CNN
 — 

Here is a look at the life of North Korean government official Kim Yo Jong, sister of Kim Jong Un. Little is known about her as the family is notoriously secretive.

Birth date: September 26, 1987 or 1988 (Widely believed to be in her early 30s, though her reported birth year varies.)

Father: Kim Jong Il

Mother: Ko Yong Hui

Marriage: Choe Song

Children: Information unavailable publicly

Education: Kim Il Sung University

Education and Family

Attended school in Bern, Switzerland, around the same time as her brother Kim Jong Un in the late 1990s. She studied under various pseudonyms.

One of at least five known siblings. She is the youngest child of former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and Ko Yong Hui. She is the sister of the current leader Kim Jong Un. Her grandfather was North Korea’s first leader.

Political Career and Public Appearances

2007 – Named junior cadre in the ruling Korean Workers’ Party (WPK).

2009-2011 – Works in the National Defense Commission and serves as Kim Jong Il’s personal secretary.

December 2011 – Attends her father’s state funeral.

March 2014 – Attends the Supreme People’s Assembly elections. This is her first public appearance alongside her brother and the first public mention of her name by North Korean state media.

October 2014 - According to a Seoul-based think tank run by North Korean defectors, Kim briefly takes charge of the country while her brother is reportedly ill with gout or diabetes.

2014 – Is appointed vice director of the Workers’ Party of Korea Propaganda and Agitation Department.

January 11, 2017 – The US Treasury Department releases a statement that designates and sanctions Kim in response to “human rights abuses and censorship activities.”

October 8, 2017-January 2021 – Alternate member of the WPK’s Politburo. It is unclear in what capacity she has served in this position. On some lists she is not named, leading to speculation that she has been demoted and reinstated more than once. As of January 2021, she no longer appears as an alternate member. She has also been alternately listed as “first vice department director” to “vice department director” of the Politburo.

February 9, 2018 – Kim attends the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics held in Pyeongchang, South Korea. She is the first member of the North’s ruling dynasty to visit the South since the end of the Korean War in 1953.

February 10, 2018 – Meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and issues a formal invitation to Moon from Kim Jong Un to travel to North Korea for what would be the first meeting of Korean leaders since 2007.

June 12, 2018 – Attends the US-North Korea summit in Singapore as envoy for Kim Jong Un, meeting US President Donald Trump.

February 27-28, 2019 – Attends the US-North Korea summit in Hanoi, Vietnam.

March 12, 2019 – North Korean state media announces Kim is elected to the Supreme People’s Assembly.

September 30, 2021 – North Korea’s state-run media announces Kim is now a member of the State Affairs Commission (SAC), the country’s ruling body headed by her brother. A seat on the SAC is the highest official position she has held.

August 10, 2022 – According to North Korea’s state-run media, Kim calls for a “deadly” retaliation against South Korea, blaming North Korea’s neighbor for the country’s Covid-19 outbreak.

Reuters
 — 

The death toll from the explosion and fire at Sigachi Industries’ SIGC.NS chemical factory in southern India has risen to at least 39, officials said on Tuesday, forcing the supplier of pharma products to shut operations for 90 days.

The government of Telangana state, where the facility is located, has formed a five-member committee to probe the incident, the cause of which is yet to be disclosed by the company.

The explosion on Monday also injured 34, according to officials.

“We are still clearing the debris,” GV Narayana Rao, director of the Telangana fire disaster response service, told Reuters, adding that the building had completely collapsed.

“Once we are all done with the clearing, only then we will be able to assess if any other body is still remaining under the debris or if it is all clear,” Rao said.

Police officials said more than 140 people were working in the plant when the incident occurred. Twenty-five of the deceased were yet to be identified, district administrative official P. Pravinya said.

“I came out (of the plant) to use the restroom and heard a loud blast. It sounded like a bomb blast. I came out and saw fire. A part of the fire also spread towards me. I jumped the wall and escaped,” Chandan Gound, 32, who has been working at the factory for six months, told Reuters by phone.

“Many of them (those inside) managed to escape, but a large number were trapped and could not come out,” Gound added.

Sigachi, which makes microcrystalline cellulose (MCC), caters to clients in the pharma, food, cosmetic and specialty chemicals sectors in countries ranging from the US to Australia.

MCC’s compressibility, binding properties, and ability to boost drug release make it a vital ingredient in pharmaceutical manufacturing. It is also used to prevent the formation of lumps in food products, to maintain texture of cosmetic products, and as a fat substitute in low-calorie foods.

Sigachi’s Telangana plant contributes a little over a fourth of its total capacity of 21,700 million metric tons per annum.

Its shares dropped about 8% on Tuesday and were headed for their sharpest two-day drop on record.

Sigachi halted operations at the plant for 90 days from Monday citing damage to equipment and structures. The plant is fully insured and the company is initiating claims.

In a separate incident on Tuesday, five people were killed and four others injured in a massive fire at a crackers factory in the Sivakasi manufacturing cluster in the southern Tamil Nadu state, a fire department official said. The incident is the latest in a series of fire accidents in the area.

CNN
 — 

Thailand’s embattled prime minister was suspended from duty Tuesday and could face dismissal pending an ethics probe over a leaked phone call she had with Cambodia’s powerful former leader.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 38, has only held the premiership for 10 months after replacing her predecessor, who was removed from office. Her suspension brings fresh uncertainty to the Southeast Asian kingdom, which has been roiled by years of political turbulence and leadership shake-ups.

Thailand’s Constitutional Court accepted a petition brought by a group of 36 senators who accused Paetongtarn of violating the constitution for breaching ethical standards in the leaked call, which was confirmed as authentic by both sides.

The court voted to suspend Paetongtarn from her prime ministerial duties until it reaches a verdict in the ethics case. Paetongtarn will remain in the Cabinet as culture minister following a reshuffle.

Paetongtarn has faced increasing calls to resign, with anti-government protesters taking to the streets of the capital Bangkok on Saturday, after the leaked call with Cambodia’s Hun Sen over an escalating border dispute sparked widespread anger in the country.

The scandal prompted the Bhumjaithai party, a major partner of the prime minister’s government, to withdraw from the coalition last week, dealing a major blow to her Pheu Thai party’s ability to hold power. Paetongtarn is also contending with plummeting approvals ratings and faces a no-confidence vote in parliament.

In the leaked call, which took place on June 15, Paetongtarn could be heard calling former Cambodian strongman Hun Sen “uncle” and appeared to criticize her own army’s actions after border clashes led to the death of a Cambodian soldier last month.

The Thai prime minister could be heard telling Hun Sen that she was under domestic pressure and urged him not to listen to the “opposite side,” in which she referred to an outspoken Thai army commander in Thailand’s northeast.

She also added that if Hun Sen “wants anything, he can just tell me, and I will take care of it.”

Her comments in the leaked audio struck a nerve in Thailand, and opponents accused her of compromising the country’s national interests.

Following the ruling, Paetongtarn said she accepts the court’s decision and that her intention “was truly to act for the good of the country.”

“I want to make it clear that my intentions were more than 100% sincere — I acted for the country, to protect our sovereignty, to safeguard the lives of our soldiers, and to preserve peace in our nation,” she said in a press conference Tuesday.

“I also want to apologize to all my fellow Thais who may feel uneasy or upset about this matter,” she added.

Thailand and Cambodia have had a complicated relationship of both cooperation and rivalry in recent decades. The two countries share a 508-mile (817-kilometer) land border – largely mapped by the French while they occupied Cambodia – that has periodically seen military clashes and been the source of political tensions.

In the wake of the scandal, Paetongtarn tried to downplay her remarks to Hun Sen, saying at a press conference she was trying to diffuse tensions between the two neighbors and the “private” call “shouldn’t have been made public.”

The prime minister said she was using a “negotiation tactic” and her comments were “not a statement of allegiance.”

Paetongtarn became prime minister last year after the Constitutional Court ruled that her predecessor Srettha Thavisin had breached ethics rules and voted to dismiss him as prime minister.

The same court also dissolved the country’s popular progressive Move Forward Party, which won the most seats in the 2023 election, and banned its leaders from politics for 10 years.