The three-way contest for the vacant seat on Köniz municipal council will go to a second ballot on October 20 No one achieved an absolute majority in the first round of the by-election Green Liberal Thomas Marti received the most votes followed by SP candidate Géraldine Mercedes Boesch with 4439 votes The EPP candidate Katja Streiff received 2614 votes as announced by the municipality of Köniz on Sunday The seat on the executive is vacant because the incumbent municipal councillor Thomas Brönnimann (GLP) head of the Security and Property Directorate is stepping down at the end of the year for personal reasons The current term of office runs until the end of 2025 and the general elections for the term of office from 2026 will take place in the fall of next year The five-member municipal government in Köniz is currently made up of one member each from the Greens The by-election could therefore decide on a new majority in the municipal council The second round of voting in October will be based on the relative majority The person with the most votes will therefore be elected Cristina Maza is an award-winning journalist who has reported from countries such as Cambodia She previously worked as a reporter for the Phnom Penh Post in Cambodia and as a reporting fellow covering energy and cybersecurity for the Christian Science Monitor in Washington D.C She writes frequently about international affairs either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has had an international upbringing Unlike the majority of his country's isolated population the 35-year-old totalitarian dictator studied abroad During his time in a Swiss boarding school from 1998 until 2000 he is known to have been an aficionado of international action movies and basketball games But some of Kim's classmates have suggested that he struggled to keep up academically because he wasn't fluent in German And as he heads into high-level negotiations with President Donald Trump over the potential denuclearization of the Korean peninsula it is unclear whether he speaks English or how good his foreign language skills are follows the North Korean leader wherever he goes Reports have suggested that Kim took English classes during his time in Switzerland and got a passing grade Many claim that Kim understands and speaks just enough English to have an informal chat and that his English language skills are not strong enough to hold formal negotiations especially about important topics like denuclearization an American basketball star who has spent time in North Korea with Kim Jong Un told reporters in Singapore last June that Kim understands some English especially when he is talking about sports yes he understands that," Rodman who was in Singapore for the first summit between Trump and Kim Trump and Kim both brought translators with them Both leaders have reputations for being mercurial and scholars have pointed to the important role that interpreters can play in defusing potentially tense situations employs some of the world's best interpreters for its diplomatic missions Some experts say this is especially important given that Trump often does not read his briefing materials When asked by a Boston Globe reporter why it is important for an American interpreter to join Trump and Kim longtime presidential interpreter Harry Obst noted that translators can be better prepared than the president "One reason is that the interpreter traveling with the president gets to see his talking points and all documents that the president needs for this particular meeting," Obst said "This is doubly important with a president like Trump The packet for such a meeting — and I've worked hundreds of them — may be as much as between 80 and 200 pages." Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground Newsletters in your inbox See all Baby-faced evil genius and master strategist at 34 Not to his old friends in Switzerland where Kim was a student in the late 1990s To them he’s still just the kid who had a good sense of humor and got along with everyone despite flashes of temper remembers fondly his former classmate at the German-speaking Liebefeld-Steinhölzli public school in Koeniz Like everyone else who knew Kim from 1998 to late 2000 Micaelo thought he was “Pak Un,” the son of a staffer at the North Korean embassy “He was a good friend,” Micaelo told The Daily Beast I don’t know anything about his life today please contact me again so we can catch up.” Kim had an enviable collection of Nike sneakers and even though he was only 5-foot-6 and slightly overweight “He was funny,” former classmate Marco Imhof of Bern said “He had a sense of humor and got on well with everyone even those pupils who came from countries who were enemies of North Korea,” another former classmate told the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag If those comments don’t square with the popular view of Kim as the wacky The Kim family has long had a strong Swiss connection and as a result a window on the West that means many of them know very well what life is like outside of the Hermit Kingdom “This guy has the same dictator gene as his grandfather He is also very aware of what a balancing act it is to run North Korea The toughest thing about heading a totalitarian regime is making sure you don’t get killed yourself and younger sister Kim Yo Jong studied in Swiss schools in and around Bern between 1992 and 2000 brutally poisoned at Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur airport last year studied in Moscow and then landed in Geneva “It’s one of the great mysteries why Kim Jong Nam studied in Geneva and learned French and the other kids who came later were sent to Bern where it’s German-speaking,” says Michael Madden, a North Korea expert affiliated with Johns Hopkins who runs North Korea Leadership Watch “All I can think is that North Korea is always a little bit on the run but he was short-tempered and had a lack of tolerance.”— Ko Yong Suk Kim's auntThe Kim family began building what Madden calls a “necessary network” in Paris in the 1970s and it maintains a home there to this day “You can’t send the kids of a dictator abroad without a network people and institutions in place to help take care of them,” Madden said that she and her husband took care of Kim and his two siblings in Switzerland Kim Jong Chol arrived in 1992; Kim Jong Un came in 1996 “We lived in a normal house and acted like a normal family I acted like their mother,” Ko said about her time in Bern “I encouraged [Kim Jong Un] to bring his friends home because we wanted them to live a normal life Ko and her husband took the kids skiing in the Swiss Alps Kim liked playing with machinery in addition to obsessing about basketball and Michael Jordan but he was short-tempered and had a lack of tolerance,” Ko recalled “When his mother tried to tell him off for playing with these things too much and not studying enough He had begun showing signs of a complicated personality and he reportedly was caught once with a BDSM porn magazine “Pak Un attended a class for non-German speaking pupils but then quickly moved to another class,” said Ueli Studer in a 2011 report Madden said that Kim and his siblings were known to be “overprotected” while studying in Switzerland “They had these women hovering around them all the time who would take them to the hospital if they had as much as a sniffle People around them thought it was bizarre.” Kim suddenly vanished in the middle of the school year in 2000 and was not heard from again as the country’s leader when he died of a heart attack at age 70 in 2011 Kim has not been known to return to Switzerland since his teenage years but his sojourn there reportedly had a major impact on him Kim has been known to dole out Swiss watches to senior party officials and one South Korean newspaper reported that in 2013 Kim took a large swath of land in Sepo and turned it into a pasture and an alpine farm Whatever taste Kim had of Western democracy “He turned out to be more vicious and ruthless than his father,” Su Mi Terry a former CIA analyst and leading North Korea expert who is now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies told The Daily Beast “I’ve lost count of how many people he’s had purged or killed Look how he had his own half-brother killed and his uncle executed The way he had his uncle dragged out and murdered There are no other examples in North Korean history like that.” is to gain international acceptance as a nuclear weapons power and avoid the fate of Muammar Kaddafi  or Saddam Hussein (who gave up their nuclear programs “He’s pretty much had to learn on the job,” she said “and so far he’s more than shown an instinct for the position.” Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here who also writes for the The New York Times Christopher Dickey, a veteran foreign correspondent, was The Daily Beast’s World News Editor, and the author of seven books, including Securing the City and, most recently, Our Man in Charleston: Britain’s Secret Agent in the Civil War South. He died on July 16, 2020. The historic Villa Morillon has already been opened for cultural events such as readings, concerts, exhibitions and lectures. In addition, the historic walls of the Villa Morillon could one day provide space for prestigious offices, according to Thomasgraf AG from Berne, which was commissioned to represent the client. and French at the school and was remembered by former classmates as being "timid," "introverted," and an "avid skier and basketball player." In 2012, the Telegraph reported Swiss newspaper Le Matin Dimanche claimed to have learned that Kim missed a considerable amount of school and got poor grades Kim missed 75 days of school in his first year at the International School of Berne and 105 days in his second The paper also reported Kim received especially low marks in natural sciences and barely passing grades in English The North Korean leader is reported to have received good marks in only music and technical studies Of Kim's early life and education in Switzerland now a senior fellow and the SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies at Brookings Institution's Center for East Asia Policy Studies wrote: Following his time at the International School of Berne Kim is reported to have attended the German-language Liebefeld-Steinhölzli public school in Koeniz from 1998 to 2000 it is reported Kim used the alias "Pak Un" and told classmates he was the son of someone who worked at the North Korean embassy Over the years, a few of Kim's former classmates at the Liebefeld-Steinhölzli public school in Koeniz have remember him with some fondness. In an interview with The Daily Beast who went to school with Kim from 1998 to sometime in late 2000 recalled the foreign leader as having been "a good friend." Kim's former classmates described him as "the kid who had a good sense of humor and got along with everyone despite flashes of temper." "We had a lot of fun together," Micaelo said