When Jasmine Goh-Chew boarded a plane for the southern Chinese city of Chaozhou in May 2026, she carried with her a small hope.The 11-day family holiday was planned around good Teochew cuisine, family time and an opportunity for her elderly parents to see the ancestral homeland they had never visited. But she also packed a faded letter written in 1993 by a relative in China to her aunt in Malaysia, which she hoped might lead them to family they had never known.It did. By the end of the trip, her family would reconnect not with one branch of relatives, but three.“We came for a holiday with no expectations at all that we would find our long-lost families,” said the 51-year-old mother of four children whom she homeschools.“But I told my husband: it’s now or never. Dad’s getting old.”The family – Jasmine, her husband Raymond Chew, three of their four children, her parents, her mother-in-law, her older sister and brother-in-law, and her sister’s father-in-law – had barely arrived in Chaozhou when chance intervened.

Motorists in Singapore can look forward to a 25 per cent discount off Esso's fuel offerings till June 30.In a statement posted on its social media on June 26, Esso said the discount is intended to thank its customers as its stations «are undergoing changes soon».Though Esso did not elaborate on what these changes are, Aster Mobility Solutions 1, which acquired ExxonMobil's network of 60 petrol kiosks in Singapore late in 2025, had announced on March 5 that it will partner Cold Storage to roll out a refreshed convenience retail concept at its stations.Aster, a subsidiary of Indonesia's Chandra Asri Group, said in its statement then that the new concept will offer «a thoughtfully curated range of everyday essentials, fresh and ready-to-eat options tailored for customers on the move.»Over the past three weeks, AsiaOne observed that convenience marts at Esso's petrol stations in Bukit Gombak, Hougang, Kovan, Marsiling, Pasir Panjang, Upper Thomson and Yew Tee have been emptying out.

Two men were arrested after a heated argument escalated into a physical altercation near Queen Street last Friday (June 26), resulting in one of them being taken to the hospital.In response to AsiaOne's queries, the police said they were alerted to the fight at Queen Street Bus Terminal at around 3.45pm on June 26. An Instagram video of the pair posted on Saturday by @jjyee0728 shows a lorry driver in a grey shirt gesturing angrily at a man in yellow in front of a red ComfortDelGro taxi.

[UPDATE: June 28] The police said in an updated statement at around 9pm on Sunday (June 28) that 12-year-old Caleb Vhonext Fulgencio Delos Reyes has been found.The police are appealing for information on the whereabouts of a 12-year-old boy, Caleb Vhonext Fulgencio Delos Reyes, who was last seen in Jurong.Police said in a news release on Sunday (June 28) that Caleb was last seen at about 9.30am on Sunday at 553 Jurong West Street 42, wearing a grey t-shirt with black shorts and black slippers.The address is in the vicinity of Jurong Spring Neighbourhood Park. Anyone with information is urged to contact the police hotline at 1800-255-0000 or submit information online at www.police.gov.sg/i-witness.All information will be kept strictly confidential.[[nid:735166]]editor@asiaone.com 

Victims of online harms will be able to seek redress through the Online Safety Commission (OSC) which begins operations on Monday (June 29).The OSC was formed to support the office of the Commissioner of Online Safety as part of the Online Safety (Relief and Accountability) Act 2025 (Osraa), which aims to protect online users from harm.The Bill was tabled in Parliament last October, giving the Government powers to order social media platforms and app providers to take down harmful content.While there may be 13 separate online harms that the OSC is set to address, it will begin with five and progressively incorporate the remaining eight.These five online harms are intimate image abuse, image-based child abuse, doxxing, online harassment and online stalking.For the first three categories, victims of such harms can directly file a report with the OSC via their website which goes live on Monday.

Despite murmurs of Workers' Party (WP) cadres being disgruntled and aiming to unseat him at the party's internal elections on Sunday (June 28), Pritam Singh has been re-elected as its leader.In a news release issued to the media at 5.50pm, Singapore's largest opposition party – with 12 seats in Parliament – announced that the 50-year-old has been re-elected as its secretary-general, with Sylvia Lim, 61, continuing as chairperson.Meanwhile, 12 other members, including MPs for Aljunied GRC, Gerald Giam and Kenneth Tiong; Sengkang GRC MPs, Louis Chua, He Ting Ru, Assoc Prof Jamus Lim and Abdul Muhaimin bin Abdul Malik; and Hougang SMC MP Dennis Tan, were also elected to WP's Central Executive Committee (CEC). «A vote was taken on whether Pritam Singh would remain as Secretary-General, and I would say that a supermajority voted for him to remain as the Workers' Party's Secretary-General,» Giam said, who was chairman of the Special Cadre Members' Conference. 

The police are appealing for information on the whereabouts of a 12-year-old boy, Caleb Vhonext Fulgencio Delos Reyes, who was last seen in Jurong.Police said in a news release on Sunday (June 28) that Caleb was last seen at about 9.30am on Sunday at 553 Jurong West Street 42, wearing a grey t-shirt with black shorts and black slippers.The address is in the vicinity of Jurong Spring Neighbourhood Park. Anyone with information is urged to contact the police hotline at 1800-255-0000 or submit information online at www.police.gov.sg/i-witness.All information will be kept strictly confidential.[[nid:735166]]editor@asiaone.com 

Cranes had to be called in to lift two heavy vehicles from a ditch after a three-vehicle accident happened on the PIE towards Tuas on Saturday (June 27) at about 2.25pm.The incident involved one cement bulk tanker, a tow truck and a car. Map showing where the accident happened on June 27. GRAPHIC: Google Maps, Social media Photographs and videos of the incident posted on social media show the cement bulk tanker and tow truck in a ditch along the centre divider.The driver's cabin of the bulk tanker is seen impinging onto the road in the direction towards Changi, resulting in the closure of one of four lanes on that side of the expressway.Meanwhile, a second lane on the Tuas-bound carriageway is closed off, as two cranes work to lift the heavy vehicles. 

The director of several companies who left over 400 workers with unpaid salaries has returned to Singapore, and his passport has been impounded amidst ongoing investigations, said Minister of State for Manpower Dinesh Vasu Dash. Ramu Palani Velu, a Singapore permanent resident, is listed as a director of KPA Engineering, SK Industries and VVR Plant Engineering, which did not pay 407 workers for months. He is also listed as a director on at least four other companies. Providing an update on the situation during a visit to Kranji Recreation Centre on Sunday (June 28), Dinesh said that Velu returned to Singapore on Friday.The minister of state met with about 280 workers from the affected companies there. «He is currently assisting us with investigations and his passport has been impounded,» Dinesh said.

SINGAPORE – Residents of Tiong Bahru's Seng Poh estate have decided to dump the familiar blue recycling bins for good.Following a three-month pilot that removed all of its recycling bins because they were often contaminated and misused, the estate will not be reinstating the bins commonly seen in housing estates.Instead, residents will take their recyclables to Tiong Bahru Community Centre (CC) and deposit them in a recycling machine launched on June 27.During the pilot, which came under a resident-led initiative called Love Tiong Bahru, residents took their recyclables to the CC, where six collection drives were held fortnightly in partnership with the estate's appointed public waste collector, Cora Environment.Conservationist and Tiong Bahru resident Kelvin Wang, who helped coordinate the initiative, said about 4,000kg of clean recyclables were collected over the six drives from April 11 to June 20. These included 1,500kg of cartons and mixed paper, 900kg of glass and 600kg of plastic.

A durian stall assistant who was given the passcode to the shop's safe while covering for his supervisor during this year's Chinese New Year stole $17,300 from it. He later gambled away the entire amount at Marina Bay Sands casino, reported Shin Min Daily News on Saturday (June 27). The 26-year-old Malaysian Tan An Sheng pleaded guilty to one charge of criminal breach of trust and was sentenced to five months in jail. The incident happened at Top Durian Station, located at Blk 154 Bukit Batok Street 11. At that point, Tan had been working there for around nine months. As the stall's supervisor went on leave, Tan was assigned to temporarily take over the role.He was given the safe's passcode for the first time and was responsible for tallying and reporting each day's earnings before depositing the money into the safe.Tan later stole a total of $17,300 from the safe on two separate occasions. The first time, he took a stack of $50 bills amounting to $1,000, and the second time, he stole the remaining $16,300 of cash. 

A 20-year-old Singaporean man escaped a major car crash near Kuala Lumpur with minor injuries, but two other passengers, both Malaysians, died.The accident happened on June 27 at around 5.10am, reported Chinese publication Sin Chew Daily on June 27. Preliminary police investigations indicate that the BMW was travelling at high speed before the driver lost control and crashed into a road divider on the Dutu-Ulu Kelang Expressway. The 22-year-old Malaysian driver, a student at the University of Queensland in Australia, and the 21-year-old front-seat passenger, who was a student at Sunway University, Selangor, were trapped in the vehicle and burned to death. As their bodies were «severely burned», their identities had to be confirmed through DNA testing. The Singaporean man, who was in the back seat, managed to escape the car before it caught fire and only suffered minor injuries to his hands and feet. He was taken to Kuala Lumpur Hospital for treatment. In a Facebook post on June 27, the Kuala Lumpur fire department shared that they received an emergency call regarding the road accident.