Catch the latest news reports on The Big Story, The Straits Times’ weekday online news programme.

There was a surge in travellers attempting to enter Singapore using an impersonated identity or identity they had not previously used amid the reopening of borders in 2022.

Revealing this on Friday, the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority said that there was a nearly 15-fold increase in such cases at Singapore’s borders – from 28 cases in 2021 to 441 cases in 2022. 

Separately, a 68-member Singapore Civil Defence Force team, which has been helping with rescue operations in Turkey after a magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck the region on Feb 6, will head home on Friday.

The officers will land in Singapore early on Saturday, when they will be received by Minister for Home Affairs and Law K. Shanmugam, Minister of State for Home Affairs and National Development Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim, and Turkish Ambassador to Singapore Mehmet Burcin Gonenli.