 Hello and welcome to International Daily Roundup by People's Dispatch, where we look at some of the top stories from around the world. Let's take a look at today's headlines. Coal mine workers go on strike in the U.S. state of Alabama. Mapuche communities file lawsuit against Chilean President citing genocidal claims. U.S. officials and Iran nuclear deal signatories to meet in Vienna next week. And in our video section, we take a look at the obstacles facing mass vaccination against COVID-19. Over 1,100 mine workers in the U.S. state of Alabama have gone on strike starting April the 1st. The strike began at 10 p.m. on Thursday after new contracts were imposed on workers by the Warrior Met Coal Company. The action has been organized by the United Mine Workers of America, or the UMWA. It will affect operations in two mines, one preparation plant, and the central shop in Tuscaloosa County. The UMWA has argued that the company has refused to acknowledge the sacrifices made by workers over the past five years. At the time, the facilities were sold to Warrior Met Coal by Walter Energy in a bankruptcy auction. Warrior Met Coal was formed by senior executives from Walter Energy. The UMWA has stated that the company has not only bounced back from possible bankruptcy, it has also started making profits. The company, on the other hand, has claimed that the new contracts are a result of uncertainties in metallurgical markets and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the union has pointed out that the company has given upper management members bonuses of up to $35,000 in recent weeks. The UMWA has also filed an unfair labor practices lawsuit at the National Labor Relations Board. These are related to the company's conduct during the negotiations. The strike is set to continue until the ongoing negotiations yield results. The UMWA has announced that dues-paying members participating in pickets and other strike actions will receive assistance. This includes bi-weekly assistance payments and health coverage for members and their families. The indigenous Mapuche communities have filed a complaint against Chilean President Sebastian Pinera for genocide crimes. As reported by Al-Pais, the lawsuit was filed in the Guarantee Court of Temuco in La Arocaña. The complaint argues that the militarization of Mapuche territories has generated systematic violations of human rights and collective rights. It further states that state repression has intensified especially of those communities which are engaged in territorial recovery. Communities have also listed the shootings, torture and murders of children, women and the elderly. The situation has been described as a, quote, low intensity war wherein the state has declared the Mapuche people an internal enemy. Around 1.5 million Mapuches live in Chile, forming 10.2% of the population. The communities have been fighting against encroachments on their ancestral lands for years. Tensions also arose during the social outbreak mass protests. A UN investigative mission was also sent to the region in August last year. The team detailed allegations of forced evictions from council properties. The Mapuche people also alleged excessive or unnecessary use of force and racial discrimination. Earlier this year, a Chilean police officer was sentenced to prison for killing Mapuche farmer Camilo Catrilanca during a vehicle price pursuit. The verdict followed several reports of alleged human rights violations by the national police. The accusations of detailed instances of rape, torture and unlawful killings in the protests of 2019 and 20. There were several attempts to cover up the crimes and if convicted officers were often given reduced sentences. The United States and the remaining signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal will meet in Vienna next week. The announcement came following a virtual meeting between the signatories on April 2. Representatives from China, Russia, France, Germany, the UK and Iran were in attendance. President Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the deal in 2018 and proceeded to impose sanctions on Iran. Iranian Foreign Minister Javid Zarif has stated that the country has suffered a loss of over $1 trillion due to over 1600 US-imposed sanctions. Both countries have been stuck in a deadlock over the past few months. Iran has stated repeatedly that it will recommit to its obligations under the deal provided all signatories return to full compliance. However, the administration of President Joe Biden has stated that sanctions will only be lifted when Iran complies with the deal. According to reports, the US has presented a proposal earlier this week offering a partial lifting of sanctions. In exchange, Iran would have to stop enriching uranium at the current rate of 20%. However, Iran's press TV reported on March 29 that the government would only stop enrichment if the US lifted all sanctions. The news portal reported again on Friday that Iran's stance has remained unchanged. Talks will now resume next week to discuss sanction lifting and nuclear implementation measures. However, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, there will be no direct discussion between Iran and the US for now. Iranian Foreign Minister Javid Zarif also stated later that there would be no US-Iran meeting calling it quote unnecessary. And in our final story, we take a look at the global disparities in vaccinations against COVID-19. Despite repeated warnings by the United Nations and the WHO, rich countries have continued to hold a majority of the vaccine supplies. This coupled with restrictive intellectual property rights regime has left poorer countries at risk. Here is Pravir Purkayastha to talk about the current scenario. Question that everybody is raising, how many vaccine doses are really required by the world and when could we get them? So the answer is that probably in the population, the world is 7.7 billion, we are looking at about 16 billion doses to be created, probably more but at least 16 billion doses to cover the entire population if we do it in 2021. At the moment, we seem to have capacity which can be ramped up to meet at least 12 billion doses. What is the bottleneck? Why aren't we able to do it more quickly? Why aren't we able to see it across the globe in very many countries? Now one of the issues with vaccines is their complex molecules, they are not simple molecules and therefore though they are not biological in the sense being of biological drugs, they are biologicals being complex big molecules. So therefore it's not that simple like making small molecule medicine like paracetamol that we use for our body aches and various other medicines that we normally use. Biologicals are complex, therefore there is a problem. Making mRNA and scaling it up, mRNA vaccines and scaling it up is again dealing with first the ability to make essentially large quantities of mRNA, messenger RNAs which we again make through biological processes, you purify it, you separate it, then you also have to encapsulate it in what are called fatty globules, lipids as they are called nanoparticles and all of this is a complex process. So none of it is going to be that simple and then of course you have to put it in ampules files in which you can send it to finally for getting into the arms of the people, the jabs. But the whole process is there is nothing that cannot be replicated today if the know-how is shared. The whole argument that has been built that this is something so difficult that only a few companies can do it just is not true because large biological manufacturing companies exist in the world who do contract manufacture. They have the ability to do it provided the know-how is shared, it is not patents and this must be very clear to people, patenting is relatively a process where each step of the way today seems to be patented. So you get a large number of patents covering the original invention, it is supposed to be that you can take the patent and recreate it if you want but that is not the entire information, there's a whole bunch of information which is not given in the patent purposely because that's not the way it was originally designed but which is kept as trade secret as know-how and that is not shared. It can be re-engineered, yes it will take two years, three years for re-engineering but this is the two three years we don't have and that is where the world is asking that we need to share the know-how, how to make this companies share the know-how is the issue and there the United States and the rich countries have said it's in the interest of our nations that this knowledge remains with our pharma companies even if they have been created by publicly funded R&D of our countries. So this knowledge should be privatized, remain private so these companies can make profit and we can then control which countries they will go to and which countries they will not and we can use it in our vaccine diplomacy is what they say but I would call it a little harsher than that the vaccine war that is being waged across the world and the third part of this is this has led to a scenario where for instance India is being criticized for having hoarding AstraZeneca's vaccine the Serum Institute Covishield vaccine which at the moment because of the Indian numbers rising the government of India has put some restrictions on its export. Yes it is true that the world depends on Serum Institute being supplying vaccines to Covax program of WHO but the point is that what we are seeing from the advanced countries today is the fact their vaccines are restricted to only those countries they have not supplied any vaccine outside the few rich countries in which they exist as manufacturers the rest of the global husband supplied essentially by China and by India. Now I would like to end with this it's interesting to note how the vaccine market works the largest number of vaccine doses are actually produced from generic vaccine manufacturers like Serum Institute South Korea there is also Brazil is to be once upon a time a large generic vaccine manufacturer except under under Bolsonaro it seems to have decided not to do much. You have other contract vaccine manufacturers in the world but the bulk of the revenue for vaccine comes from only four multinational companies of course Pfizer is there, Merck is there, Sanofi is there and I think Merck is also one of them. So there are four or five companies which control the revenue of the vaccine today who'd like therefore to use the monopoly of the vaccine knowledge that they have got from public domain science let's say understand all of this came from public domain science in the United States or in Germany the BioNTech vaccine or in UK where it came from Oxford University came from public domain science but the governments of the rich countries wanted to be the private property of a few drug companies and that is where the real battle today is the inability of these countries to accept that unless everybody in the globe is vaccinated the epidemic continues new variants will arise and we will continue the cycle of the pandemic continuous. 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