New York (MCT) – Australian Prime Minister John Howard conceded electoral defeat… New York (MCT) – Australian Prime Minister John Howard conceded electoral defeat Saturday, as the Labor Party won control over the government with promises to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq and to sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

Preliminary results showed a large margin of victory for the opposition Labor Party over the ruling Liberal-National coalition, news reports said, adding that Howard appeared to have also been voted out of his own seat in the legislature.

Despite its name, the Liberal Party is generally seen as more conservative than its Labor rival.

In addition to vowing changes to the country’s Iraq and global warming policies, Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd has said he wants to improve relations with China and that he will keep much of the previous administration’s economic policies intact.

Rudd said in a victory speech that he will “put aside the old battles of the past, between business and unions, between growth and the environment.”

In a concession speech, Howard said his government was leaving Australia more prosperous than when it came to power in 1996. – Michael Kitchen, MarketWatch

Tokyo (MCT) – The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency will from fiscal 2008 offer an online service for cell phones that will provide the latest information on accidents and incidents at nuclear power stations and related facilities.

The site will use easy-to-understand language to quickly provide information on matters that concern the public, such as data on the condition of nuclear reactors and radioactivity measurements, as well as whether local residents should evacuate.

NISA, which is under the jurisdiction of the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry, also will send texts with such information to those who request them.

The Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu Offshore Earthquake in July caused a transformer fire and tiny amounts of radioactive substances to leak at the Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station in Niigata Prefecture. But the leak was not at such a level that it caused health or pollution concerns.

Despite this, many local residents became anxious and the reputation of the region suffered.

NISA has concluded that a cause of this anxiety was that correct information based on the conditions at the site was not relayed to residents, and this has led it to set up a mobile phone homepage that is easy to access, as well as a mobile-texting service.

NISA did not hold a press conference until about two hours after the July earthquake. – The Yomiuri Shimbun

Vienna, Austria (MCT) – Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday that his country could suspend uranium enrichment if the United States and Western Europe agreed to acknowledge that its nuclear program was peaceful.

But Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh said there was a “serious confidence gap” between his country and the United States and Western Europe and that he saw little point in trying to “build confidence” with an American administration that had none in his country.

“We don’t trust the United States,” he told McClatchy Newspapers after the IAEA Board of Governors finished its latest round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program. “We could suspend nuclear enrichment. We did it before for two and half years. But it wasn’t enough then and wouldn’t be enough now. We will not suspend enrichment again because there is no end to what the United States will demand.”

The Bush administration’s charges that Iran’s nuclear-enrichment program is intended to produce a nuclear weapon, but Iran says its aim is peaceful nuclear energy. – Matthew Schofield, McClatchy Newspapers