Lee Kuan Yew goes sightseeing in Singapore.  AsiaOne:

THE Singapore Flyer had a special guest yesterday – Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, who boarded the world’s largest observatory wheel to experience both the sunset and night rides. MM Lee, on his first visit to the 165m high, $240-million Flyer which opened a year ago, had a long-standing invitation from its management to ride in it. But he had been busy, he told reporters. ‘And it was new. So I thought, I like others to test new things first,’ he said.

And a few prognostications about the economy while he was at it, via the Straits Times:

MINISTER Mentor Lee Kuan Yew on Tuesday expressed doubts about the ‘green shoots’ pointing to a possible recovery in the United States economy by the year’s end – one that could revive Asian economies, including Singapore’s.

‘Everyone does that. Not that they’ve become poorer overnight, but they have become cautious about spending overnight,’ he explained.

‘But if you believe what Bernanke and Geithner say, there are ‘green shoots’; American banks are beginning to show a little bit of profit. But that may be because they’ve changed their method of reckoning, per quarter instead of December which counts from January.

‘So I have my doubts. But anyway, it’s good to be optimistic. The Americans are always optimistic, which is good.’

And on swine flu (CNA):

SINGAPORE: Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said Singapore is well prepared to deal with swine flu.

“It’s like an act of god, it’s like SARS. How long will it last? I don’t know, but we are taking all the precautions. We are taking no chances. We learn from SARS and we got all the precautions in place,” he said.

Note Lee’s characteristically Singaporean grammatical error (“we got all”), quoted verbatim.