Australia's Mandarin-speaking Labor leader Kevin Rudd, who ended 11 years of Conservative rule after trouncing Prime Minister John Howard at national elections on Saturday, studied Mandarin in Taipei when he was young, diplomatic sources said yesterday.
The youthful-looking Rudd, 50, who likes to describe himself as a "farm boy from Queensland, " also studied Mandarin in Australia for three years at Australian National University.
TAIWANESE TEACHER
His teacher, Anita Chang (
During that period, according to Chang, who now teaches at Macquarie University in Sydney, Rudd played the leading role as the landlord in the Chinese play The Little Cow Herd.
Chang said she also taught Rudd some Peking Opera, which he later performed in front of an audience.
NEW GENERATION
Rudd, who vowed to be a "prime minister for all Australians" after Saturday's victory, presented himself as the leader of a new generation by promising to pull Australian combat troops out of the war in Iraq and sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
Rudd has made the environment a top issue and pledged that if he won the election he would sign the agreement limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
He was elected member of parliament in 1998 and had a lengthy career as a diplomat, including postings to Stockholm and Beijing, before becoming a Labor Party leader last year.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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