Singapore Airlines (SIA) has come out tops among its peers in Fortune's world's most admired companies list for 2026 released on Wednesday (Jan 21).It is ahead of Delta Air Lines, Air France-KLM Group, United Airlines and Lufthansa Group, and outshone the wider aviation sector including Airbus and Lockheed Martin. SIA and Toyota are the only Asian companies in the top 25 —the automobile company is ranked 23rd overall, while SIA is ranked 24th — bettering its 28th spot in 2025.It is also the only Singapore-based company to feature in the top 50.According to consultancy firm Korn Ferry, which partnered Fortune, nine attributes were used to evaluate companies when determining the industry rankings: ability to attract and retain talented people; quality of management; social responsibility to the community and the environment; innovativeness; quality of products or services; wise use of corporate assets; financial soundness; long-term investment value; and, effectiveness in doing business globally. In an online statement, SIA said that it is honoured to be included in the list and for topping the industry.

A day after the Land Transport Authority (LTA) said it is resetting the Expected Time of Arrival (ETA) system for buses, the transport regulator announced that it has identified the root cause of the issues affecting the system.In an update issued on Thursday (Jan 22) evening, the authority said that its engineers and contractors discovered a memory cache build-up in the on-board systems of some buses.«This disrupted data transmissions between on-board bus systems and the central ETA processing servers, leading to missing bus arrival timings.» About 50 per cent of the bus fleet across all bus operators have been affected.Restoration process to take about four days: LTAAs part of the restoration process, technicians will need to reconfigure the ETA system and clear the cache on all the affected buses.Given that there were 5,841 public buses as at the end of 2024, technicians will have to physically service more than 2,900 on-board units.LTA said that this process is expected to take about four days to complete.

[GroundUp] Education department rejects claims that immigrants are given preference

[Scrolla] 14 learners have now died after a scholar transport crash in Vanderbijlpark on Monday, 19 January 2026, police confirmed on Thursday. Police charged a 22-year-old scholar transport driver with 14 counts of culpable homicide after two more learners died in hospital.

[HRW] UN Child Rights Body Should Urge Mine Suspension, Independent Assessment

Tony Blair was namechecked by the US president at the ceremony in Davos, where he hailed the level of interest in participating.

We all now know - and he confirmed it in Monday's bombshell post - the reason why Brooklyn Beckham has cut off his family. But what is it about Nicola, 31, that they don't like?

A total of 27 male illegal immigrants arrived at the camp in Crowborough in the early hours of Thursday morning in mini-buses that were escorted by police.

Victoria Beckham could land her first ever solo number one amid her bitter fallout with son Brooklyn.

Families affected by the 1984 anti-Sikh riots expressed deep disappointment and anger after former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar was acquitted in a case linked to alleged incitement of violence. Despite this acquittal, Kumar remains in prison serving a life sentence in other related murder cases, leaving victims' families feeling their long search for justice is still unfulfilled.

Former US President Donald Trump launched his «Board of Peace» initiative at the World Economic Forum in Davos. India received an invitation to join this effort aimed at resolving global conflicts. However, India was not present on the stage during the unveiling. Several countries, including some from the Middle East and Asia, were listed as participants in the initiative.

The European far right’s pushback showed the limits of the president’s with-me-or-against-me politics, a key obstacle to cooperation among nationalist parties.

Trump and his envoy Witkoff have said a deal to resolve nearly four years of war between Russia and Ukraine is close.

Support for the Centre Party has increased by three percentage points month-on-month and now stands at 22.2% in the latest poll by Maskína. This is just under five percentage points lower than support for the Social Democratic Alliance, which measures at 27%.

Most people are concerned about the need for security and growth in their careers, including the dignity of knowing that they are able to contribute in their roles, said President Tharman Shanmugaratnam. President Tharman, who also co-chairs the World Bank Group's high-level advisory council on jobs, was speaking at the World Economic Forum's session on the jobs challenge in emerging markets on Wednesday (Jan 21) in Davos.Speaking after Ajay Banga, president of the World Bank Group, who talked about concerns regarding the insufficiency of jobs in emerging markets for people coming of age, President Tharman agreed that geopolitics aside, most people would be most concerned about jobs.He said: «Ask ordinary people around the world what their main concerns in life are, what is on the minds of most people is the need for security and growth in their careers. »Not necessarily the same job, but the security of a career, growth through their lives, and the dignity of knowing that they are able to contribute." 

The supply of Certificates of Entitlement (COE) for the February to April period will drop by 1 per cent compared to the previous quarter, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) said on Thursday (Jan 22).The total number of COEs will fall slightly to 18,824, down from 18,894 from November 2025 to January 2026 period, which saw a 1.5 per cent increase.Compared with the last quarter, the quota for Categories A and E will decrease by around 1 and 13 per cent respectively, while the quota for Categories B and C will increase by around 1.5 per cent and 3 per cent respectively.The quota for Category D will remain unchanged.LTA added that bidding under the new quota will begin on Feb 2.The COE quota for the bidding period of May to July 2026 will be announced in April.The upcoming COE quota consists of the following components:

[New Times] The latest rejection by rebel leader Corneille Nangaa of President Félix Tshisekedi's overtures for yet another round of «peace talks» in Luanda should finally force a moment of honesty in Democratic Republic of Congo's long running crisis.

[New Times] The United States' withdrawal from dozens of UN-affiliated bodies and multilateral groups, following the shutdown of USAID, barely registered in Rwanda, or across much of Africa.

[New Times] 10% of all park tourism revenue is channelled back to neighbouring communities.

This study examines transparency in the context of the Recovery and Resilience Facility, with a particular focus on data and information availability, quality, granularity, accessibility, comparability and comprehensibility. Lessons learnt are drawn from the positive examples and shortcomings in transparency identified across National Resilience and Recovery Plans and at EU level. The study puts forward some recommendations, including the adoption of an accessible, consistent and interoperable transparency ecosystem, to enhance the accountability of future EU funding instruments. This document was provided by the Economic Governance and EMU Scrutiny Unit at the request of the ECON Committee. Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

The RRF has promoted investments and reforms in nearly any area of domestic policy. The legal framework governing the RRF is broad and undefined, with little practical guidance, leaving the Commission wide discretion to negotiate fund allocation with national governments. In practice, this has led to large amounts of EU funding being directed to national projects without clear EU-level impact. The RRF’s wide scope and strict confidentiality regime, combined with the performance-based delivery mode, enable its implementation to escape scrutiny and make rigorous assessment of value for money nearly impossible. The main risk to the financial interests of Union is not fraud or irregularities, but EU money financing projects that have little relevance for European priorities. - The implementation of the RRF relies on the ability to define milestones and targets and measure performance in a sensible manner. This is particularly hard for reforms, which are difficult to pin down to milestones and targets. Funds have often been disbursed on the basis of procedural milestones that bear little relation to actual performance. - Based on the RRF experience, 27 national plans are not an efficient tool for promoting European priorities that are global and Europe-wide. EU priorities need to be incorporated in the forthcoming legal framework in a clear and operational manner, so as to effectively limit and frame Commission and Member State discretion in drawing up the plan. - The Commission’s MFF package fails to address the core problems of the RRF model. It does not define EU priorities. The legislative framework provides no actual ‘requirements’ that would effectively steer national plans. It leaves too much discretion for the national governments to propose, and the Commission to approve, in a confidential setting, nearly any national project that in their determination seems worthy of funding. - The shift to performance-based funding fundamentally alters what ‘management’ of EU funds consists of, creating new risks to the financial interests of the Union Measured error rates may go down because what constitutes ‘management’ in the new system is less demanding. Costing/pricing takes place at a point where only the outlines of the measures are known. At the point of disbursement, the value of each milestone is calculated with a methodology that bears little connection either to real or estimated costs. The eventual actual national cofinancing rates may end up being far from the numbers required in the regulation. - ⁠Trying to make up for these problems through oversight arrangements in the Parliament or Council is unlikely to succeed. Instead, EU legislators need to maintain control over EU priorities and set clearer limits on what EU funding can be spent on, reconsider the central status given to national plans, and address the deep information asymmetries built into the RRF model. Using EU funds requires appropriate accountability structures at EU level, aimed at ensuring that money is effectively steered to policies with EU-wide interest. Funding national policy measures requires strong involvement of national parliaments and civil society. Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

The Commission’s NRPP proposal seeks to preserve core features of the Cohesion Policy Funds (regional and local authority involvement under shared management) while drawing on RRF innovations (integration of reforms and investments, performance-based disbursement linked to milestones and targets). • The proposed governance model and oversight regime is a potentially credible hybrid. But some modifications are needed to ensure fairness and comparability in Commission assessments of national Plans, secure meaningful stakeholder participation throughout the policy cycle, and develop effective monitoring systems that support learning and adaptability without imposing excessive administrative burdens. • The Commission's proposals address many criticisms of the RRF and CPF through explicit assessment criteria for milestone and target fulfilment; ex-ante payout values per milestone and target; clarified provisions for recovering unjustified payments; and stakeholder-based Monitoring Committees to review implementation and approve amendments to operations. • But major unresolved problems remain, notably: the absence of a definition of what constitutes addressing 'all or a significant subset' of EU recommendations to Member States; the effectiveness of the proposed 'regional test' in ensuring genuine stakeholder participation; ensuring Monitoring Committees’ capacity to oversee national and regional Plans effectively; and ensuring that performance indicators are genuinely useful in monitoring NRPPs in real time. • The NRPPs are more flexible than the RRF and the CPF, featuring smoother disbursement systems; easier Plan revisions based on 'reasoned requests' without requiring demonstration of changes in 'objective circumstances'; a Mid-Term Review leading to mandatory submission of amended Plans; a new EU Facility to support rapid responses to crises and emerging Union priorities. • Verifiability and auditability are strengthened compared to the RRF through clarified assessment criteria and transparent ex-ante payout values. But the multi-tiered Single Audit approach creates new challenges that will require national audit authorities, the Commission, and the European Parliament to develop expertise in assessing performance information alongside traditional cost-based audits. • The 500+ mandatory common indicators proposed by the Commission are unlikely to provide a satisfactory solution, since most are primarily output-focused and do not provide evidence of intervention effects. Effective ‘diagnostic monitoring’, aimed at detecting and correcting problems in real time, would require a more robust set of programme- and project-specific indicators reflecting intervention logics and expected outcomes. • The NRPPs enhance inclusiveness compared to the RRF through the structural embedding of the partnership principle and the involvement of local actors in Plan design, implementation, monitoring, and revision. Yet inclusiveness could be enhanced, for example, by requiring Member States to publish outline proposals for stakeholder involvement in the Plans at each stage of the process. • The proposed governance model and oversight regime has the potential to improve transparency and accountability by enabling the European Parliament to build on the Commission’s oversight of national audit authorities, ECA investigations, and extensive mandatory information provision on the Plans and their implementation. But transparency could be further enhanced by requiring publication of Monitoring Committee discussions and reports of annual review meetings. Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said there were 'concerns' about the invite for the Russian dictator to join the body given his invasion of Ukraine.

Members of the public had spotted the trio, who were wearing high-vis overalls, and alerted police. And it wasn't just luck that the officers were about - the manhole was just yards from a police station.

Former special counsel Jack Smith returns to Capitol Hill to offer his first public testimony defending his efforts to prosecute Donald Trump.

“I get that I’m not a traditional candidate. And that’s exactly why I’m going to win,” the Texas Democrat said. Not everyone in her party sees it that way.

Officials said Lafayette Square, the public park next to the White House, will be improved as part of Trump’s America 250 celebration.

SINGAPORE — A wave of controversy over sexually explicit artificial intelligence (AI) deepfakes has not made billionaire Elon Musk's social media platform X or chatbot Grok any less popular in Singapore.Instead, it may have done the opposite.Since late December 2025, X has been at the centre of a storm over users creating AI-generated sexually explicit images of other users without their consent. Users could do so simply by posting a message aimed at Grok's account on the social media platform.In the wake of such controversy, the Grok app has shot up the charts on the Google and Apple app stores for Singapore users, according to data from analytics firm SensorTower.On Google Play Store's top free apps chart, Grok has been in the top 10 for most of January — a feat it last achieved in late November.On the Apple App Store top free apps chart, Grok has hovered in the top 25 since early January, up from around the No. 100 to 130 range in October.X continues to hover in the top 100 apps in both stores, with interest rising in the Google Play Store in January after a late December slump.

SINGAPORE — The Nature Society Singapore (NSS) is proposing that almost a third of the vegetation in and around Paya Lebar Air Base be retained as green spaces, ahead of redevelopment of the area set to begin in the 2030s.The Straits Times has learnt that the society submitted a report to the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) detailing its proposal to retain 389ha of land in the area, which comprises forest, parkland and water bodies.URA said it will assess the proposal.Based on NSS' estimates, the area­ slated to be redeveloped for housing and industrial purposes after the airbase is relocated amounts to 1,271ha — an area slightly bigger than the size of Wood­lands.Of this, 805ha comprises areas of biodiversity importance, said the society. These refer to areas that are critical to support flora and fauna, and parts of it, at least, should be preserved, it believes.NSS spokesman Tony O'Dempsey said the greenery in the area represents one of the last «wild growth areas» in north-east Singapore.

A construction firm allegedly allowed its workers to live on its premises without authorisation, and continued to house them even after the building management ordered it to stop.The illegal dormitory is located in an industrial estate at Defu South Street 1, reported Shin Min Daily News on Wednesday (Jan 21).This came to light when a whistle-blower, surnamed Xu, tipped off the newspaper about the workers living there.According to his tip-off, the sleeping quarters had been constructed on top of a metal frame about two storeys high.«Sleeping at such a high place, if a fire breaks out, they might not be able to escape,» Xu told Shin Min.In response to media queries, spokespersons for the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) and JTC, which manages the industrial estate, said they received feedback about an unauthorised dormitory on Dec 31, 2025.When they inspected the premises of Lian Hup Seng Construction & Tentage on Jan 2 and 5, they found evidence of workers living there.