A fire broke out at Jurong East shopping mall Jem on Tuesday (July 19) evening.

Mr Clinton Chen, who sent in photos and videos of the fire to The Straits Times, said the blaze broke out at basement one.

The level was closed to the public and shoppers were told to evacuate the building.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force said the fire has been extinguished.

The cause of the incident is still under investigation.

No injuries were reported.

Mr Chen said access to basement two and three, and level one and above have resumed, but many shops remained closed.

This article was first published on July 19, 2016.
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A disk failure and an app that did not detect the problem were the root cause of the securities market shutdown on July 14, Singapore Exchange (SGX) said yesterday.

“The disruption was prolonged due to challenges in the orders and trade reconciliation process,” it added.

The faulty disk had been replaced on Thursday, it said.

“We are working with our vendor to review the application which sends out clearing confirmation messages…

“We will work with members to review their order and trade reconciliation process, to improve overall recovery and market resumption, in the event of a similar recurrence.”

The number of business continuity planning scenarios which require industry-wide participation for reconciliation and recovery will be increased.

Detailing Thursday’s disruption, SGX said at 9.38am it had detected input/output errors on a disk that runs the app to send out clearing confirmation messages to members.

“As the application did not detect the disk failure, which it should have, it did not automatically cut over to SGX’s backup secondary system.

“SGX initiated a manual cut over from the primary to secondary systems at 1012 hours.”

As a result of the disk failure, some clearing confirmation messages were not generated. Following the cut over, the app attempted to resend all missed messages, which resulted in some being duplicated.

SGX said order and trade reconciliation required the exchange and its members to match their trade or clearing confirmation data files.

“The entire process took longer than expected, as members use different systems, and either the trade confirmation or clearing confirmation messages, or both,” it noted.

This article by The Business Times was published in MyPaper, a free, bilingual newspaper published by Singapore Press Holdings.

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Dengue fever cases are creeping up again as Singapore enters the traditional peak season, with the number of reported cases exceeding 200 a week for the fourth week in a row.

There were 223 cases of the mosquito-borne virus reported last week, slightly down from 246 the week before.

A 72-year-old woman in Simei on June 25 became the sixth victim this year to succumb to dengue here. Last year, four people died from the virus.

The National Environment Agency (NEA) and Ministry of Health (MOH) said in a joint statement on Sunday that they are “anticipating an upward trend in the number of dengue cases in the coming months”.

Since April, the NEA has observed 50 per cent more Aedes mosquitoes, which spread the virus, caught in its Gravitraps islandwide.

A total of 9,641 cases have already been reported this year. Over all of last year, just over 11,200 people were diagnosed with dengue.

The NEA said in February that it anticipates the number of cases this year could exceed 30,000 – higher than the historic 22,170 cases reported in 2013.

The year started with cases at an unusual high, at one point surpassing 600 a week in January despite it being the traditional low season for dengue.

Efforts to stem the spread of the virus brought down the number of cases, which fell to a low of 158 in the second week of June. But the past few weeks seem to have given rise to a resurgence once more.

The Asian Dengue Vaccination Advocacy, a scientific group of dengue experts across South-east Asia including Singapore, said they expect the recent “alarming rise” in cases to continue, partly due to climate change.

They added: “The spike in cases cannot be seen in isolation as factors such as large-scale urbanisation make it easy for the Aedes mosquito to breed.”

There are now 44 active dengue clusters in Singapore, down from 49 last week.

Of these, eight are classified as high-risk.

The biggest is the Dunbar Walk-Telok Kurau cluster, where 70 cases have been reported since the cluster started, 12 of these in the past two weeks.

The next largest are the Jalan Ismail-Lorong Marican cluster in Eunos, which has had 49 cases, and Admiralty Drive-Sembawang Drive, which has had 48.

Of the six people who died from dengue this year, three were in their 70s and two in their 60s. The youngest was a 47-year-old man who lived in Marsiling Rise.

Infectious diseases expert Leong Hoe Nam from Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital noted that the elderly tend to be more susceptible to the dengue virus, especially if they have existing conditions such as lung or heart problems, or weaker immune systems.

“These people should not take any additional stress and dengue can be the final straw that pushes them over,” he said.

oliviaho@sph.com.sg

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SINGAPORE – All California Fitness outlets here have been closed until further notice, the gym operator’s provisional liquidators said in a statement today (July 20).

Tim Reid and Theresa Ng of recovery firm Ferrier Hodgson said that JV Fitness, which operates California Fitness, does not have adequate liquid resources to keep the gyms running.

They added that they will “quickly explore options that may be available to enable the business to operate”.

California Fitness had centres in Bugis, Novena and Raffles Place, which was closed on Saturday (July 16) reportedly due to its failure to pay its rents.

Its Orchard branch was shut in February.

Last Tuesday, the chain closed all its outlets in Hong Kong, where it was established in 1996.

South China Morning Post reported that the firm owes an estimated HK$130 million (S$22.6 million) in rent and other operating costs.

huizhen@sph.com.sg