Australian pop icon Kylie Minogue was expected to be admitted to hospital as early as yesterday after revealing that she has early-stage breast cancer, amid an outpouring of support from fans and admirers around the world.
Anxious fans have flooded Web sites with messages of support while local supporters have delivered gifts to her Melbourne home since the announcement that the 36-year-old would begin treatment immediately.
"I think all Australians feel for her and wish her well," said Prime Minister John Howard.
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"A young woman, Kylie Minogue, any young woman of that age to be diagnosed with that condition, it does send a shudder through you."
Minogue's illness has forced her to call off the Asian and Australian legs of her successful Showgirl tour which were due to begin in Sydney today.
The singer, who found fame in the 1980s in the soap opera Neighbours before launching a pop career that has seen her sell an estimated 40 million records, has apologized to fans for the postponement of the shows.
PHOTO: AP
"I was so looking forward to bringing the Showgirl tour to Australian audiences and am sorry to have to disappoint my fans," she said in a statement on Tuesday.
"Nevertheless, hopefully all will work out fine and I'll be back with you all again soon."
Experts said yesterday that while women who suffer breast cancer before the age of 40 generally have a more aggressive form of the disease, the overall survival rate for all sufferers was 85 percent to 90 percent.
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Minogue is also thought to have caught the disease before it spread to other parts of the body.
"Early breast cancer is highly treatable and the survival rates are very good," said Gill Batt of the New South Wales Cancer Council.
Minogue was resting in Melbourne ahead of the rest of her tour when the diagnosis was made. She is believed to be bunkered down in her family's home in the Melbourne suburb of Canterbury with partner Olivier Martinez.
Earlier yesterday at least 20 journalists were camped outside the two-storey home waiting for a glimpse of the diminutive star.
Michael Jackson's 16-year-old cousin told jurors on Tuesday that she saw his accuser and the boy's younger brother steal wine from the pop star's kitchen late at night while they were staying at his Neverland Valley Ranch. Simone Jackson was the first relative of the 46-year-old singer to testify in his defense and the latest witness to describe the two young boys at the center of the case drinking alcohol on the sly at Neverland in February and March 2003.
Let's hope My Generation is making some serious money. Legendary rock band The Who will play its only US performance this year at a charity dinner where tickets are US$1,500 apiece, promoters said.
Neil Young, rap star? Hours before the veteran rocker was due to deliver his next album to his label, he took a bow in Beverly Hills for his diverse body of work on Monday, and jokingly threatened to venture into the urban field.
The man who made a hit movie out of eating McDonald's fast food for a month has filmed a "fundamentalist Christian" man living as a Muslim to find out what it's like to face the prejudice that many Muslims in America deal with since Sept. 11. The experiment is part of Super Size Me Director Morgan Spurlock's new reality TV show 30 Days, which places people in a variety of unfamiliar circumstances for 30 days.
A celebrity impersonator sued by actor Robin Williams for being too convincing has agreed to stop posing as the Oscar-winning actor, Williams' attorney said. Williams had accused his impersonator, Michael Clayton, and Clayton's manager, Michael Pool, of duping a Minnesota Star-Tribune reporter and fund-raisers for a Missouri fire department into believing he was Robin Williams.
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated