 Hello and welcome to the International Daily Roundup by People's Dispatch, where we bring you some of the major news developments from across the world, our headlines. WHO reports records single-day increase in COVID-19 cases. Iran's latest cargo shipments reach Venezuela with food supplies. Bolivia's coup president forced to declare general election. Protests intensify in Tunisia after violence from security forces in Tatooine. And South African trade unions admonish government for airline restructuring plan. We begin with an update on the novel coronavirus pandemic that continues to rage across the world. The number of total reported cases has reached close to 9 million worldwide. Over 475, 1,000 deaths have been reported as of today afternoon and nearly 3.7 million cases are still active. Between Thursday and Sunday, a record number of single-day increases were reported by the WHO. Over 181,000 cases were reported on Thursday, 143,000 and 139,000 confirmed cases on Friday and Saturday. And on Sunday in its update, the WHO said that the number of cases went up to 183,000. Brazil led the peak in numbers, contributing to close to 55,000 cases on a day-to-day basis, followed by the U.S. with over 32,000 and India with over 15,000. In our infocus section, News Clicks Prabhu Purkhaisa analyzes the spread of the pandemic. So there continues to be a spike in cases, although in many countries this may no longer be the main subject of discussion. We have seen that the United States, as Trump's doing in India, it has moved in some other direction. But nonetheless, the fact is that COVID-19 is very much in the center of our day-to-day life and yesterday's case numbers prove that. So especially when you take the top three countries, that's Brazil, India and the United States, how do we see the way these countries are handling this crisis? Well, you know, of course, the cases will shift from country to country, continent to continent as you go along. So I think the first was China. The second in that sense was the European Union, what I would call the core European Union countries, which are also very well connected amongst each other. If one goes up, so do the others. And then of course, the United Kingdom also being closely connected. So that set of countries. And of course, then you have the United States, very close again to European Union, in terms of connections, people flying back and forth. And then now you have the Latin America, so what I would call the Americas, they have taken over and as is India. So you have shifting locations of the epidemic. And that's the nature of the pandemic because it's not the virus which is transmitted automatically. It's really people transmitting the virus. So it's a contact between people, the density of the population, how people who are infected are separated from others or not. All of that really determines the nature of the epidemic. And it's very clear that countries like Brazil and countries like the United States really stumbled badly. In the US because it failed in its initial phase to test even the CDC tests failed. So they're trying to blame China for not telling them one week before or something like that. The point remains that they had almost one and a half months in which to scale up at least the possibility of testing. And WHO is applying test kits to all other countries. So it's very surprising that the US stumbled on that. But also the fact that Trump and Bolsonaro both had a common attitude to the virus. Then Trump got convinced that he needs to take more responsibility and started saying, yes, of course, we are controlling it. We have the best, we have the best tests, we have the best systems and everything. And then when it finds that he's really not able to do it, now his position is it's a state's problem. It's not our problem. And now we should really reopen the economy. His skepticism regarding the pandemic, the COVID-19 epidemic seems to have come back in some form or the other. And then saying the economy matters more than the pandemic. And this is what we do. And at the end of it, it's really also about his elections. So what matters to him for the elections? The reality is that you have these two right-wing, what shall I call them, chauvinists, shall we say national chauvinists, national supremacists in some sense internally, also extremely right-wing. And in the case of Trump, close to white supremacists, and so is Bolsonaro. And then, of course, we have the case of India, which had a very draconian lockdown. So not that the lockdown wasn't there. The lockdown was definitely there. And it was a lockdown which was in terms of the scale of the lockdown was quite severe. So what is it that makes India come to the same scale as the others? And we have discussed it in India. In fact, the failure has been to treat it as a lower normal problem and use sticks when you need public health measures. So looking at it is also the vision of the Modi government. Another right-wing government, another one who wanted to blame the minorities for even the COVID-19 initially, trying to stigmatize a group of people on that count. And also the fact that it has sort of now decided having lost grip on the epidemic, having now shifted the blame entirely to the state, only what Trump is doing. So you see a commonality of all of this. But the underlying issue is that it is a public health disaster that is in the making, particularly in the countries which are unable to control it. And I would now have to put India also in that camp because it appeared that India was stuttering on the brink for quite some time. We have discussed it a number of times. It's a touch and go. It's not very good situation. The numbers are going up. There's really no control over it as it is being claimed. And now it's very clear that yesterday I think we had 15,000 numbers. We are going up very steadily. And as you can see, of course, we are behind the United States, Brazil and Russia. But in terms of new infections, we are number three. And the number of deaths also, deaths per day, the last 24 hours of deaths. Again, we are number three. Well, Russia, the absolute numbers are higher, total numbers are higher. But the number of infections are slowly coming down. It's not going to come down very quickly. That's very clear. Unless you do something like the Chinese are successful in doing, most countries have come down slowly. And Russia is on that track. So is Iran on that track, the blips aside. So what you are likely to see is Brazil, certainly not in any control. Latin America, varying degrees of India, shall we say. That means losing control of the epidemic and daily figures are continuing to rise. India, we have seen daily figures started with 8,000, 7,000, 8,000, 10,000, 12,000. Now we have reached 15,000 per day. And what happens is two weeks later, then you see the death count goes high. Because these are the people then who becomes very sick, some of them. And then of course, some of them will die. So it's a cascading effect that we are seeing. And the fact that we are not in control of it is very worrying for all the three reasons I've talked about. The United States, the Americas, and now South Asia. Pakistan is not too far behind. In terms of per capita, the number of cases, it's very closely following on India's heels. So I think this is the South Asian problem that we are also going to get. But these numbers are also rising. And I think one thing is now very clear that this is not related to the climate. That means the hot season is not going to make a significant difference because India, it is summer at the moment. We are seeing temperatures above 40 degrees in North India consistently. So it's very clear that the climate may reduce or increase transmission by some amount. The primary transmission vectors are human beings and it is that contact that really decides the nature of the epidemic. And unless we have a vaccine, I don't think we are going to be at the moment going to be able to control it. Not with the policies we have and not the way a lot of the countries are going. The fact that we haven't learned from Chinese experience, we haven't learned from the European Union, particularly Germany did, which managed to keep its death count very low. Similarly, Russia, high infections, but death count low because they really had good hospital facilities for taking care of those who really become sick. So all of those lessons, if we don't take, and it doesn't look like we're taking those lessons either in Brazil, India, rest of the Americas, and of course the United States of America itself, where the death count is high. So we are seeing all of this shows that what WHO is saying, what everybody is saying, that we are going to see this continuing of the pandemic, at least for the next six months, if we don't, you know, drastically alter the way we look at the pandemic itself, look at it as a public health issue and control it as any public health response should be. In our next story, an Iranian ship carrying cargo of food and other supplies arrived in Venezuela in waters on Sunday, June 21st. The cargo ship Gholsan reached the Lagoa airport and is the first of five shipments carrying supplies to open an Iranian supermarket outlet in Venezuela. The arrival of the new shipment comes barely a month after a successful dispatch of five super tankers carrying over 1.5 million barrels of petrol by Iran to Venezuela. Details of the shipment are yet to be given out by either Iran or Venezuela but Iranian embassy in Caracas confirmed the approach of the Gholsan on Saturday, June 20th. There has been speculation within the United States that the shipments could also include equipment to upgrade oil refining capabilities in Venezuela. Both Iran and Venezuela are reeling under unilateral economic sanctions from the United States, severely affecting their economic stability and access to essential goods. The petrol shipment made in May helped Venezuela stave off a major shortage in fuel in its domestic market that has been caused by U.S. sanctions. We now go to Bolivia where de facto President Jeanine Arnais enacted a law scheduling the much awaited general elections for September 6th. The law was passed on the night of June 21st when she telecasted her announcement. Arnais held hours of consultation with Salvador Romero, President of Bolivia's electoral body, the TSE, over the feasibility of the election before passing the law. The decision was celebrated by citizens, social movements and trade unions who have been mobilizing against her mishandling of the pandemic. Former President Ivor Morales also welcomed the announcement and stated that it was up to the government to guarantee a free election. The elections were initially scheduled for May 3rd but got postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak. On April 30th, the President of Bolivia's legislature Ivacopa promulgated an electoral law to hold elections between May 3rd and August 2nd which Arnais rejected. However, on June 2nd, the TSE negotiated with all political parties to further postpone the date to September 6th due to the public health risks. Last week, both the Plurian National Legislative Assembly approved the bill to this effect but Arnais tried to pass this off as multiple opinion polls have shown MAS Party candidates Luis Arce and David Chacobonca in the lead. Jeanine Arnais came to power in a coup in November 2019 that deposed President Morales and the MAS government. Her government has been widely criticized for using the pandemic as a pretext to consolidate her power. In our next story, protests took place in the initial city of Tatooine on Sunday after the arrest of Tarek Haddad. Haddad is one of the organizers of the weeks-long roadblocks and protests in the region and the city. Security forces violently dispersed the protesters on Sunday using tear gas and arrested 10 people. For weeks, people in Tatooine have been demanding jobs in better living conditions. Protesters have blocked the main road to prevent the movement of oil from the Elkamore public pumping station. They are demanding that the government act on its 2017 agreement with the Tunisian Trade Union Confederation of the UGTT after months of similar protests. The government had then agreed to employ 1500 people and invest more than 28 million US dollars in the region to boost employment opportunities. Activists have claimed that the agreement was never implemented by the government. Protesting the non-fulfillment of the demand and violence of the security forces, trade unions including the UGTT are holding a general strike today. Tunisia is facing its biggest economic crisis in decades, compounded by neoliberal policies of successor governments and the recent coronavirus pandemic. The national economy is expected to shrink by as much as 7% this year due to the disease. According to official sources, Tunisia's unemployment rate is also expected to grow up from 21% from 15% last year. The unemployment rate in the region of Tatooine, which is also the largest province in the country, has already touched 30%. And finally, South African trade unions have accused the Department of Public Enterprise of Double Dealing for supporting the Business Rescue Plan for South African Airways. In a recent statement, the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa and the South African Cabin Crew Association called out the plan, chocked by a group of technocrats, as a liquidation plan instead of a rescue plan. The plan proposes laying of 3,700 of the roughly 4,700 workers in the airlines. Talking to People's Dispatch, Noomsa Spokesperson, Pagami Lahulbi Majola, said that the plan in Norway addresses the true cost drivers that caused the crisis in the airlines. These cost drivers, according to the unions, include years of corruption and mismanagement that led to costly and wasteful contracts, including outsourcing of labour at much higher rates to private players. The unions have also reiterated the long-standing demand for a fair retrenchment package for workers over the age of 50 and a similar separation package for young workers who will opt to leave voluntarily. That's all we have in this episode of the International Daily Roundup. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest news developments from across the world. Until then, keep watching People's Dispatch. Thank you very much for watching!