Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd was yesterday admitted to hospital for surgery to treat severe stomach pain one month after he was dramatically removed from office by his own party.
The former Labor leader, 52, was admitted to hospital in Brisbane after suffering acute abdominal pain, a spokesman said.
“Mr Rudd will have an operation to remove his gallbladder later today,” the spokesman said in a statement.
Rudd, who is standing for re-election in his Queensland seat in Aug. 21 national polls, has haunted the election campaign of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who wrested power from him in a party coup late last month.
Gillard has publicly promised Rudd a senior ministerial role if Labor is re-elected, but her campaign has lost momentum amid damaging Cabinet leaks, which some have suggested may have come from Rudd.
Former colleague and one-time prime ministerial candidate Mark Latham yesterday challenged Rudd over the leaks, which revealed that the childless Gillard once questioned a popular pension increase for the elderly and paid maternity leave.
Latham, who led the Labor Party for 13 months before resigning in January 2005, citing ill health and amid dissent about his leadership, suggested Rudd had taken the “snake’s way” of leaking to journalists.
“I think it’s unmanly and beneath a decent Aussie bloke to act this way, let alone an ex-prime minister,” Latham told Sky News on Thursday. “So I challenge Kevin Rudd to be a man, to be honest, to have some honor and actually, if he feels this strongly about it, put his name to his words.”
A spokesman for Rudd said the former leader would not comment, but was committed to a Labor victory.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing