SINGAPORE
Airbnb hosts plead guilty
Two men yesterday pleaded guilty to using platforms, including Airbnb, to rent out condominium units for less than six months. Terence Tan En Wei and Yao Songliang pleaded guilty at the State Court to four charges of illegally renting out four condominium units last year. They face fines of up to S$200,000 (US$151,746) per charge. Court documents show that they used platforms such as Craigslist, HomeAway and Airbnb to rent out the units. Offering short stays in private homes is illegal in Singapore, where most residents live in subsidized public housing. The minimum rental period had been six months, but has since been reduced to three months.
NEW ZEALAND
Nats pick Simon Bridges
The conservative National Party yesterday chose their first Maori leader as they regrouped after an election loss. Party members selected 41-year-old Simon Bridges from among five candidates. He is a former lawyer and prosecutor who was first elected to parliament 10 years ago. He held several ministerial portfolios in the previous government, including energy, labor and transport. The party also chose a Maori deputy leader after Paula Bennett fended off one challenger to retain her position. “I’m really excited about the opportunity I’ve got ahead,” Bridges said. “I hope Maori are proud of me.”
JAPAN
Man held over mutilation
A US tourist has been arrested after a local woman he met through a dating app went missing earlier this month, her body believed to have been dismembered and scattered across several locations, media reported. Police arrested the 26-year-old last week on suspicion of confining the woman, who had been reported missing since Feb. 16, media said. They later found what appeared to be the woman’s head inside a suitcase at an apartment the man had booked in Osaka, media said. A Hyogo Prefecture police official confirmed the location and times the torso, legs and arms were found, but provided no further details.
CHINA
Prominent figures blast plan
In a rare public expression of dissent, a well-known political commentator and a prominent businesswoman have penned open letters urging lawmakers to reject a plan that would allow President Xi Jinping (習近平) to rule indefinitely. In a Monday statement on WeChat to Beijing’s members of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, Li Datong (李大同), a former editor of China Youth Daily, wrote that lifting term limits would “sow the seeds of chaos.” “If there are no term limits on a country’s highest leader, then we are returning to an imperial regime,” Li told reporters yesterday. Businesswoman Wang Ying (王瑛) wrote on WeChat that the party’s proposal was “an outright betrayal” and “against the tides.”
GREECE
Economy head steps down
Minister of Economy and Development Dimitri Papadimitriou quit early yesterday, the prime minister’s office said, hours after his wife, Rania Antonopoulos, was ousted as a junior minister over a housing stipend controversy. A reshuffle is to be announced tomorrow, reports say. Despite being personally wealthy, Antonopoulos had reportedly requested a 1,000 euro (US$1,234) monthly housing stipend available to government members without permanent homes in Athens. Antonopoulos on Monday said she had received 23,000 euros over two years, and was technically within her rights to do so.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing