January 03, 2021
A sign in a convenience store at Bedok Interchange Food Centre showing the updated minimum age of 21 for people buying tobacco products.
The Straits Times
SINGAPORE - What started as being a curious 16-year-old, wanting to be cool and fit in with friends quickly turned into a habit and today Chris is a full-blown, self-confessed smoking addict.
That is not his real name, and with reason: As of Friday (Jan 1), the full-time national serviceman, 20, became guilty of underage smoking.
The minimum legal age for buying and using tobacco products was raised from 20 to 21 on that day, after being upped from 18 to 19 in 2019 and then to 20 in 2020.
The Straits Times
SINGAPORE - Sweater weather continued for the second day of the new year in Singapore, with wet and windy conditions on Saturday (Jan 2).
The National Environment Agency (NEA) said on Facebook that widespread continuous rain, heavy at times and with thunder, was expected to continue on Saturday and ease gradually in the night.
It added later that while the rain was set to clear overnight, thundery showers are likely on Sunday afternoon following a cloudy morning.
The wet weather has been so persistent that the 318.6mm of rain that fell in Changi on Friday, the first day of this year, was more than the average of 238.3mm for the month of January, said national water agency PUB on Saturday on Facebook.
The Straits Times
Time to do more to stub out smoking in Singapore?
The Jan 1 raising of the minimum age limit for smoking to 21 is the latest step to manage the harm of tobacco, following measures over the years to shrink the space you can take a puff in public. But some feel more needs to be done to weed out the habit.
A sign in a convenience store at Bedok Interchange Food Centre showing the updated minimum age of 21 for people buying tobacco products.ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM
https://str.sg/JDob
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SINGAPORE - To escape the scourge of a contagious, microscopic foe, various nations went into lockdown earlier this year.
As people were confined to their homes, cars stowed away and industrial activities slowed, it was as though an invisible broom had swept away the pall of smog, soot and harmful pollutants, to reveal clear skies.
Singapore saw improvements in its air quality before and during the two-month circuit breaker, as key pollutants plummeted to levels within the World Health Organisation s air quality guidelines, some of which the country previously could not meet.
In April, for the first time in decades, people in Punjab could view the Himalayan mountain range about 200km away as India enforced a nationwide lockdown.