SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s former prime minister and acting president Han Duck-soo ended a short, ill-fated attempt to win the conservative party’s presidential nomination on Sunday after days of internecine disputes just days out from the election. Rival Kim Moon-soo was chosen as nominee for the People Power Party after party members voted on Saturday to retain him over Han, whose late entry into the race derailed the consensus over its candidate for the June 3 presidential vote. Han on Sunday said he “humbly accepts everything” and hopes Kim wins the snap election, which was triggered by the impeachment of the country’s former president. Kim formally registered as a PPP candidate on Sunday morning, and is now South Korea’s conservative hopeful against frontrunner Lee Jae-myung of the opposition Democratic Party. Han and Kim struggled for unity in the past week and had held a series of failed talks to discuss how to unite their conservative campaigns to avoid splitting the vote.

 

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DHAKA (AP) – The interim government in Bangladesh banned all activities of the former ruling Awami League party headed by former influential Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted last year in a mass uprising. Asif Nazrul, the country’s law affairs adviser, said late Saturday the interim Cabinet headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus decided to ban the party’s activities online and elsewhere under the country’s Anti-Terrorism Act. The ban would stay in place until a special tribunal completes a trial of the party and its leaders over the deaths of hundreds of students and other protesters during an anti-government uprising in July and August last year. “This decision is aimed at ensuring national security and sovereignty, protection of activists of the July movement, and plaintiffs and witnesses involved in the tribunal proceedings,” Nazrul told reporters after a special Cabinet meeting.

 

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TIRANA (AFP) – Albanians cast ballots in the general election on Sunday, with Prime Minister Edi Rama seeking an unprecedented fourth term after a campaign dominated by promises of European Union membership and corruption allegations. Polling stations opened at 7am local time (05:00 GMT) on Sunday and closed at 7pm (17:00 GMT), with results expected on Monday. Nearly 3.7 million Albanians, including hundreds of thousands living abroad, are eligible to vote. For the first time, members of the diaspora can cast their ballots by mail. Rama, leader of the governing Socialist Party since 2013, has positioned himself as the architect of Albania’s EU future. He has pledged that the country will join the bloc by 2030, repeating the promise at his final rally: “We will get our fourth mandate, and we will not lose a single day for Albania 2030 in the EU.” Rama’s main rival, 80-year-old Sali Berisha, a former president and prime minister, leads the conservative Democratic Party.

 

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COLOMBO (AFP) – At least 21 people have been killed and many others injured when a bus carrying dozens of Buddhist pilgrims in central Sri Lanka careened off a cliff, according to authorities. The crash took place early on Sunday in a mountainous area near the town of Kotmale, about 140km (86 miles) east of the capital, Colombo. “Twenty one have died and we are trying to identify the victims,” Deputy Minister of Transport and Highways Prasanna Gunasena told local media. The toll could have been higher, the minister added, if not for local residents helping pull people from the mangled wreckage and rushing them to hospital. Television footage showed the bus overturned at the bottom of a precipice while volunteers helped rescue injured people from the rubble. The roof and side panels of the bus were sheared off, and more than half the seats were ripped from the floor of the vehicle, which landed wheels up into a tea plantation, photos of the wreckage showed. Police said 24 people were being treated in two hospitals.

 

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LONDON (RT) – The British military is supplying Ukraine with flat-pack decoys designed to mimic real military hardware, The Times reported, citing sources. The effort is aimed at deceiving Russian forces and exaggerating the amount of modern equipment on the front line. At the heart of the effort are so-called “Ikea-style” kits resembling British-supplied tanks, artillery, and air defense systems that are designed to stretch Russia’s surveillance and strike capacity. “We haven’t gifted a huge amount of these, so anything we can do to make the quantities look greater on the front line is advantageous to us,” RAF Squadron Leader Lowri Simner told the paper. The deception campaign is being managed by Taskforce Kindred, a 20-person team within the British Defense Ministry that works with industry specialists. They rely on digital images of equipment to create realistic replicas, which are then printed on flat materials, shipped to Kiev, and quickly assembled close to the combat zones.