Daily Briefing: Jetstar Asia to operate transit flights through SG from six cities; Activist faces fine over smiley face sign protest

And a software-defined network is the secret to building a Smart Nation.

From ChannelNewsAsia:

Budget airline Jetstar Asia will start operating transit flights through Changi Airport from 1 December, becoming the fourth carrier to do so as Singapore gradually reopens its borders.

Passengers from Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, and Phnom Penh can transit through Singapore to nine onward destinations served by the airline if their connection is within 48 hours, Jetstar Asia said on 20 November.

Since 2 June, travellers have been allowed to transit through Changi Airport with COVID-19 prevention measures in place.

Transit flights have so far been reinstated by the three airlines under Singapore Airlines (SIA) Group—SIA, SilkAir, and Scoot.

Transiting passengers are required to book the full journey on one booking and must check with the relevant authorities that they meet the entry requirements for their destination, Jetstar Asia said in a media release.

Read more here.

From Reuters:

Singapore is set to charge an activist with staging a one-man protest without a permit over an incident in which he held up a sign bearing a crudely drawn smiley face outside a police station.

Police told Jolovan Wham, 40, who has had several run-ins with authorities in the city-state that tightly controls public assembly, the media and free speech, on Thursday that he would be formally charged in court Monday.

The charge relates to a March incident in which Wham demonstrated his support for a young climate activist who said he had been questioned by police over a similar protest days previous.

Wham posted a picture of himself holding the sign on his social media accounts.

The civil rights campaigner, who has already served two brief stints in jail this year, will be charged under the Public Order Act, which regulates assemblies and processions in public places, according to the charge sheet Wham posted on Twitter.

Read more here.

From e27:

In 2014, Singapore launched its Smart Nation initiative: a national-level digitalisation and automation master plan that seeks to maximise the country’s digital potential.

Through this, Singapore hopes to foster growth and bolster its digital economy.

When it comes to the complex needs of building a Smart Nation, what digital transformation the Singapore government imbues upon its systems and processes must be, to some extent, matched by the private sector’s digital capabilities in order for the country’s collective digital potential to be maximised.

To support this smart nation initiative, network infrastructure must not only be robust and secure, but must also have inbuilt intelligence and reliability to support digitalisation efforts.

One way to deliver such a connectivity solution is software-defined networking with network functions virtualisation.

Read more here.