North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is re-elected by Congress as the General Secretary of the country’s ruling Workers’ Party for the third time.

State media reported on Monday that Kim, 42, was reelected to the top post with delegates at the Congress crediting him for bolstering the country’s nuclear arsenal and strengthening its regional standing.

Kim has created a military capable of handling “any threat of aggression” and “any form of war,” the Congress announced, adding that his brave leadership is “reliably guaranteeing” the country’s future and “boosting the pride and self-esteem” of North Koreans.

Kim was reelected as General Secretary of North Korea’s Workers’ Party with the “unshakable will and unanimous desire” of thousands of delegates on the fourth day of meetings Sunday, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) announced. He has held the party’s top post since 2016.

The Congress is held every five years to elect the general secretary to serve as the party’s top representative and leader.

Kim is expected to announce his major policies on the military, diplomacy, the economy, and other areas for the next five years at the Congress, which kicked off last Thursday.

Western political analysts believe Kim will likely use the assembly as a platform from which he will announce the nation’s new military goals, including strengthening conventional forces and integrating them with nuclear capabilities. He will also likely announce a new plan for economic “self-reliance” through mass mobilization, following gradual post-pandemic gains fueled by rebounding trade with China and arms exports to Russia.

In the meantime, Kim’s government has rejected dialogue offers from US President Donald Trump since the American president began his second term, urging Washington to drop its demand for North Korea’s denuclearization as a precondition for talks. Kim has declared the war-divided South Korea a permanent enemy of the North as long as it is under US influence.

The plight of a baby monkey in Japan who has become an internet sensation shows the cruelty of zoos, an animal rights group said, as sales of the plush IKEA orangutan the animal clings to boomed.

Punch, a baby macaque abandoned by its mother, shot to stardom after being pictured getting bullied by other monkeys and seeking comfort from the orangutan toy at Ichikawa City Zoo outside Tokyo.

“Zoos are not sanctuaries — they are places where animals are confined, deprived of autonomy, and denied the complex environments and social lives they would have in the wild,” said People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta).

“What some are calling ‘cute’ is actually a glimpse into the trauma of a young, highly social primate coping with isolation and loss,” the group’s Asia director, Jason Baker, said in a statement.

“Until facilities stop treating sentient beings as attractions, animals like Punch will continue to suffer in captivity,” Baker said, calling for Punch to be moved to a “reputable sanctuary, where he could live in a more natural environment”.

Spurned by its mother, Punch was raised in an artificial environment after being born in July, and began training to rejoin his troop last month.

Punch’s predicament sparked huge interest online, spawning a devoted fanbase under the hashtag #HangInTherePunch, as large crowds thronged the zoo.

Meanwhile, Swedish interior furnishings giant IKEA, the maker of the orangutan soft toy, said it was seeing “unprecedented” interest and “significantly” higher sales than usual.

“As a result, the product is currently out of stock in some markets, including Japan and the United States,” Ingka Group, the holding company controlling most of IKEA’s stores, told AFP by email.

Over a long holiday weekend in Japan, fans queued for up to an hour to catch a glimpse of Punch, the Ichikawa zoo said in a post on X, with more than 5,000 visitors recorded on Monday.

The zoo said it had set up a “restricted zone” around part of the monkey enclosure to reduce stress for the animals.

A large number of people have asked how they can donate cash or goods, it added.

In an update on Punch’s plight on Sunday, the zoo said he “was meticulously groomed by two monkeys and is steadily fitting into the group”.

• Helicopter came down in Dorcheh city of Isfahan province.
• Sanctions-hit Iran suffered many air disasters in recent years.
• Pilot killed when F-4 jet crashed in Hamadan province last week.

An Iranian Army helicopter crashed into a fruit market in the central province of Isfahan on Tuesday, killing the pilot, co-pilot, and two merchants, state media reported.

The helicopter came down in the city of Dorcheh, causing a fire that was put out by emergency services, the reports added.

The pilot, co-pilot, and two fruit vendors on the ground were killed, the official IRNA news agency said, attributing the crash to “a technical malfunction”.

Sanctions-hit Iran has suffered several air disasters in recent years, with officials complaining of difficulties acquiring spare parts to keep its ageing fleets in the air.

Experts say Iran has a poor air safety record, with repeated crashes, many involving aircraft bought before the 1979 Islamic Revolution and lacking original spare parts for maintenance.

Last week, a US-built F-4 fighter belonging to Iran’s regular air force crashed in the western province of Hamadan, killing one pilot during a training flight.