NewsLite

If you've been wondering about the smell of smoke in the air over the past two evenings, here's why.

In a Facebook post at about 7pm on Monday (Feb 2), Singapore's National Environment Agency said that it has continued to detect "persistent hotspots" near the city state, during its satellite pass at 2.20pm the same day.

The agency added that dry conditions are expected until Wednesday (Feb 4), when showers are forecast.

In an earlier release on Monday, the Meteorological Service Singapore said that thundery showers are forecast over parts of the island in the afternoon, on most days of the second half of this week.

A GrabFood rider has likened his delivery experience to a "ghost story" after arriving at a customer’s address which turned out to be an vacated industrial building.

In a TikTok video shared on Jan 24, Alfian, 34, panned across an empty corridor of the building at Depot Lane in Bukit Merah. The unit which he was supposed to deliver to — #04-04 — appeared to be padlocked.

"This block, whole stretch, is already abandoned," said Alfian. "It is a scary thing."

The site had been vacated since last year to make way for new housing development, the Straits Times reported in June.

Three public transport operators are offering up to $20,000 in sign-on bonus in a bid to woo more local bus captains.

AsiaOne has found on Monday (Feb 2) that the three are SBS Transit, SMRT and Go-Ahead Singapore.

Tower Transit, meanwhile, offers a $7,200 bonus to applicants who are new to the industry, or have been away for at least a year.

SBS Transit, which employs the largest pool of bus captains with about 5,400 full-timers, offers a sign-on bonus of $20,000 from October 2024— up from $10,000 — with another $5,000 in training incentive, along with a starting pay of $4,500 a month.

Singapore Airlines (SIA) announced on Monday (Feb 2) that it will launch four-times weekly nonstop flights to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in June, subject to regulatory approvals.

In a media statement, the airline said that it intends to operate the medium-haul variant of its Airbus A350-900 aircraft for the proposed route.

It is configured with 303 seats across two cabin classes — 40 in business class and 263 in economy class.

If approved, SQ498 will depart Singapore for Riyadh on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays at 6.20pm (Singapore time).

The aviation and aerospace sectors will be "twin, reinforcing engines" for Singapore’s growth as global demand for air travel rebounds and supply chains face further complexity, Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong said on Monday (Feb 2).

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Singapore Airshow 2026 at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre, he said that the Republic will attract global companies while scaling up local firms as "critical partners", invest in building a talent base and long-term infrastructure, as well as encouraging research and innovation.

"We will keep these twin engines of growth resilient, competitive and future-ready, and contribute meaningfully to the future of global aviation and aerospace," he added.

While demand for air travel, particularly in the Asia Pacific region, is rebounding, DPM Gan, who is also Minister for Trade and Industry, said that supply has become more constrained.

MOSCOW — Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, said that if the New START treaty expired with no replacement then the world should be alarmed that the biggest nuclear powers had no limits for probably the first time since the early 1970s.

The New START treaty, signed in 2010 by US President Barack Obama and Medvedev, who served as Russia's president from 2008 to 2012, limited the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 on each side.

It is due to expire on Feb 5 and Russian officials have said they have had no official response from Washington on a proposal from President Vladimir Putin to stick to existing missile and warhead limits for one more year.

"I don't want to say that this immediately means a catastrophe and a nuclear war will begin, but it should still alarm everyone," Medvedev told Reuters, TASS and the WarGonzo Russian war blogger in an interview at his residence outside Moscow.

Stay in the know with a recap of our top stories today.

1. Woman, 48, falls into water at Woodlands Waterfront Park, rescued by restaurant staff

A 48-year-old woman was rescued by an employee of a nearby restaurant at Woodlands Waterfront after falling into the waters at the seaside park on Thursday (Jan 29).

A restaurant employee at Rasa Istimewa Restaurant, who wished to be known only as Sagar, 36, told Shin Min Daily News that he had arrived at the restaurant at 11.35am on his bicycle when he suddenly heard a scream.... » READ MORE

GAZA/CAIRO — Israel reopened the border between Gaza and Egypt on Monday (Feb 2) for a limited number of people on foot, allowing a small number of Palestinians to leave the enclave and some of those who escaped the war to return for the first time.

The crossing, in Israeli-held territory in what was once a city of a quarter of a million people that Israel has since completely demolished and depopulated, is the sole route in or out for nearly all of Gaza's more than two million residents.

It has been largely shut for most of the war, and reopening it to give even a small number of Gaza residents access to the outside world is one of the last major steps required under the initial phase of a US-brokered ceasefire reached in October.

A Palestinian source said that on the first day 50 Palestinians were expected to enter Gaza, where they will face stringent Israeli security checks, and a similar number would be permitted to leave.

NEW YORK — From tech titans to Wall Street power brokers and foreign dignitaries, a who's who of powerful men make appearances in the huge trove of documents released by the Justice Department in connection with its investigations of Jeffrey Epstein.

All have denied having anything to do with his sexual abuse of girls and young women. Yet some of them maintained friendships with Epstein, or developed them anew, even after news stories made him widely known as an alleged abuser of young girls.

None have been charged with a crime connected to the investigation. Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019.

Here's a primer on some of the notable names in the Epstein files:

In the final four months of getai singer Angie Lau's life, she refused visits from her sister Liu Lingling or their mother.

Speaking to AsiaOne recently to promote her new movie A Good Fortune, local singer-actress Lingling recounted: "Her body was weakening and she was bedridden for a while, but she didn't want us to visit her because she wanted us to think that she was doing well."

When she eventually allowed people to visit her in the final month of her life, Lingling, 63, said she saw Angie every day, knowing that her days were numbered.

"Her death brought me to a realisation, and that is to treat everyone well. Someone we see today may not be someone we will see again tomorrow."