Taiwan signed a free trade deal with Singapore on Thursday, its first with a Southeast Asian country, as the diplomatically isolated island steps up efforts to join regional economic blocs.

The "economic partnership agreement" was signed in Singapore just months after Taiwan struck a similar deal with New Zealand, its first with a country that has diplomatic ties with China.

Two Lebanese match officials jailed in Singapore for accepting free sex from an alleged match-fixer have refused to return to the city-state to testify at his trial, a court heard Tuesday.

Assistant referees Ali Eid, 33, and Abdallah Taleb, 37, were deported in June after serving three-month prison sentences for accepting the services of a prostitute as a bribe from Singaporean nightclub owner Eric Ding Si Yang.

A Singapore bus driver has been fired after he was caught on video trimming his nails while driving along an expressway.

The 29-second video, posted on the Facebook page "SG Share" on July 26, showed the driver resting his left hand on the steering wheel while trimming the nails with a clipper held in his right hand.

Credit rating agency Moody's on Monday downgraded the outlook of Singapore's three main banks to "negative" from "stable" amid rising property prices and mounting household debt in the city-state.

"The two main drivers underpinning our opinion are the recent period of rapid loan growth and rising real estate prices in Singapore and in regional markets where Singapore banks are active," it said in a statement.

A Lebanese referee serving time in a Singapore jail has given evidence at the start of the corruption trial of accused match fixer Eric Ding Si Yang.

Ali Sabbagh, dressed in purple prison overalls, avoided eye contact with Ding as he entered the courtroom Monday before revealing details of plans to fix matches.

Suicides in Singapore hit an all-time high of 487 in 2012 as more young people bogged down by stress and relationship woes took their own lives, a charity group dealing with the problem said Friday.

The tally, a 29 percent increase from the 2011 total, was boosted by an 80 percent rise in the 20-29 age bracket, the Samaritans of Singapore (SOS) said in a statement.

Indonesia Friday dispatched helicopters to create artificial rain in a desperate bid to fight raging fires that have choked Singapore, as smog cloaking the city-state hit record-breaking levels that pose a threat to people's lives.

At a late-night emergency meeting, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ordered disaster officials to "immediately mobilize all the country's resources" to extinguish the fires on Sumatra island that have created vast palls of smoke.

Singapore is fighting back against a rapidly worsening dengue epidemic by distributing insect repellants to every household and recruiting hundreds of disease control officers, officials said.

Two Singaporeans have died from the virus so far this year and weekly cases hit an all-time high of 820 in the period ending June 8, the National Environment Agency (NEA) said in a statement issued late Tuesday.

Singapore is telling doctors to be more vigilant against dengue fever as the mosquito-borne disease surges this year.

The Southeast Asian city-state has had more than 9,000 cases and two deaths since January. The illnesses counted so far in 2013 are already twice the total for all of last year.

A law professor was sentenced to five months in jail in Singapore on Monday for obtaining sexual favors and gifts from a female student in exchange for better grades.

Former National University of Singapore (NUS) professor Tey Tsun Hang, 42, will also pay a penalty for the gifts he had received, Judge Tan Siong Thye ruled.