SINGAPORE — A day after TODAY broke the news about a new website Straits Times Review, it has emerged that Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) has taken steps against the borrowing of its flagship newspaper’s name.

The media group, which owns The Straits Times (ST), did not respond by press time to TODAY’s queries on whether it will take action against the new website over its naming.

But in an article published on its website after this newspaper’s queries yesterday, ST reported that SPH “is exploring all options, including legal recourse” against Straits Times Review for borrowing its newspaper’s name.

“The company has also lodged a trademark infringement complaint to Facebook against the Straits Times Review Facebook page, calling for it to be removed,” the article added.

Straits Times Review, which describes itself as an “independent news site based in Australia, was registered on April 18. The site administrator declined to respond to TODAY’s questions on Tuesday.

But blogger and former election candidate Alex Tan lists himself as the site’s editor on his Facebook page. He started actively sharing the site’s posts from Monday and also called for contributors to submit opinion articles and news for the site.

The system engineer, who lists his location as Sydney, Australia on Facebook, had co-founded The Real Singapore (TRS), whose statutory class licence was suspended and ordered to shut down last Sunday by the Media Development Authority (MDA). Two of its editors — Singaporean Yang Kaiheng, 26, and his Australian girlfriend Ai Takagi, 22 — are facing seven charges of sedition and one of failing to produce documents related to TRS to a police officer.

MDA had told TODAY that it is looking into purported mirror sites cloning TRS’ content.