Indonesia will stop sending new domestic workers to 21 Middle Eastern countries, including Lebanon, reports said Tuesday, after the recent execution of two Indonesian women in Saudi Arabia angered Jakarta.

Other countries affected by the ban are Saudi Arabia -- a major destination for Indonesian maids -- United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Yemen, Iran and Egypt.

A Singaporean man and an Australian woman behind an online forum that often attacks immigrants and foreign workers in Singapore were charged Tuesday with sedition, an offence punishable by jail.

Singaporean Yang Kaiheng, 26, and Japanese-Australian Ai Takagi, 22, each face seven counts of sedition for articles published on a website called The Real Singapore and its Facebook page between October 2013 and February this year, court documents showed.

Two Singaporean men have been arrested for staging a weekend protest outside the government complex that houses the offices of the president and prime minister, police said Monday. 

The men, aged 24 and 25, "turned up at the front gate of the Istana with placards" on Saturday afternoon, a Singapore Police Force spokesman told Agence France Presse.

Tens of thousands of mourners braved torrential rain, howitzers fired a 21-gun salute and jet fighters screamed across the sky Sunday as Singapore staged a grand farewell for its founding leader Lee Kuan Yew.

"The light that has guided us all these years has been extinguished," his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, told a state funeral at the National University of Singapore attended by Asia-Pacific leaders.

Singaporeans wept on the streets and queued in their thousands Wednesday to pay tribute to founding leader Lee Kuan Yew after his flag-draped coffin was taken on a gun carriage to parliament for public viewing.

More than 26,000 had filed past the coffin before sundown, a government spokesman told AFP, and thousands more were in line outside despite warnings that it could take them up to eight hours to view the casket.

Singapore's first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, one of the towering figures of post-colonial Asian politics, died Monday after a long illness, plunging the city-state he steered to prosperity into mourning.

Lee's son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, said in a statement that he was "deeply grieved" to announce the passing of his 91-year-old father at the Singapore General Hospital.

The health of independent Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew has worsened, the government said Saturday as one of the foremost figures of 20th century Asia struggled with severe pneumonia.

The 91-year-old, widely credited with transforming the city-state into one of Asia's wealthiest economies, has been in the Singapore General Hospital for more than six weeks and is being aided by mechanical ventilation, a form of life support.

Singapore's founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew is "critically ill" and his condition is worsening further while on life support in hospital, the government said Wednesday.

The 91-year-old, widely credited with transforming Singapore from an economic backwater into one of Asia's wealthiest economies, has been receiving treatment for severe pneumonia in the intensive care unit at Singapore General Hospital since February 5.

Last year was the safest ever for commercial aviation despite high-profile incidents such as the disappearance of Flight MH370, but the industry is still working on new technologies to improve its record, IATA chief said Monday.

While more people died in air accidents in 2014 than in previous years, the rate of fatalities per flight dropped to its lowest point on record, the aviation body said. 

A Singapore court on Thursday sentenced two young German men to nine months in prison and three strokes of the cane for spray-painting a metro train in the city-state, which enforces hardline rules on vandalism.

Andreas Von Knorre, 22, and Elton Hinz, 21, were sentenced after pleading guilty to vandalism and trespassing. Both asked for mercy before sentencing and called their acts a "stupid mistake".