<div><b style="font-size: 1rem;">&nbsp;Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern bowed out of parliament Wednesday, ending a career marked by empathetic leadership during times of crisis even as she faced escalating abuse online</b><span style="font-size: 1rem;">.</span><br></div><div><br></div><div>Ardern shocked New Zealand earlier this year when she announced she was stepping down as prime minister and retiring from politics, saying she no longer had "enough in the tank".</div><div><br></div><div>The 42-year-old, once the youngest woman leader in the world, said in her final speech to parliament that she never expected to take the nation's top job.</div><div><br></div><div>"It was a cross between a sense of duty to steer a moving freight train... and being hit by one," she quipped during her valedictory address.</div><div><br></div><div>"And that's probably because my internal reluctance to lead was matched only by a huge sense of responsibility."</div><div><br></div><div>Ardern steered New Zealand through natural disasters, the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre -- in which a white supremacist gunman killed 51 Muslim worshippers. AFP</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/kh</div>