Understand the challenges of animal rescue before passing judgments: Shanmugam
Minister for Home Affairs and Coordinating Minister for National Security K. Shanmugam has called for the public to understand the difficult challenges of animal rescue and shelter work before passing judgments. His comments follow recent reports of animal welfare group Animal Lovers League (ALL) losing its tenancy at The Animal Lodge facility due to lack of funds, and the animals under its care not receiving prompt or adequate veterinary attention.
Mr Shanmugam wrote in a Facebook post on Dec 9 that ALL co-founder Mr Mohan “is a kind, compassionate and humble person who goes the extra mile to help animals,” but acknowledged that there may have been lapses along the way.
More direct paths, shorter flights for travellers on Singapore and other routes
Travellers flying between Singapore and cities such as Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Auckland can expect shorter flight times on selected flights, as pilots take the most direct and efficient paths across participating airspaces.
Singapore, Australia, Fiji, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea will allow pilots from eight airlines to choose the most optimised paths across their airspaces. Besides potentially cutting flight time, it can also improve comfort by helping pilots avoid areas of turbulence and lower fuel consumption, which may also reduce operating costs, and by extension, air fares.
New hospitals will be built faster, likely to cost less: Ong Ye Kung
With standard design guidelines in place, new hospitals can now be built faster at a potentially lower cost. Key to this effort is the Healthcare Facility Design Standards (HFDS) – the first framework in Singapore that harmonises hospital design principles across the public healthcare system. “Singapore has built wonderful hospitals over the decades that served our people well, and we can be very proud of them,” said Health Minister Ong Ye Kung at the launch of the standards on Dec 9.
“A shorter project timeline is not an end in itself. It brings many benefits...makes construction more predictable. It means we reduce cost variability and risks throughout the project,” he added. The first public hospital project that fully applies HFDS and will see time savings in construction is the Tengah General and Community Hospital.
GCE N-level results to be released on Dec 18
The results of the Singapore-Cambridge General Certificate of Education (GCE) N-level examinations will be released at 2pm on Dec 18. This was announced by the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board (SEAB) on Dec 11.
School candidates will receive their results from their secondary schools, while Private candidates can access their results via SEAB’s Candidates Portal from 2.45pm on Dec 18 to 11pm on Jan 2, 2026. Those who cannot collect their results in person can appoint someone to do so. Such students can contact their schools for help to appoint a proxy, who must produce relevant documents for the school’s verification when collecting the results.
