Britney Spears is going “Down Under” next month, and the pop star has asked her entourage to undergo regular drug and alcohol tests before they hit the continent.
The 27-year-old hitmaker will perform for the first time in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth in November and has laid down strict disciplines for her employees if [...]
Tiger Airways Pte, the budget carrier partly owned by Singapore Airlines, added a seventh plane to its fleet in Australia, the company said today in a press release.
Tiger is also creating 30 jobs at its office in Melbourne, the statement said.
The new airplane will allow Tiger to increase service between Sydney and Melbourne to as many as nine round-trips a day, according to the release. It plans to increase flights on the Sydney-Adelaide route to two round-trips daily, it said.
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Pearl Jam recently announced that they will add five additional shows to their previously announced North American tour. The band is now scheduled to perform in Vancouver, BC, Portland, OR and Salt Lake City, UT. The band will also add two additional dates to their run as the last band to perform at Philadelphia’s historic Wachovia Spectrum before it is demolished. Pearl Jam’s tour is support of their ninth studio album, Backspacer. Scheduled for release on Sunday, September 20, 2009, the album will be released in the U.S. through the retailer Target, in addition to Pearl Jam’s own Ten Club and independent retailers, as well as iTunes. Internationally, the album will be available beginning on September 21, 2009 via Universal/Island Records. The first single, “The Fixer,” was released through radio on July 20, 2009. On August 24, the track will be available as a 7-inch white vinyl at Ten Club, independent music retailers and select Target stores. “The Fixer” will also be available for purchase digitally on the same date.
Ben Harper and Relentless7 will open all dates except for the Philadelphia shows. Public tickets for Pearl Jam’s added Philadelphia Spectrum shows will go on-sale Friday, August 14 at 10:00 a.m. EST through ComcastTIX at comcasttix.com, in person at the Wachovia Complex box office and at www.livenation.com. Public tickets for the Portland and Vancouver shows will also go on-sale Friday, August 14 at 10:00 am PDT through ticketmaster.com. The remaining newly announced North American dates will go on-sale Saturday, August 15th through ticketmaster.com.
Tour Dates:
08/11/09 Tue Shepherd’s Bush Empire London, GB
08/13/09 Thu Ahoy Hall Rotterdam, NL
08/15/09 Sat Wulheide Berlin, GER
08/17/09 Mon Manchester Evening News Arena (MEN) Manchester, GB
08/18/09 Tue O2 Arena London, GB
08/21/09 Fri Molson Amphitheatre Toronto, ON
08/23/09 Sun United Center Chicago, IL
08/24/09 Mon United Center Chicago, IL
08/28/09 Fri Outside Lands Festival San Francisco, CA
09/21/09 Mon Key Arena Seattle, WA
09/22/09 Tue Key Arena Seattle, WA
09/30/09 Wed Gibson Amphitheatre Universal City, CA
10/01/09 Thu Gibson Amphitheatre Universal City, CA
10/04/09 Sun Zilker Park Austin, TX
10/06/09 Tue Gibson Amphitheatre Universal City, CA
10/07/09 Wed Gibson Amphitheatre Universal City, CA
10/09/09 Fri Viejas Arena (Formerly Cox Arena) San Diego, CA
10/27/09 Tue Wachovia Spectrum Philadelphia, PA
10/28/09 Wed Wachovia Spectrum Philadelphia, PA
10/30/09 Fri Wachovia Spectrum Philadelphia, PA
10/31/09 Sat Wachovia Spectrum Philadelphia, PA
11/14/09 Sat Members Equity Stadium Perth, AU
11/17/09 Tue Adelaide Oval Adelaide, AU
11/20/09 Fri Etihad Stadium Melbourne, AU
11/22/09 Sun Sydney Football Stadium Sydney, AU
11/25/09 Wed Queensland Sport & Athletics Centre Brisbane, AU
11/27/09 Fri Mt. Smart Stadium Auckland, NZ
11/29/09 Sun AMI Stadium Christchurch, NZ
Mainboard-listed Tuan Sing Holdings says it posted a profit after tax and minority interest (PATMI) of $4.3 million for the first half year of 2009.
For the first half of the year, the property segment generated revenue of $18.9 million and profit after tax of $0.6 million.
During 1H09, Grand Hotel Group reported profit after tax of A$10.9 million ($13.2 million) which was inclusive of a A$6.5 million gain on the disposal of its two Hyatt hotels in Canberra and Adelaide.
Industrial Services posted revenue of $49.1 million and profit after tax of $1.2 million.
Retail recorded revenue of $16.8 million and loss after tax of $2.8 million in the first half of the year.
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By Nick Bryant
BBC News, Sydney
Australia is currently living through what the northern hemisphere will soon have to confront: a winter with swine flu.
Public health officials in countries like the UK and US are therefore looking upon Australia as a global case study, and seeing what lessons they can glean from the country’s handling of the pandemic.
Distance offered no protection for this far-flung country, and swine flu reached its shores in early May.
Since then, more than 40 people have died and more than 16,000 have been infected. There has been no sense of public panic, despite the fact that Melbourne for a time was dubbed the "swine flu capital of the world", the city with the highest concentration of cases.
With New Zealand hit first, Australia had a few crucial weeks to refine its response.
It prepared public information adverts, warning people to be careful to wash their hands and quickly rolled out thermal-imaging cameras at international airports to try to identify air travellers arriving with the virus.
If there was a vulnerability, it was at the ports. For a time, cruise passengers set foot in the country without being checked.
Although a swimming meet was cancelled in June, sports fixtures have not been disrupted and neither have other public gatherings.
People are going around wearing protective masks, and the swine flu outbreak has not even dominated the headlines in recent times, although it has received extensive coverage.
Risk to Aborigines
Some affected schools have been shut, because Australia has realised that children are the so-called "super-spreaders" of H1N1.
Therein lies a lesson for the northern hemisphere, according to Professor Raina MacIntyre, from the University of New South Wales.
"Shutting schools is probably the key non-pharmaceuticals intervention and social distancing intervention that can have an impact," he said.
"We’ve had controversy here about things like banning sports fixtures and mass gatherings, and so on. But they have less of an impact than school closures because children are one of the key reservoirs of infection and transmission."
Australia’s indigenous population is at particular risk from swine flu World response to swine flu crisis Correspondents’ round-up
The vulnerable groups in Australia are similar to those elsewhere, she says: the young, pregnant women and the obese.
But indigenous Australians have also been at particular risk, partly because so many Aborigines tend to suffer from underlying medical conditions, and the provision of healthcare is not as good in the Outback communities where many of them live.
Then there is the problem of poor living conditions, which can accelerate the spread of the disease.
Last week, Alf Lacey, the Mayor of Palm Island, off the Queensland coast, described how 15 residents were living in a three-bedroom house.
It is thought 400 Palm Islanders have been infected out of a population of 3,500.
Last week, a pregnant woman suffering from swine flu was airlifted off the island. She lost her unborn child.
Vaccine trials
Elsewhere in Australia, intensive care units have come under a lot of pressure, and there has been a heightened demand for last-resort cardiac bypass machines which oxygenate the blood in cases where the lungs are particularly badly diseased or damaged.
One hospital in Sydney reported that it normally treats about five patients a year using these ECMO machines, as they are called. In the past few weeks alone, it has treated double that number.
Last week, Australia started human trials of a swine flu vaccine in Melbourne and Adelaide, the first in the world.
It is hoped that the vaccine will be available by October, and the Australian government has already ordered 21 million doses. The companies developing the vaccine are also looking to sell it abroad.
By then, it will be springtime in Australia. But one of the lessons this country has learnt from the northern hemisphere is that swine flu can spread even at the height of summer.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Human trials of a vaccine to protect against the H1N1 swine flu virus have begun in Australia.
Vaxine and CSL have both started injecting volunteers this week, but it will be at least six weeks before the initial results are known.
Meanwhile, in the UK Gordon Brown has sought to reassure the public by saying the plans in place were "robust".
It comes as another death has been announced in the West Midlands, bringing the UK total to at least 31.
No more details are being released about the latest person to die with swine flu.
And the overall figure is likely to climb on Thursday when the Department of Health gives its weekly update. Worldwide, more than 700 people have died.
Adelaide-based Vaxine began trials Monday with 300 subjects, and Melbourne’s CSL has 240 people in its trial, which started Wednesday.
Neither firm has a contract with the UK government, which expects the first vaccine batches by the end of August.
SWINE FLU SYMPTOMSSource: NHS
But Vaxine research director Nikolai Petrovsky said: "There is no guarantee any of these vaccines will work. Swine flu is a very peculiar beast, its a very different virus that we’re dealing with. But we are hopeful."
Mr Brown admitted swine flu was putting the health service in the UK under strain.
But the prime minister said some of the pressure would be relieved by the National Flu Service, which is being launched in England later this week.
The phone and internet service will allow people with swine flu to get access to anti-flu drugs without needing to consult a doctor.
Mr Brown said: "I want the public to be reassured that we have been preparing for the possibility of a pandemic for a number of years.
"The NHS is continuing to cope well, but as swine flu cases have started to increase we have needed to be able to give anti-virals more quickly.
"From the end of this week the National Flu Service will be up and running. This will free up GP and NHS time."
GPs have started to raise concerns about the number of calls they are getting about flu with every region of England apart from Yorkshire and the Humber seeing "exceptional" levels of demand.
Under contingency plans, non-emergency operations can be cancelled and doctors moved around the health service to help tackle hotspots.
It has not reached that stage yet, but ministers have been forced to set up the flu service.
Challenge
Mr Brown was speaking the day after Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson admitted the flu pandemic was presenting the NHS with its "biggest challenge in a generation".
In the worst-case scenario, up to a third of the population could become infected this winter with as many as 65,000 deaths.
Sir Liam said coping with such huge demands would be a real test for everyone working in the health service.
• The Meningitis Research Foundation has warned the focus on swine flu risks masking other serious illnesses.
A 17-year-old from Derbyshire was admitted to hospital last week after originally being diagnosed with swine flu.
The foundation warned people to be aware of the disease as the early symptoms of meningitis and septicaemia were "very similar" to flu.
The group also said the levels of flu circulating in the UK meant that immune systems were compromised and could lead to a rise in meningitis cases. </p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Britain’s biggest pharmaceutical company is preparing to sell £3bn worth of swine flu drugs this year, it emerged today.
GlaxoSmithKline revealed its vaccine, one of the world’s first, could be available by September after the UK government placed advance orders for 60m doses.
It also disclosed that international governments were stockpiling large supplies of GSK’s anti-viral treatment Relenza, which can relieve swine flu symptoms.
Worldwide sales from the two drugs are expected to reach £3bn by January, but the company rejected claims it was exploiting the pandemic – stressing that profits would be much lower once development costs were taken into account.
It also said poorer nations would receive the vaccine for free with 50m doses to be donated to the World Health Organisation. More could follow, depending on demand.
The chief executive, Andrew Witty, said the company had been preparing for a pandemic for the last three-and-a-half years and had spent more than £1bn to ensure its factories could crank up production at short notice. “We don’t know how big this deal is going to be, but no-one can say we aren’t ready,” said Witty. “We are working flat out with governments around the world to come up with a solution.”
GlaxoSmithKline has also developed an anti-viral face mask, which is expected to be used by people such as “front line health workers.”
Swine flu is thought to have led to the deaths of 31 people in Britain so far and further details of its rapid spread are due to be released by the NHS tomorrow.
The world’s first human trials of a swine flu vaccine have begun in Australia, drug company officials said, as the global death toll from the virus rose to 700.
Two biotechnology companies have started injecting adult volunteers in the southern city of Adelaide.
In a sign of how quickly GSK is working to make sure a vaccine is available from September, the company said that “clinical trials will be limited, due to the need to provide the vaccine to governments as quickly as possible.
“Additional studies will therefore be required and conducted after the vaccine is made available.”
• Two biotechnology companies start injecting adult volunteers with swine flu vaccine
• Experts say it could be two months before they can verify vaccine’s effectiveness
The world’s first human trials of a swine flu vaccine have begun in Australia, drug company officials said today, as the global death toll from the virus rose to 700.
Two biotechnology companies have started injecting adult volunteers in the southern city of Adelaide. CSL, a Melbourne company, has 240 people in its seven-month trial starting today. Vaxine, from Adelaide, began trials on Monday with 300 people.
At least 41 people have died in swine flu-related illness in Australia, now well into its winter flu season.
“We’re in the southern hemisphere, and that is where the problem is right now,” Vaxine’s research director, Nikolai Petrovsky, said. “The demand was here yesterday. We’re right in the middle of a surge of swine flu cases where perhaps the US won’t have to worry about it as much until their flu season hits, in six months.”
Australia had confirmed 14,703 cases of swine flu, while the number of deaths from the virus globally is more than 700, according to the World Health Organisation, which recently stopped counting the number of cases worldwide. A surge in cases is predicted in September and October, when students and workers in the northern hemisphere return from summer vacation.
The Australian government has already ordered 21m doses of CSL’s vaccine for use in Australia, should it be proved to work.
“We have a specific vaccine that we believe will be able to protect millions of people against this new H1N1 flu,” Andrew Cuthbertson, CSL’s director of research and development, told reporters. He called swine flu “a novel strain of influenza”, and said the trial would determine the dose and schedule of the vaccination.
Petrovsky said it would be six to eight weeks before results would verify whether a vaccine was effective.
“There is no guarantee any of these vaccines will work,” he said. “Swine flu is a very peculiar beast. It is a very different virus that we’re dealing with. But we are hopeful.”
Medical experts warned against rushing the vaccines through trials.
“I think it’s important for the public to know that they’re going to get a safe and effective vaccine,” Andrew Pesce, president of the Australian Medical Association, told Sky News television. “No one will give anybody brownie points for putting out a vaccine that didn’t work or caused harm.”
In Britain, the UK’s health protection agency (HPA) estimates there were 55,000 new cases of swine flu in England the week before last, including people visiting GPs and those who are looking after themselves at home.
The British pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline, said in May it had agreed to supply nearly 130m doses of the swine flu vaccine to the UK, France, Belgium and Finland. It also said it would donate 50m doses to developing countries. The vaccine is expected to come before the end of the year.
Glaxo is one of several companies charged with producing a vaccine for H1N1 after the outbreak of the virus was declared a pandemic last month.
Wolfmother Tour With The Killers Before Releasing New Album
Cosmic Egg, On October 13
 Wolfmother |
The Australian rock outlaws that comprise Wolfmother are back together – minus two founding members – ready to release a new body of work and spend some time on the road. The band will preview new material on the road this summer, with a run of shows alongside The Killers. For the six shows in support of The Killers the Aussies will unveil new songs they’ve spent months recording in L.A.
Fans in L.A. can experience the whole album set to mind-blowing visuals on July 27 at the Laserium CyberTheater at the historic Vine Theater in Hollywood. Wolfmother also plays August 22 at KROQ’s Epicenter ’09 festival at the Fairplex at Pomona in California.
The Grammy-winning four-piece recently dropped teaser track “Back Round” on iTunes, MySpace.com/wolfmother and wolfmother.com. Wolfmother is also opening for AC/DC on its “Black Ice Tour,” beginning in February in 2010. The down-under tour sold out faster than any other tour in the Australia’s history.
Led by hirsute shredder Andrew Stockdale, the band cooked Cosmic Egg for three years, taking time to lock in a permanent lineup and build on the self-titled album that gave the world the insta-classic and much overplayed track “Woman.” Wolfmother recorded over the course of two months with heralded U.K. producer Alan Moulder (Smashing Pumpkins, The Killers, My Bloody Valentine). His sweeping and storied career as an iconic record-maker coupled with Wolfmother’s immortal song craft add up to nothing short of a truly enjoyable listen.
Wolfmother plans to headline a U.S. tour after the album’s release later this year.
Tour Dates:
08/22/09 Sat Pomona Fairplex Pomona, CA
08/31/09 Mon Merriweather Post Pavilion Columbia, MD
09/01/09 Tue Nikon at Jones Beach Theater Wantagh, NY
09/02/09 Wed PNC Bank Arts Center Holmdel, NJ
09/04/09 Fri TD BankNorth Garden Boston, MA
09/05/09 Sat Jacques Cartier Pier Montreal, QC
09/06/09 Sun Molson Amphitheatre Toronto, ON
09/17/09 Thu Tivoli Theatre Brisbane, AU
09/19/09 Sat Enmore Theatre Sydney, AU
09/23/09 Wed The Capitol Theatre Perth, AU
09/24/09 Thu HQ Complex Adelaide, AU
09/25/09 Fri The Palace Melbourne, AU
09/26/09 Sat The Pier Hotel Frankston, AU
10/31/09 Sat City Park New Orleans, LA
02/11/10 Thu Etihad Stadium Melbourne, AU
02/13/10 Sat Etihad Stadium Melbourne, AU
02/15/10 Mon Etihad Stadium Melbourne, AU
02/18/10 Thu ANZ Stadium Sydney, AU
02/20/10 Sat ANZ Stadium Sydney, AU
02/22/10 Mon ANZ Stadium Sydney, AU
02/25/10 Thu Queensland Sport & Athletics Centre Brisbane, AU
02/27/10 Sat Queensland Sport & Athletics Centre Brisbane, AU
03/02/10 Tue Adelaide Oval Adelaide, AU
03/06/10 Sat Subiaco Oval Perth, AU
03/08/10 Mon Subiaco Oval Perth, AU
