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Edited By Jonathan Cohen. May 17, 2005, 9:45 AM ET

Kylie Minogue Diagnosed With Breast Cancer

Australian pop icon Kylie Minogue has been diagnosed with breast cancer, her management representatives said today (May 17). All remaining dates of her "Showgirl" tour, including concerts in Australia and Asia, will be postponed.

According to a statement from Frontier Touring Co., the singer was diagnosed with "early breast cancer" while visiting her family in Melbourne this week.

Minogue, 36, was due to begin her Australian concerts at the Sydney Superdome on Thursday (May 19) before embarking on a tour of Asia. Her planned headline slot at Glastonbury Festival in England next month will be canceled.

"I was so looking forward to bringing the Showgirl tour to Australian audiences, and am sorry to have to disappoint my fans," Minogue says in a statement. "Nevertheless hopefully all will work out fine and I'll be back with you all again soon."

Minogue's sister Dannii, who had a string of top 10 U.K. chart hits during the 1990s, remains upbeat on the health scare. "Although as the cancer has been diagnosed at such an early stage we are all very optimistic that everything will be OK," she says in a statement.

On another positive note, Melbourne-based Frontier Touring says those who missed out on the tour Down Under should "hang onto their tickets pending the announcement of new Showgirl dates."

Minogue's enduring popularity in Britain was confirmed this year when the London leg of her tour stretched to seven performances at the Earls Court venue, breaking the record number of nights played by a solo female artist there. Madonna previously had that record with six nights in 2001. Minogue's May 7 final performance at the 18,500-seat capacity venue aired on national television network Channel 4.

In this week's Billboard Boxscore, the artist occupies the top two slots stemming from the Earls Court dates and a five-night run of sellouts in Manchester, pulling in combined grosses of more than $12.3 million.

The "Showgirl" dates also helped push her 2004 hits album "Ultimate Kylie" (Parlophone) up to 58-38 this week on the U.K. albums chart. In the United Kingdom, "Ultimate Kylie" has certified doubled platinum with shipments in excess of 600,000 units during 23 weeks on the chart. It has also garnered an IFPI Platinum Europe award, for European shipments of 1 million copies.

-- Lars Brandle, London

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