Axios

Five months after Airbnb announced the company would be removing their listings from the West Bank, the team has decided not to move forward with the original policy following backlash in Israel and the U.S.

Details: The decision is part of a lawsuit the company settled with hosts and potential hosts. However, Airbnb will not accept any of the profits from the West Bank listings, instead donating the money to humanitarian nonprofits. The company said it will do the same for listings with Abkhazia in South Ossetia, another disputed region.

Fresh exit polls from Israel's two main television channels show a narrow victory for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Why it matters: This would be the fourth consecutive election victory for Netanyahu, who has led Israel for the past 10 years and 13 years in total. He campaigned while facing indictments for bribery, breach of trust and fraud.

Voting ended in Israel's election Tuesday, with exit polls projecting a dead heat.

The latest: Exit polls in Israel show Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party won 35 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, while retired Gen. Benny Gantz's Blue and White party also clinched 35. Both candidates declared victory. This is the 4th election Netanyahu won in a row. 

China, the European Aviation Safety Agency, Ethiopia, and several other regulators and countries have joined the Federal Aviation Administration's international team to review the safety of the Boeing 737 MAX, Reuters reports.

Why it matters: Per Axios' Andrew Freedman: The participation of international aviation authorities in part indicates some skepticism regarding the FAA's certification process, which is under investigation in the wake of the two 737 MAX crashes. By working with the FAA, international regulators may be betting that they will have access to more information to determine aircraft safety on their own, rather than merely trusting the FAA's safety review.

Go deeper:

• Boeing faces its biggest stress test
• Everything you need to know about the Boeing 737 MAX crashes

U.S. tech startup investors have spent the past decade trying to deepen ties with China, but some of those efforts may soon backfire. Particularly as anti-China rhetoric continues to ramp up on Capitol Hill.

The big picture: Part of this relates to last year's changes to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which used to focus on foreign entities buying control of U.S. companies in a way that could pose national security concerns.

Move over Apple and Google, the next big news efforts to follow are two Chinese news aggregation rivals: Qutoutiao and Toutiao.

Driving the news: Qutoutiao, the 3-year-old news and video aggregation startup backed by Tencent, recently announced that it is receiving a $171 million convertible loan from Chinese tech behemoth Alibaba.

Israelis are at the polls today to vote in a critical legislative election — the 22nd since the country's founding in 1948.

Why it matters: Today's vote is widely seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 13 years of rule, with the last 10 running consecutively since 2009. This year's elections were called early due to fractures within Netanyahu's ruling coalition, and they come as the prime minister faces pending indictments for bribery, breach of trust and fraud.

The 9 leaders of Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests were found guilty Tuesday by a court in the Chinese territory of charges including public nuisance.

Details: Pastor Chu Yiu-ming, law professor Benny Tai and retired sociology professor Chan Kin-man and pastor Chu Yiu-ming were among those convicted, the BBC reports. They're seen as figureheads of a movement involving thousands of people, who protested in Hong Kong's streets in 2014 following China's decision to only allow candidates pre-approved by Beijing in elections.

By the time China's ambitions of displacing the U.S. as the dominant global power were widely understood, Beijing's success had already begun to feel inevitable.

Why it matters: The Chinese Communist Party has exploited America's desire to "sleep through difficulties," writes Jonathan Ward in the new book, "China's Vision of Victory." He contends that the outcome of the battle for global supremacy remains to be determined, but that the U.S. must quickly and dramatically change course in order to prevail.

The Trump administration today designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), the first time the U.S. has applied that label to an element of a foreign government.

Secretary Mike Pompeo escalated the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign on Iran with his announcement that the State Department would add Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to its Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list on April 15.

Why it matters: The FTO designation builds on the existing web of U.S. penalties against the IRGC — which has spawned and backed countless proxies and militias in the Middle East and carried out or supported terrorist actions on several continents — and makes it even harder to do business with individuals or companies tied to the group.

Yujing Zhang, the Chinese woman charged with illegally entering President Trump's Mar-a-lago club in Florida last month, appeared at a detention hearing in Florida on Monday, CNN reports.

Details: Prosecutors searched Zhang's hotel room after she was caught at Mar-a-lago with 4 cell phones, a laptop, an external hard drive and a USB stick laced with malware. They found another cell phone, 9 USB drives, 5 SIM cards, a signal detector used to reveal hidden cameras, and thousands of dollars in cash. Prosecutors said Zhang "lies to everyone she encounters" and has no ties to anyone in the U.S.

Representatives from the E3 — the U.K., France and Germany — sent a letter last week to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres asking him to “report fully and thoroughly on Iranian ballistic missile activity.”

The big picture: The group's request follows recent developments in Iran's ballistic missile program, including the inauguration of two upgraded missile platforms and a failed satellite-launch vehicle test. This effort broadens the focus on the Iranian missile threat to encompass future intentions — especially around nuclear-capable systems — and provides a new vector for joint U.S. and European pressure.

The Trump administration has designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization.

Why it matters: The Monday announcement, which marks the first time the U.S. has designated an element of a foreign government as a terrorist entity, is a further sign that the Trump administration will use any tool at its disposal to inflict pain on the Iranian regime. The pressure campaign has kicked into overdrive since President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal last May.