Australian Prime Minister John Howard fended off speculation yesterday about the threat of a leadership challenge by his heir apparent, vowing to stay in his job as long as the Liberal Party wants him.
Treasurer Peter Costello initiated the speculation himself by refusing last week to rule out a challenge after opinion polls showed Howard's conservative government trailing a resurgent Labor opposition in the run-up to elections late this year. He refused to rule out a challenge again yesterday, saying he and Howard were "very good friends and colleagues, I can assure you of that."
A prominent Costello supporter, government parliamentary secretary Christopher Pyne, contributed to the controversy by telling a TV program a succession plan between Howard and Costello had been agreed upon.
Howard yesterday described the speculation as ridiculous, saying he had not discussed the leadership with Costello since announcing last year that he had decided against early retirement.
"My position last June when I indicated that I would continue as the party leader, was that I would remain the leader of the Liberal Party for so long as the party wanted me to and while it remained in the party's interest that I should," he told Channel Nine.
"That was my position last June, it's my position now, it will be my position when the election campaign starts, it will be my position on election day and I don't intend to alter in any way that because it's the truth," he said.
However, Howard admitted the dynamics had changed in the four months since new Labor leader Mark Latham was elected. He said he had no problem with Costello's responses to questions about leadership, and had never required people to rule out "having a go."
In other developments, Howard yesterday condemned a law passed by the nation's capital to allow gay couples to adopt children, signalling that his government may consider overturning the move.
The Australian Capital Territory (ACT), which administers Canberra, passed a law last month that allows homosexual and lesbian couples to adopt.
Howard did not rule out the possibility his government would block the law, expected to take effect next month.
"I'm against gay adoption, just as I'm against gay marriage," Howard told a Sydney radio station.
Howard was reported to be considering using his government's little-used power over the nation's two territories -- the ACT and the Northern Territory -- to block the newly-passed law.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
RSS