 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 globe. Our headlines. The United States cuts funding to the World Health Organization, accuses the agency of mismanaging the COVID-19 outbreak. Thousands of migrant workers in India continue to be stranded amid the country-wide lockdown. South Africa allows mining of gold and other precious minerals despite coronavirus outbreak and in Malawi, medics protest the lack of protective gear in worsening work conditions. We begin with our regular update on the novel coronavirus pandemic. The number of reported cases crossed 2 million worldwide with close to 1.4 million active cases. The number of deaths has come to around 127,000 people with nearly 7,000 deaths added yesterday. Over 600,000 cases have been reported in the US alone. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump announced a halt on all funding to the World Health Organization pending review. The announcement came a week after he had threatened to withdraw support over what he called mismanagement of the novel coronavirus outbreak. Trump also stated that his administration will be investigating the supposed mismanagement of the funds by the World Health Organization by covering up the spread of coronavirus to quote for China. Last week, Trump made similar allegations against the World Health Organization in the press conference where he called the UN agency China-centric. Despite the financial support, the US is given to the WHO. The US is the single largest contributor to the WHO covering close to 15% of its total annual budget. The WHO is currently coordinating global efforts to contain the pandemic and such a sudden withdrawal from the US can potentially affect that. A shortage of funds will seriously affect not only its capacity to deal with the crisis, but the accusations also stand to threaten the legitimacy of the agency. Opposition Democratic Party leaders in the US have condemned the decision as a way for Trump to deflect responsibility and blame for the major mistakes made by his own administration. The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres responded to the US decision insisting that now is not the time to play politics and called on world leaders to come together in solidarity. In our in-focus section, News Clips Prabir Purkhaisar talks about Trump's decision and its implications. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. Today we are joined by News Clips Prabir Purkhaisar and we are going to talk about US President Donald Trump's announcement that he is going to cut funding for the World Health Organization pending a review process. Donald Trump has said that he is unhappy with the way the WHO responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. So what are the implications of this funding cut and what does it mean when countries just randomly withdraw? Prabir, thank you so much for joining us. So this is not something out of the blue because Trump has earlier announced that he was, he had already announced that he was going to cut it, then he packed it, said that we are going to study it and now they seem to have done some background work or preparation or whatever it made the announcement. So this seems the latest in a long series of steps to target the WHO and China for the crisis and hide their own mistakes. You know, there are two separate issues over here. One is that Trump wants somebody to be blamed for the fact that the US was left unprepared for in spite of the warnings received. Now we know that number of internal warnings were given to the White House, the United States government was fully aware of what the nature of the COVID-19 epidemic was all about reports that in fact the China's CDC head when he was talking to the person in the US, he in fact was in tears. That's the report we have and this is right early January. So it's not something which the US didn't know and that's what the reports have been. The US has been aware of the severity of the problem, the nature of the human to human transmission possible with this novel coronavirus, which is what it was being called at that time and the US did not prepare it for it for whatever the reasons. The belief that somehow since they had cut snap ties with China in terms of air travel and so on that this will not affect the United States or in some sense this was the third world disease and this is somehow going to stay out of the United States. You can also see the response of the European Union, which wasn't very different from that. You can see that Mr. Trump was coming for his jamboree to India. You can see Mr. Modi was focused more on Trump at that point than on the epidemic. So there seems to have been a failure of countries to think beyond China and to think that China has done it because quote unquote it's authoritarian, it uses the lockdown, but there are many other ways of dealing with it and somehow we'll deal with it much better. It's not a virus problem, it's a China problem. That's the way they seem to have been looking at it. Only this explains the way that you can see the Western so-called democracies have been so taken aback by what has happened and the extent of the spread of the pandemic both in the European Union and then in the United States. It's really a story of giving up particularly in the developed countries the whole idea that infectious diseases and epidemics have to be fought with public health authorities in measures and this is the basic shift that has taken place regarding it what I call as the ill health industry which is raised on disease and not looking at really epidemics and other public health issues because they were thought to be third world problems. So I think that is one main issue that we now see and you know the second crisis or the second failure is of course the specific person who heads the White House today, but it is a much larger failure that the United States has been slowly getting away from what I call the multilateral organizations where the world is ruled not by the United States but by a scobity of nations and to some consensus. The U.S. has been withdrawing funds, cutting funds from that. It has been funds to what I call committed programs which means a Ebola program, a polio program and so on but not to the general strengthening of WHO which then they would be able to help the other third world countries what I call the global South countries who have much weaker infrastructure, WHO could really take the lead. The global wealthy countries believe that they could insulate themselves from the third world of the developing world countries, the poorer countries and that will not percolate to them. So WHO was meant only for handling things like Ebola, polio and so on which could somehow spill over to their countries as well but this is the crisis, the larger crisis you have which goes far beyond that Mr. Trump wanting to blame someone. You can also see the enormous failure of the United States that at a time when you need global leadership and even foreign policy which is not particularly shall be the socialist or left wing even foreign policy as it says that however bad we would think of China however we dislike it, both United States and China has to provide joint leadership to the world. At this point there is no other course so the U.S. has to swallow its bile so to say and make good with the U.S. with China and then work with international organizations to be able to be seen as a global leader. It's very clear that the way the Trump is reacting trying to find somebody to be at fault blaming somebody else first the governors now WHO saying that China did not warn us in spite of the fact that such early warnings all of this shows that the U.S. is really no longer the leader of the world doesn't see itself as a leader of the world and United States the leader that we have President Trump wants all of this to be his re-election campaign. I don't think he's really bothered about rest of the world all that he bothers about how does it look good in his coming electoral battle as presidential in the presidential elections and it seems therefore we need to find scapegoats first China now WHO. In our next story hours after the announcement of extending the country wide lockdown in India till May 3rd, thousands of stranded migrants landed up at the Bandra Railway Terminal India's commercial capital Mumbai. The workers are expecting to board trains back home after certain local news channels spread false news of train services resuming in the city. The police were called to forcibly disperse the crowd for alleged violations of social distancing policies. Similar instances of stranded workers rushing to rail and bus terminals were reported across several major cities. The migrants were demanding that they be transported safely to their hometowns. Most of these workers who are seasonally or casually employed have been hardest hit by the lockdown which has rendered them effectively jobless. Reports also came in from the city of Surat in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat where hundreds of stranded migrant textile workers took to the streets in protest. The workers who hail from the poorer regions of Central and Eastern India claim that the landlords were threatening them with evictions despite rent freezes in place. They also claimed that they were unable to procure essential goods including food grains because of the lockdown. In our next story, South African mine workers employed by Anglo American Platinum or Amplats have been called back to work beginning today. The call has been made despite the recent government decision to extend the countrywide lockdown till the end of April to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Numerous platinum mining companies have been granted exemptions as an essential service by the Department of Mining Resources and Energy or the DMRE. The exemptions follow the partial recovery and stabilization efforts of the government to maintain the metal price in the international market. The Association of Mine Workers in Construction Union, Amgu, accused the DMRE of succumbing to the pressure exerted by the mining companies. They have also questioned the motivation behind granting essential status to companies mining precious metals. In a statement released earlier this week, the union admonished the move to assign mining of such minerals as gold, platinum and diamonds as an essential service on par with coal mining which is necessary for electricity production. And finally, frontline healthcare workers and medical professionals in Malawi staged a demonstration yesterday against the government's failure to provide them with protective gear. The protest was organized in Malawi's commercial capital, Blantyre. Protesters also condemned the government's failure to improve their working conditions. The nurses, doctors and other medical staff were on a strike earlier over the weekend demanding better working conditions and adequate PPEs. The government assured them of meeting their demands in response to which the union called off the strike and appealed to them to resume work on Monday. However, workers in uniform are seen protesting and carrying placards with slogans such as we are not going on a suicide mission and Malawi government protect us, we will protect you on Tuesday, April 14th. This happened outside Blantyre's Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital. Malawi in Southern Africa has reported 16 cases of COVID-19 so far. Two persons have died in the country due to the infection that is first reported on April 2nd. Blantyre alone has half the country's total reported cases. Most of the infected people have returned from a blot. The rumours after the first case of infection were reported to have led to vigilante groups killing 9 people including some medical staff on the suspicion of them being bloodsuckers, the Guardian reported on April 9th. Meanwhile, the president of Malawi, Pita Mutarika, announced a 21-day complete lockdown. The lockdown will start from April 18th. We want this countrymen to follow the restrictions to avoid a larger catastrophe. That's all we have time for today in the International Daily Roundup. To know more about these stories visit our website peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thanks for watching.