004 have seen their career skyrocket. Day Two will see Las Vegas band The Killers who have had huge success selling more than five million copies of their debut. Also playing on day two are AFI who have just released their seventh album 'Decemberunderground" and the Vancouver based band Hot Hot Heat. Early bird tickets are on sale now until February 2nd for $33.18. From February 3rd tickets will be on sale for $43.18.

To purchase tickets and for more information about the V Festival, see there official site here.

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BC PLACE STADIUM DOME COLLAPSE

BC Place Stadium, the fantastic landmark in Vancouver had to be evacuated a few hours ago. The world's largest air supported domed stadium roof has collapsed.

The dome which was opened in 1983 and can seat more than 60,000 visitors has a fibreglass woven fabric roof covering ten acres. This special fabric roof is 1/30 inches thick and consists of two layers with a gap between these layers of four foot. It is in this four foot gap that hot air is pumped by sixteen fans to keep the roof up. The roof has no extra support from steel or beams and therefore relies entirely on the air from the fans for support.

It takes just an hour to inflate this huge domed roof and anywhere between 4 to 6 hours to deflate the roof. It was therefore a huge shock to see the dome deflate in a matter of minutes a few hours ago. It has not yet been confirmed what was the cause of the collapse and speculation has only gone as far as the awful weather we have been experiencing since the early hours this morning. We have seen hours of constant rain and snow and it can only be assumed at this point that this has had some bearing on the collapse today.

Reports so far are stating that thankfully there have been no injuries. Luckily there was no event on at the time and staff were evacuated effectively. The roads around the stadium have been closed for the moment until the stadium is deemed safe.

For up to date reports on the collapse of the BC Place Stadium Dome, please see there official site here.