TURKISH ELECTION VICTORY FOR ERDOGAN LEAVES NATION DIVIDED

Recep Tayyip Erdogan's supporters celebrated well into the night after Turkey's long-time president secured another five years in power.

"The entire nation of 85 million won," he told cheering crowds outside his enormous palace on the edge of Ankara.

But his call for unity sounded hollow as he ridiculed his opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu - and took aim at a jailed Kurdish leader and pro-LGBT policies.

The opposition leader did not explicitly concede victory.

Complaining of "the most unfair election in recent years", Mr Kilicdaroglu said the president's political party had mobilised all the means of the state against him.

President Erdogan ended with just over 52% of the vote based on near-complete unofficial results - almost half the electorate in this deeply polarised country did not back his authoritarian vision of Turkey.

Ultimately Mr Kilicdaroglu was no match for the well-drilled Erdogan campaign, even if he took the president to a run-off second round for the first time since the post was made directly elected in 2014.

But he barely dented his rival's first-round lead, falling more than two million votes behind.

The president made the most of his victory, with an initial speech to supporters atop a bus in Turkey's biggest city Istanbul, followed after dark by a balcony address from his palace to an adoring crowd that he numbered at 320,000 people.

"It is not just us who won, Turkey won," he declared, calling it one of the most important elections in Turkish history.

He taunted his opponent's defeat with the words "Bye, bye, bye, Kemal" - a chant that was also taken up by his supporters in Ankara.

Mr Erdogan poured scorn on the main opposition party's increase in its number of MPs in the parliament vote two weeks before. The true number had fallen to 129, he said, because the party had handed over dozens of seats to its allies.

He also condemned the opposition alliance's pro-LGBT policies - which he said was in contrast with his own focus on families.

Although the final results are not confirmed, the Supreme Election Council said there was no doubt who had won.

RUSSIA TARGETS KYIV WITH LARGEST DRONE ATTACK OF CONFLICT, KILLING 1

Kyiv, Ukraine : Ukraine’s capital was subjected to the largest drone attack since the start of Russia’s war, local officials said, as Kyiv prepared to mark the anniversary of its founding on Sunday. At least one person was killed.

Russia launched the “most massive attack” on the city overnight Saturday with Iranian-made Shahed ‘kamikaze’ drones, said a Kyiv military official. The attack lasted over five hours, with air defence reportedly shooting down more than 40 drones. A 41-year-old man was killed and a 35-yearold woman was hospitalised when debris fell on a seven-story nonresidential building and started a fire, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

Ukraine’s air force said that Saturday night was also record-breaking in terms of Shahed drone attacks across the country. Of the 54 drones launched, 52 were shot down by air defence systems. In the Kharkiv province, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said a 61-year-old woman and a 60-year-old man were killed in two separate shelling attacks.

Kyiv Day marks the anniversary of Kyiv’s official founding. The day is usually celebrated with live concerts, street fairs, exhibitions and fireworks. Scaled-back festivities were planned for this year, the city’s 1,541stanniversary.

The timing of the drone attacks was likely not coincidental, Ukrainian officials said.

PAK GOVT UNDER FIRE OVER ALLEGATIONS OF SEXUAL ABUSE OF ARRESTED PTI WOMEN MEMBERS

Islamabad : Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif’s government has come under fire from opposition and human rights groups over alleged reports of authorities torturing in the most horrible ways possible arrested PTI workers, including sexually abusing women.

Social media has been buzzing with stories of alleged physical and sexual abuse of women PTI supporters, who were taken into custody and kept in detention centres following protests over ex-PM Imran Khan’s arrest on May 9.

PTI claims over 10,000 of its workers, including a large number of women, are currently locked up in overcrowded jails. The growing publicanger over the alleged abuses prompted home minister Rana Sanaullah to accuse PTI on Sunday of spreading lies to malign law enforcers. He said intelligence agencies had intercepted a conversation indicating that PTI was planning two “rapes” and pass the blame on security forces. He did not provide any proof to substantiate his statement. PTI chief Imran dismissed the home minister’s allegations as false and accused the latter of coming up with bizarre tales to cover up the “horror stories”. “If there were any doubts about women being mistreated in jails, this press conference from this certified criminal shouldremove all such doubts,” he tweeted. After Sanaullah’s comments, Islamabad police sent alerts to ensure cameras in police stations, offices and jails were working properly to avoid “plans to target officials”. Police noted a “planned campaign to defame institutions” had been initiated.

WITH 60 PTI MEMBERS GONE, IMRAN’S PARTY FACES TOUGHEST TIME IN 27 YRS SINCE CREATION

Twenty-seven-years after its founding, former PM Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party is at the crossroads, facing a likely ban by the coalition government following the unprecedented attack on sensitive military installations by his supporters earlier this month. The ruling parties backed by the military establishment are in favour of banning the PTI for “promoting extremism and violence”. Amid the crackdown on the Imran-led party, over 60 of its members have announced their resignations from party posts, citing attacks on military installations.

UKRAINE’S ZELENSKY INTRODUCES IRAN SANCTIONS BILL

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensk’y has put forward abill that would see Ukraine impose sanctions on Russian ally Iran for 50 years, Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said on Sunday, a response to what Kyiv says is Tehran’s weapons supplies to Moscow. Kyiv and its allies say Iran has been supplying Russia with arms, including hundreds of drones, since Moscow invaded Ukraine last year. Tehran rejects the allegations.

HARRIS 1ST WOMAN TO GIVE WEST POINT SPEECH, TARGETS CHINA AND RUSSIA

New York : US Vice-President Kamala Harris, the first woman to deliver a commencement speech at West Point, lauded graduating cadets Saturday for their noble sacrifice in serving their country, but noted they were entering an “unsettled world” because of Russian aggression and the rising threats from China.

“The world has drastically changed,” Harris told the roughly 950 graduating cadets. She referred to the global pandemic that took millions of lives, as well as the fraught shifts in global politics in Europe and in Asia. As the US ended two decades of war in Afghanistan, the longest in the country’s history, the vice president said, Russia soon launched the first major ground war in Europe since World War II when it invaded Ukraine. She advised cadets to be wary of China, as it rapidly modernises its military and muscles for control over parts of the high seas, ostensibly referring to the brewing disputes over the South China Sea.

IRAQ PLANS $17BN TRANSPORTATION PROJECT LINKING ASIA TO EUROPE

Irbil : Iraq’s PM on Saturday announced plans for a $17 billion regional transportation project intended to facilitate the flow of goods from Asia to Europe. The announcement was made at a one-day meet in Baghdad that convened transport ministers and representatives from Iraq, the Gulf countries, Turkiye, Iran, Syria, and Jordan.

Iraqi PM Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the planned Development Road project would facilitate the movement of goods from the Gulf to Europe first to Turkiye, then to Europe, through a network of railways and highways. The project, which would involve the construction of 1,200 km of railways and highways, will be “an economic lifeline,” said al-Sudani.

CHINA’S HOMEGROWN PASSENGER JET MAKES MAIDEN COMMERCIAL FLIGHT

BEIJING: China’s first domestically produced passenger jet made its maiden commercial flight on Sunday, a milestone event in the nation’s decades-long effort to compete with Western rivals in the air. Beijing hopes the C919 commercial jetliner will challenge foreign models though many of its parts are sourced from abroad.

SOMALIA TO INTRODUCE DIRECT UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN 2024

MOGADISHU: Somalia's government and federal member states said on Sunday that direct universal suffrage would be introduced with local elections set for June 2024. The move follows a pledge by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in March to end a complex indirect system in place since 1969.

JUSTINE TRIET WINS CANNES TOP PRIZE FOR FRENCH MYSTERY, 3RD WOMAN TO DO SO

Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” won the Palme d’Or at the 76th Cannes Film Festival in a ceremony on Saturday that bestowed the festival’s prestigious top prize on an engrossing, rigorously plotted French courtroom drama that puts a marriage on trial.

“Anatomy of a Fall,” which stars Sandra Huller as a writer trying to prove her innocence in her husband’s death, is only the third film directed by a woman to win the Palme d’Or. One of the two previous winners, Julia Ducournau, was on this year’s jury. Cannes’ Grand Prix, its second prize, went to Jonathan Glazer’s“The Zone of Interest,” a chilling Martin Amis adaptation about a German family living next door to Auschwitz.

The awards were decided by a jury presided over by twotime Palme winner Ruben Ostlund, the Swedish director who won the prize last year for “Triangle of Sadness”. The ceremony preceded the festival’s closing night film, the Pixar animation “Elemental”.

Remarkably, the award for “Anatomy of a Fall” gives the indie distributor Neon its fourth straight Palme winners. Neon, which acquired the film after its premiere in Cannes, also backed “Triangle of Sadness,” Ducournau’s “Titane” and Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite,” which it steered to a best picture win at the Oscars.

Triet was presented the Palme by Jane Fonda, who recalled coming to Cannes in 1963 when, she said, there were no female filmmakers competing “and it never even occurred to us that there was something wrong with that”. This year, a record seven out of the 21 films in competition at Cannes were directed by women. After a rousing standing ovation, Triet, the 44-year-old filmmaker, spoke about the protests that have roiled France this year over reforms to pension plans. “This award is dedicated to all the young women directors and all the young male directors and all those who cannot manage to shoot films today,” she added. “We must give them the space I occupied 15 years ago in a less hostile world where it was still possible to make mistakes and start again.