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View of Tan Tock Seng Hospital in Singapore on Apr 30, 2021. (Photo: Calvin Oh) - 

Fourteen community cases were among the 39 new COVID-19 infections reported in Singapore as of noon on Sunday (May 2), the Ministry of Health (MOH) said in its preliminary daily update.

Among them, 11 cases are linked to the Tan Tock Seng Hospital cluster and were detected from the ministry's proactive testing of patients, visitors and staff members at the hospital.

The remaining 25 cases were imported and were placed on stay-home notice or isolated upon arrival in Singapore, the ministry said.

Among them, 10 are Singaporeans or permanent residents and three are foreign domestic workers.

No new cases were reported in migrant workers’ dormitories.

Details of the new cases will be released on Sunday night, said MOH.

Starting from Sunday, Singapore has stopped entry or transit for visitor with recent travel history to Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the COVID-19 task force also announced on Friday.

The ban covers all long-term pass holders and short-term visitors who have been in the four countries in the last 14 days, including transit//CNA

SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft, with parachutes open, returns to Earth with four astronauts AFP/Handout - 

A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts back to Earth splashed down off Panama City early on Sunday (May 2), a NASA livestream showed.

Boats were retrieving the spacecraft and crew after their six-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The capsule splashed down at 2.56am local time in the dark in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast after a six-and-a-half hour flight from the ISS, images relayed by NASA's WB-57 high-altitude research aircraft showed.

Astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japan's Soichi Noguchi went to space last November as the crew on the first fully operational mission to the ISS aboard a vehicle made by Elon Musk's SpaceX, which has become NASA's favored commercial transportation partner.

Seven astronauts remained on the ISS including a new crew of four who arrived on a different SpaceX craft last week.

"Thanks for your hospitality," Hopkins said earlier as the capsule undocked from the space station for its return journey. "We'll see you back on Earth."

Prior to that, two American astronauts made a test mission to the ISS in May and stayed for two months.

That was the first launch to the ISS from US soil since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. It was also the first crewed mission run by a private company, as opposed to NASA.Until then US astronauts had caught rides to the ISS aboard Russian spacecraft//CNA

Medical workers with Delta Health Center prepare to vaccinate people at a pop-up COVID-19 vaccination clinic in a rural Delta community on Apr 29, 2021 in Leland, Mississippi. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images/Spencer Platt) - 

America's COVID-19 immunisation campaign is stalling.

While vaccination programs are lagging badly in many countries - if they've begun at all - mass vaccine sites across the US are closing due to dwindling demand, leaving the authorities exploring new ways to reach people who haven't yet gotten a shot.

The people most eager to get their shots have, for the most part, already rolled up their sleeves and done so.

The challenge is reaching the rest.

In Texas, as in much of the country, vaccinations are in freefall. A huge federal site in Arlington, between Dallas and Fort Worth, shut its doors in mid-April because of insufficient numbers.

Two other federal sites, the NRG Stadium in Houston and Fair Park in Dallas, have ended their appointments system and now take walk-ups.

The NRG Stadium, seeking to ease the process, is now remaining open until nine o'clock in the evening rather than five, and vaccinating people in their cars.

Authorities are considering more targeted approaches to reach people who are geographically isolated or find it hard to reach vaccine sites.

Five mobile vaccination centres are now crisscrossing those areas of the county with the highest number of positive cases.

"Next week, we'll be increasing to 10 clinics," Ashlei Dawson, the official in charge of one of the sites, told AFP, as she oversaw the training of new recruits.

Dozens of supermarkets and pharmacies around the city are now advertising vaccinations. 

Among Republican voters, 29 per cent say they will never take the vaccine, compared to five per cent of Democrats and nine per cent of independents, according to a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Friday promised a new initiative to help people get vaccines through their own doctors who, research shows, are often the most trusted messengers//CNA

In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un delivers a closing speech at the Sixth Conference of Cell Secretaries of the Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang, North Korea, Thursday, Apr 8, 2021. (Photo: Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP) - 

Recent comments from US President Joe Biden and members of his administration show he is intent on maintaining a hostile policy toward North Korea that will require a corresponding response from Pyongyang, North Korean officials said on Sunday (May 2).

The officials' comments came in a series of statements carried on state news agency KCNA, after the White House on Friday said US officials had completed a months-long review of North Korean policy.

The human rights criticism is a provocation that shows the United States is "girding itself up for an all-out showdown" with North Korea, and will be answered accordingly, the unnamed spokesman said.

In a separate statement, Kwon Jong Gun, director general of the Department of US Affairs of the Foreign Ministry, cited Biden's first policy speech to Congress on Wednesday, where the new president said nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran posed threats that would be addressed through "diplomacy and stern deterrence."

Kwon said it is illogical and an encroachment upon North Korea's right to self-defense for the United States to call its defensive deterrence a threat.

Biden's speech was "intolerable" and "a big blunder," Kwon said. "His statement clearly reflects his intent to keep enforcing the hostile policy toward the DPRK as it had been done by the US for over half a century," he said, using the initials for North Korea's official name.

Under the policy announced on Friday, Biden has settled on a new approach to pressuring North Korea to give up nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles that will explore diplomacy but not seek a grand bargain with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the White House said.

In Sunday's statement, Kwon Jong Gun said US talk of diplomacy is aimed at covering up its hostile acts, and its deterrence is just a means for posing nuclear threats to North Korea.

Now that Biden's policy has become clear, North Korea "will be compelled to press for corresponding measures, and with time the US will find itself in a very grave situation," he concluded.

In a third statement, Kim Yo Jong, a senior official in the government and sister of leader Kim Jong Un, sharply criticised South Korea for failing to stop defector activists from launching anti-North Korea leaflets.

An activist group in South Korea said on Friday it had released balloons into North Korea carrying dollar bills and leaflets denouncing the government in Pyongyang, defying a recently imposed law banning such releases after complaints by the North.

"We regard the maneuvers committed by the human wastes in the south as a serious provocation against our state and will look into corresponding action," Kim Yo Jong said.

Last year, North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong, North Korea, after Kim Yo Jong led a campaign of criticism over the leaflet launches//CNA