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Thailand’s Constitutional Court has suspended Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who has come under mounting pressure to resign over her leaked phone conversation with former Cambodian leader Hun Sen.

The clip, in which Paetongtarn called him “uncle” and criticised a Thai military commander, sparked public anger and a petition for her dismissal, which the court is now considering.

That could make Paetongtarn the third politician in the powerful Shinawatra clan – which has dominated Thai politics for the past two decades – to lose power before completing their term.

Her ruling coalition is already teetering with a slim majority after a key conservative ally abandoned it two weeks ago.

The Constitutional Court voted 7-2 to suspend her while they consider the case for her dismissal and she has 15 days to present her defence.

In the meantime the deputy PM will serve as the country’s acting leader. Paetongtarn, however, will remain in the cabinet as culture minister, a new appointment following a cabinet reshuffle that was endorsed hours before she was suspended.

On Tuesday, Paetongtarn apologised again, adding that the purpose of her phone call with Hun Sen was “more than 100%… for the country”.

The call was about the border dispute between the two countries – although it’s decades old, tensions have risen again since late May when a Cambodian soldier was killed.

The leaked audio especially angered conservative lawmakers who accused her of appeasing Hun Sen and undermining Thailand’s military.

But she defended herself on Tuesday, saying, “I had no intent to do it for my own interest. I only thought about how to avoid chaos, avoid fighting and to avoid loss of lives.

“If you listened to it carefully, you’d understand that I didn’t have ill intentions. This is what I’ll focus and spend time on explaining thoroughly.”

If she is eventually dismissed, Paetongtarn will be the second prime minister from the Pheu Thai party to be removed from premiership since August last year.

At that time, her predecessor Srettha Thavisin was dismissed, also by the constitutional court, for appointing to his cabinet a former lawyer who was once jailed.

Days later, Paetongtarn – whose father is Thailand’s deposed leader Thaksin Shinawatra – was sworn in as prime minister.

Tuesday’s decision once again underscores the constitutional court’s power to unmake governments, which critics say can be weaponised to target political opponents.

This court has dissolved 34 parties since 2006, including the reformist Move Forward, which won the most seats and votes in the 2023 election but was blocked from forming the government.

“This has become a pattern in Thai politics… a part of the Thai political culture, which is not what a true political process is supposed to be,” said Titipol Phakdeewanich, a political science lecturer at Ubon Ratchathani University.

“The suspension by court order shouldn’t have happened but most people could see its legitimacy because the leaked conversation really made people question if the PM was genuinely defending the interest of the country.”

Paetongtarn, 38, remains the country’s youngest leader and only the second woman to be PM after her aunt, Yingluck Shinawatra.

Already struggling to revive a weak economy, Paetongtarn saw her approval rating fall to 9.2% last weekend, down from 30.9% in March.

The court’s decision comes on the same day as Paetongtarn’s father, who was seen as the driving force behind her government, battles his own political troubles.

Thaksin is fighting charges of insulting the monarchy over an interview he gave to a South Korean newspaper nine years ago. His trial started on Tuesday.

The controversial political leader, who returned to Thailand in 2023 after 15 years in exile, is the most high-profile figure to face charges under the country’s notorious lese majeste law.

Thaksin’s return was part of a grand compromise between Pheu Thai and its former conservative foes.

They include the military, which deposed two Shinawatra governments in coups, and groups close to the monarchy.

President Donald Trump’s move to cut most of the US funding towards foreign humanitarian aid could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal.

A third of those at risk of premature deaths were children, researchers projected.

Low- and middle-income countries were facing a shock “comparable in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict,” said Davide Rasella, who co-authored the report.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in March that over 80% of all programmes at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) had been cancelled. The Trump administration has taken aim at what it sees as wasteful spending.

The controversial cutbacks – which were condemned around the world by humanitarian organisations – were overseen by Elon Musk. The billionaire was then leading an initiative to shrink the federal workforce.

During his second term, Trump has repeatedly said he wants overseas spending to be closely aligned with his “America First” approach.

The USAID funding cuts “risk abruptly halting – and even reversing – two decades of progress in health among vulnerable populations,” said the statement from Rasella, a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health.

In their report, Rasella and his fellow researchers estimated that USAID funding had prevented more than 90 million deaths in developing countries between 2001 and 2021.

They modelled the potential impact on death rates with an assumption that funding would be cut by 83% – the figure provided by Rubio in March.

The researchers suggested that the cuts could lead to a “staggering” number of more than 14 million avoidable deaths by 2030.

That would include the deaths of more than 4.5 million children under the age of five, they added.

The Lancet report was published as dozens of world leaders meet in the Spanish city of Seville this week for a United Nations-led aid conference, the biggest of its kind in a decade. The US is not expected to attend.

The US, by far the world’s largest humanitarian aid provider, has operated in more than 60 countries, largely through contractors. According to government data, it spent $68bn (£55bn) on international aid in 2023.

USAID was seen as integral to the global aid system. After Trump’s cuts were announced, other countries followed suit with their own reductions – including the UK, France and Germany.

The moves have been widely condemned by humanitarian organisations. Last month, the United Nations said it was dealing with “the deepest funding cuts ever to hit the international humanitarian sector”.

According to Rubio’s statements in March, there were still approximately 1,000 remaining US programmes that would be administered “more effectively” under the US State Department and in consultation with Congress.

Still, the situation on the ground has not been improving, according to UN workers.

Last month, a UN official told the BBC that hundreds of thousands of people were “slowly starving” in Kenyan refugee camps after US funding cuts reduced food rations to their lowest ever levels.

At a hospital in Kakuma, in northwestern Kenya, the BBC witnessed a baby who could barely move and was showing signs of malnutrition, including having parts of her skin wrinkled and peeling.

PARIS — France and the rest of Europe were still in the grips of the first major heat wave this summer with health warnings in effect Tuesday, even as conditions began to improve in some parts of the region.

Punishing temperatures were forecast to reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in Paris and to stay unusually high in Belgium and the Netherlands. In contrast, temperatures were falling in Portugal, where no red heat warnings were issued.

In France, the national weather agency Météo-France placed several departments under the highest red alert, with the Paris region particularly hard hit. The heat wave — defined as consecutive days of very high temperature — is expected to intensify Tuesday and more than 1,300 schools were expected to be partially or fully closed, the Education Ministry said.

Visitors to the Eiffel Tower without tickets were told to postpone their visits, and the summit of the city’s landmark was closed until Thursday.

Farther south, 17 of Italy’s 27 major cities were experiencing a heat wave, according to the Health Ministry.

Météo-France also warned of the heightened risk of wildfires due to the drought-stricken soil, compounded by a lack of rain in June and the recent surge in temperature.

Climate experts warn that future summers are likely to be hotter than any recorded to date. By 2100, France could be up to 4 C (39 F) warmer, with temperatures exceeding 40 C expected every year and extreme heat spikes potentially reaching 50 C (122 F). According to Météo-France, the country may face a tenfold increase in the number of heat wave days by 2100.

In Portugal, Lisbon was forecast to reach 33 C (91 F), typical for this time of the year, though some inland areas could still see peaks of 43 C (109 F), according to the national weather agency. June temperature records were broken in two locations in Portugal on June 29.

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Associated Press writers Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, and David Billier contributed to this report.