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.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion