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Singapore’s population size this year saw its sharpest percentage drop since 1950, a report said on Tuesday, as coronavirus-induced travel restrictions kept foreigners away from the Asian financial hub. It was the second consecutive year the city-state saw its population shrink and only the third time it had negative growth since 1950, according to an official annual population report.
A 16-year-old schoolboy in Singapore has been charged with murdering a fellow student, in a case that has shocked the country. Police officers called into a high school on Monday found the body of a 13-year-old boy in a bathroom. Extreme violence in schools is rare in Singapore, which has one of the lowest crime rates in the world.
Singapore has detained a 16-year-old for intending to attack two mosques, plans authorities said were inspired by the killing of Muslim worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand in March 2019. The boy, an unnamed Christian of Indian ethnicity, had purchased a tactical vest online and had intended to also buy a machete at the time of his arrest in December.
A passenger on board a “cruise-to-nowhere” from Singapore has tested positive for Covid-19, the operator Royal Caribbean said on Wednesday. At 2.45 am on Wednesday morning, the captain of the Quantum of the Seas informed the 2,000 passengers that the ship was to return to dock a day early and that they should stay in their rooms, the Straits Times reports.
Singapore’s government has invoked its anti-‘fake news’ law for the first time, the Straits Times reports, with the city-state’s Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act Office directing opposition party member Brad Bowyer to include a correction notice in an earlier Facebook post. Bowyer’s original Facebook post included comments on the government’s involvement in investment decisions by Temasek and GIC as well as Keppel Corporation’s finances.
Singapore said on Tuesday it had seized 8.8 tonnes of elephant ivory, a record haul by authorities in the city-state, which conservation groups say is a transit point for the illegal wildlife trade. The elephant ivory, estimated to be worth $12.9 million, came from nearly 300 African elephants, and was heading to Vietnam through Singapore from Democratic Republic of the Congo. The haul also contained the third major seizure of pangolin scales in Singapore this year.