We need more world leaders like him……. congratulations to Australia for getting rid of Howard!

Australia’s new leader, Kevin Rudd, has said he will pull his country’s troops out of Iraq by mid-2008, fulfilling a promise he made during the election campaign.
Rudd said he would meet Robert McCallum, the US ambassador to Australia, soon to discuss the precise timing of the withdrawal.

The 50-year-old politician, who will be sworn in as prime minister on Monday, has said he believes the presence of troops in Iraq has made Australia more of a target for terrorism.

“The combat force in Iraq we would have home by around about the middle of next year,” Rudd said in a radio interview in the southern city of Melbourne.

Several hundred troops will remain in Iraq in supporting roles, such as providing security to diplomats. Australia also has about 1,000 troops in Afghanistan but there are no plans to reduce their numbers.

Rudd’s stance is in direct contrast with that of his predecessor, John Howard, who had close ties to the US president, George Bush, and sent 2,000 troops to support the US and British forces during the 2003 invasion. Howard refused to set a timetable for pulling out the troops, saying that withdrawal would be a sign of weakness on the part of the allied forces.

More at the Guardian

Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion and opposition leader, was arrested Saturday and sentenced to five days in jail after trying to lead a march to the offices of the federal election authorities.

Mr. Kasparov was taken into custody during a scuffle between protesters and security officers on the route to the offices, where he had intended to present a letter asserting that the parliamentary election on Dec. 2 was biased toward President Vladimir V. Putin’s party.

Taken into a small bus, he gave a victory sign through the back window as he was being driven away.

On Saturday night, a Moscow judge ordered him to serve five days in jail for holding an unauthorized march. City officials had given his loose opposition coalition, Other Russia, permission to conduct a rally on Saturday, but not a march.

In a statement, Mr. Kasparov said the court proceedings had been “a choreographed farce from beginning to end.” He added, “It was a symbol of what has happened to justice and the rule of law under Putin.”

More at the New York Times

Hey Scottie……if you’re out there, tell us what you think of Rudd. I know there are MANY Aussies glad to be rid of Howard.

Australia’s new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, made climate change his top priority on Sunday, seeking advice on ratifying the Kyoto pact and telling Indonesia he will go to December’s UN climate summit in Bali.

Rudd, who swept aside 11 years of conservative rule by John Howard in Saturday elections, also spoke to U.S. President George W. Bush by phone, but would not say when he planned to start a promised withdrawal of 500 Australian combat troops from Iraq.

“I emphasized to President Bush the centrality of the U.S. alliance in our approach to foreign policy,” Rudd said in his first media conference on Sunday as prime minister elect, adding he would visit Washington early next year.

Rudd, 50, presented himself to voters as a new-generation leader by promising to pull troops out of Iraq and ratify the Kyoto Protocol capping greenhouse gas emissions, further isolating Washington on both issues.

More at Reuters

This report from CNN International news. The killing of a Japanese jounalist in Myanmar is caught on video.