HONG KONG – A palatial four-bedroom house in Hong Kong’s exclusive Peak district has been sold for HK$1.16 billion (S$200 million), which the main developer said is the most paid for a home in one of its projects this year.

The price per square foot was HK$126,813, a spokeswoman for Wheelock Properties said on Wednesday. She declined to identify the buyer.

The sale of the more than 9,000 square foot detached house, which includes a swimming pool, lavish garden and basement carpark, underscores the gaping contrasts in the Chinese-controlled city where the average living space is just 150 square feet (14 square meters) per person.

Wheelock and Company, one of Hong Kong’s biggest developers, owns the Mount Nicholson project via its subsidiaries Wheelock Properties and Wharf Holdings, together with Nan Fung Development.

A recent UBS report said Hong Kong was the world’s most expensive city for apartments, with a skilled service worker needing to work 20 years – the longest period of time in a list of 20 cities in the world – before being able to afford a 650 square feet (60 square meters) flat near the city centre.

Hong Kong authorities have tried to implement a raft of measures to cool the city’s property prices but Chief Executive Carrie Lam has said the government has no “magic wands”.

The former British colony is one of the world’s wealthiest cities with fiscal reserves of more than HK$936 billion but less than one-tenth of its land area is zoned for housing.

Inequalities have been exacerbated with many middle class families unable to afford property.

Even more dire is the plight of the very poor who have been forced to live in “coffin homes” and families residing in subdivided flats smaller than 75 square feet.

Home prices in Hong Kong have jumped close to 400 per cent since 2003, while the median monthly household income has risen just 61 per cent, pushing home ownership out of reach for many.

Lam, who took office in July, has made cooling sky high property prices one of her top priorities and has announced a new “Starter Homes” scheme to help middle class families.

A man dragged two dogs – seemingly pets – that were tied to a motorcycle in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province.

Cheonan Dongnam Police Station said Tuesday it was investigating the case.

An eye witness reported that a man who appeared to be in his 70s was riding a motorcycle on the street with two dogs tied to it, Tuesday afternoon.

The witness urged him to stop, but the man said, “(The dogs) are mine. It’s none of your business.” He then accelerated.

The witness said, “The dogs were trying hard to keep up. One of them seemed to be bleeding.”

The motorcycle has not been found yet, according to police.

Three in five Korean companies still consider the gender of potential employees when hiring new recruits, a report said Monday.

According to research by job posting firm Saramin on Monday, 63 per cent of respondents — 151 of the 238 companies that took part in Saramin’s survey — said that the applicant’s gender mattered in the decision to hire.

When asked which gender had an advantage in landing a job, 74 per cent of the companies answered male, while the remaining 26 per cent chose female.

As for the reasons they thought gender was important, the most cited answer was that “there are tasks more suitable for each gender.” That was followed by “Less pressure in asking for extra hours and out-of-town business trips” and “Facilitates flexible working culture.”

Male workers were preferred in manufacturing and production, business and business management, purchasing and business planning and strategies.

Female workers were preferred for finance and accounting, human resources, design and service.

YANGON – Turkey’s state broadcaster said a team of journalists filming a documentary in Myanmar had told the government of their plans before they were detained for attempting to fly a drone near the country’s parliament.

The journalists, Lau Hon Meng from Singapore and Mok Choy Lin from Malaysia, have been held since Friday in the capital Naypyitaw, along with their Myanmar interpreter Aung Naing Soe and driver Hla Tin.

Police have said they are investigating the four for bringing the drone into Myanmar in violation of an import-export rule that carries a penalty of up to three years in jail.

The two foreign nationals had obtained official journalist visas before they entered Myanmar on Oct. 21, TRT World, the English-language subsidiary of the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, said in a statement late on Tuesday.

“They shot in various locations with conventional cameras as well as with a drone, up until October 27,” the broadcaster said.

“The Myanmar Information Ministry was previously informed about all filming activities and the filming schedule.”

The broadcaster did not say if the reporters had specifically sought permission to operate a drone near the parliament building. They had interviewed a lawmaker and were about to film the parliament with a drone when they were detained, it said.

Myint Kyaw, an information ministry official in charge of journalist visas, told Reuters that TRT World had only made a broad request to the ministry to film in Yangon and the troubled western state of Rakhine.

“The letter they sent was not their schedule. They didn’t even mention in their letter about visiting Naypyitaw,” he said, adding that the letter did not mention a drone.

Last week’s arrests came amid tension between Turkey and Myanmar over treatment of the Muslim Rohingya minority in Rakhine. In early September, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said security operations targeting the Rohingya constituted”genocide”, a charge Myanmar denies.

More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled majority-Buddhist Myanmar for neighbouring Bangladesh since security forces launched a counter-insurgency operation in response to Rohingya militants’ attacks on Aug. 25.

The families of the two Myanmar nationals and a lawyer hired on their behalf have not been allowed to visit them, family members and police said.

On Friday about 25 police raided the Yangon house of their interpreter Aung Naing Soe, a freelance reporter, seizing his computer memory sticks and searching documents.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called for the immediate and unconditional release of all four.

“These arrests and the raid of Aung Naing Soe’s home speak to the continuing deterioration of conditions for the press in Myanmar,” Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative, said in a statement on Monday.

Kim Yu-na, the only figure-skating gold medalist of South Korea, took the white-and-gold Olympic torch on the first leg of its journey to PyeongChang on Tuesday.

The Olympic flame handover ceremony took place at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, Greece.

Kim, an ambassador for the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, lifted the torch at the ceremony.

The flame then travelled to Korea by air, landing at Incheon International Airport on Wednesday morning.

The Rapid Action Battalion (Rab), Bangladesh’s elite anti-crime and anti-terrorism unit yesterday arrested a Biman Bangladesh Airlines co-pilot, who according to the force, was planning to carry out a suicide attack on the houses of government high-ups with an aircraft.

First Officer Sabbir Emam Sabbir, 31, had an alternative plan of kidnapping passengers of an aircraft and taking it to a country in the Middle East, Mufti Mahmud Khan, director (legal and media wing) of the Rab told a press conference in the capital.

He did not give details of the alleged plans by the arrestee, who is the son of the arrested owner of a building raided by the Rab in the capital’s Darussalam area around two months ago.

During the operation on September 4-8, Abdullah alias Meer Akrabul Karim, a suspected JMB leader, was killed along with his two wives, two children and two of his associates in massive explosions inside their apartment.

The Rab claimed that Abdullah had exploded “powerful” bombs. Later, seven skulls were recovered from their apartment.

Yesterday, the Rab members also arrested Sabbir’s mother Sultana Parvin, 55, their relative Asifur Rahman Asif, 25, and local tea-stall owner Alam, 30, for their alleged links with militancy.

They were caught in raids in different areas of Mirpur between 2:00am and 11:00am, Mufti Mahmud said.

“During primary interrogation, Sabbir admitted making the plans…We came to know about the plans from the confessional statement of JMB man Billal Hossain, who was arrested in Narayanganj on October 26,” he said.

Replying to a query, the Rab official claimed that Billal was a close associate of Abdullah. He came to know about Sabbir and his planning through the suspected militant killed in that raid.

Although Rab claimed that Abdullah was a top leader of Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh, DMP’s counterterrorism sources said the man, widely known as Kabutar Abdullah, had cut ties with the banned militant outfit.

Wishing anonymity, a CTTC official yesterday said, “We had information about Abdullah, but we never raided his house as we were told that he had severed all his ties with JMB.”

During the press conference at the Rab media centre in Karwan Bazar, Mufti Mahmud said, “Sabbir had made the plans along with Abdullah and Sarwar Jahan alias Manik before and after the Gulshan cafe attack last year.” Except Sultana, the three arrestees were paraded before the media at the briefing yesterday.

Sarwar Jahan, a suspected JMB man, died after he jumped off a five-storey building during a Rab raid in Ashulia on the outskirts of the capital on October 8 last year.

Sabbir has been working for Biman since 2014. He used to fly Boeing 737 as the first officer. He worked for another local airline from 2010 to 2014, said Rab.

An official of Biman’s public relations department told The Daily Star that Sabbir had refused to fly aircraft following the anti-militancy drive on his house.

Sabbir formally appealed to the director of flight operations not to ask him to fly aircraft considering his “mental state” following the arrest of his father in the raid.

The appeal was approved and he was off duty for a certain period of time, said the official.

The Rab yesterday said Sabbir again flew a Biman flight on the Dhaka-Kolkata-Dhaka route on Monday.

Contacted, Biman Managing Director AM Mosaddique Ahmed said, “We are inquiring into the matter. If the allegation against him [Sabbir] is proved, action should be taken as per the law.”

Mufti Mahmud also claimed that Sabbir had promised Abdullah to “donate” Tk 10 lakh (to JMB) he was supposed to get as service allowances.

He further claimed that Sabbir, Sultana and their relative Asif had taken Bayah (oath of allegiance) from Sarwar Jahan.

According to the Rab official, Sultana used to provide financial support to Abdullah while Asif used to collect and supply different types of chemical to Abdullah for making bombs, he said, adding that the tea stall owner, Alam, also had “close links with Abdullah”.

Inspired by militant attacks in the USA, France and Germany, Abdullah had planned to drive a truck into a police establishment before the last Ramadan. He was trying to have the truck with the help of Asif, he said.

The Rab official further claimed that Billal, who was arrested in Narayanganj, used to carry bombs to Abdullah in different areas of the country.