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HP job cuts loom for Australian employees

A number of Australian employees of Hewlett-Packard are facing the loss of their jobs as the global computer giant looks to slash its worldwide workforce by up to 30,000.

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Ariane ends year with successful launch

Science - Space

The sixth and final Ariane launch for the year successfully took a pair of commercial satellites into orbit.

The Ariane 5 GS launcher took about half an hour to ferry the satellites into their transfer orbits.

RASCOM-QAF1 is the first pan-African telecommunications satellite, while Horizons-2 will provide telecommunications, HDTV and IP-based content distribution to North America.

The combined weight of the two satellites was 5464kg.

ESA expects seven or eight Ariane launches annually in subsequent years.