Australia's opposition Labor Party elected former diplomat Kevin Rudd as its new leader yesterday in a bold gambit to boost its chances of ousting Prime Minister John Howard in elections next year.
Rudd, 49, is the fifth Labor leader Howard has faced in the decade since his conservative coalition won power and the fourth in four years, as the center-left opposition party has been rent by bitter infighting.
At yesterday's meeting, Australian Labor Party federal politicians voted 49-39 to dump incumbent leader Kim Beazley, who had failed to put a dent in Howard's popularity.
Rudd, 49, pledged to end the rhetoric and "short-termism" of Australian politics, saying the country faced stark choices because of Howard's policies.
"This fork in the road has emerged because John Howard has taken a bridge too far in industrial relations, a bridge too far in Iraq, a bridge too far on climate change," Rudd said.
Rudd, 49, was elected to federal parliament in 1998 after working for the state Labor government in Queensland. He also had a lengthy career as a diplomat, with postings to Stockholm and Beijing.
A fluent Chinese speaker, he also worked as a China consultant to Australian companies between the various stages of his political career.
Slightly-built, impeccably suited and bespectacled, Rudd has been nicknamed "Harry Potter" and "Pixie" in Canberra, where some pundits claim he lacks the common touch the Australian public normally demands in its leaders.
But he has described himself as a "very determined bastard" with the steel needed to unseat Howard.
Rudd endured a tough childhood: he was temporarily forced to sleep in a car at the age of 11 when his family was evicted from their farm following the death of his father in a road accident.
Howard, who beat Rudd's predecessor Beazley in elections in 1998 and 2001, accused the new leader of being more style than substance.
"The Labor Party has reshackled itself to the past today," Howard said. "Kevin Rudd has said that he's taking Australia back to a union-dominated past."
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
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