 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. COVID-19 cases cross 1.85 million, over 114,000, 38. Shipments of testing kits meant for India as redirected to the US, prisoners in Bolivia protest demanding better sanitation and medical attention. OPEC and Russia agree to cut down global oil production by 10% to arrest foreign prices. We begin with an update on the novel coronavirus pandemic. The number of infections continues to grow and has touched 1.85 million, so far. The number of deaths worldwide has crossed the 100,000 mark over the weekend with the latest figures, standing at over 114,000. The outbreak in the US continues to contribute to lion's share of the global cases, as more than 27,000 to the over 72,000 newly reported cases yesterday came from the US alone. Despite the growing crisis, neoliberal hawks in the US and elsewhere have passed on the blame to the World Health Organization. In the meanwhile, images of a mass grave of unclaimed dead bodies from the epicenter of the epidemic in New York has caused widespread panic and speculation on social media. The state of New York has over a third of the total number of cases in the US and far outstrips any other country in terms of the number of infections. It has reported over 9,300 deaths so far. Drone-view pictures from Heart Island in the Bronx revealed anonymous coffins being buried in a mass grave. The mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, responded to public concerns stating that while the phenomenon of anonymous mass graves is not new in the city, it has witnessed a major increase in recent times. On the other hand, the US has continued its aggression by pushing out more countries in a bid to acquire medical equipment. A shipment of rapid testing kits that was ordered and paid for by the Indian state of Tamil Nadu was reportedly diverted to the US on Saturday. The diversion of the testing kits was revealed by state officials on Sunday, who expressed the hope the next consignment would be sent to the state. The state government of Tamil Nadu, led by an ally of the right wing Bharati Janthapathi, has been criticized for its extremely low testing rates and has only recently dispersed funds to acquire necessary testing kits. On Sunday alone, the state reported over 106 cases of the infection. Meanwhile, there are signs of hope in Europe where the number of deaths has decreased to the mid-100s from the close to 1,000 just a few days ago. Lockdowns too are expected to continue in many countries. India, which is perhaps the largest lockdown in the world, is expected to continue it till the end of the month. French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to be the same. Australia and New Zealand have also dismissed the idea of withdrawing curbs. China, meanwhile, recorded 98 imported cases by the end of yesterday. Chinese authorities are on full alert, lest a second round break out due to arrivals bring the virus. On April 12th, the inmates of the San Pedro Prison in Aurora Province in Bolivia staged an uprising demanding better sanitary measures and health care. The riot broke out in reaction to the death of a prisoner who was believed to have COVID-19. A group of prisoners lit several brown fires in different parts of the facility and climbed onto the roof of the prison. They demanded that the national government accelerate the pardon process announced recently for people over 58 years of age. They also demanded that the entire prison population be tested to rule out the coronavirus infection. The Bolivian police used brute force to suppress the protest. The ministry of the coup-installed government, Arturo Murillo, clarified that the death of the inmates was due to inflammation of the pancreas and not COVID-19. In our next story, hundreds of cargo workers in India's Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi have alleged that they are not being paid their salaries. The matter has come to light at the time and the whole of the country is under a lockdown. Around 70% of the roughly 1,200 workers employed through contractor JAC Air Services at the airport have reportedly not received pay for the lockdown period. This is despite strict directives issued by both the central government and the Delhi state government against salary reductions during this period. The matter was raised with the authorities by the airport employees union. The union, which is affiliated to the left-wing center of Indian trade unions or the CITU, has tried to negotiate with the management but in the mobile. The union has raised the issue of the company not making necessary arrangements to acquire curfew passes for their employees even when they are expected to work during the lockdown period and have not complying to the wage hike that the company had agreed to earlier this year. The cargo workers' problems are characteristic of several workers across India who have been required to continue working as essential workforce during the lockdown. Despite the importance of their work, most of them are not compensated with hazard pay or extra paid leave so working during the crisis. Many are yet to be paid, they are due for the month by the companies. Now, the organization of petroleum exporting countries or the OPEC and Russia agreed on Sunday to cut their production by 9.7 million barrels per day in the months of May and June and to control crashing oil prices in the international market. As per the agreement, most of the OPEC countries along with Russia, which are collectively called the OPEC+, will keep gradually decreasing curbs on their production for 2 years until April 2022. Previous attempts to reach the agreement in February had failed, leading to Saudi Arabia announcing an increase in its daily production from 11 million barrels per day to 12.5 million barrels. The OPEC+, cut in production would be around 10% of the total global supply. OPEC has also appealed to other non-OPEC producers like Norway and Canada to cut their production by at least 5%. However, experts argue that this historic reduction in global production will still not be enough to control the fall in prices. Global demands in energy resources have decreased by 1 third since the beginning of the year, largely due to the pandemic. Saudi hike in production led to a free fall oil prices in the international markets. In the beginning of the year, the prices were around US$67 per barrel, which fell to US$30 per barrel, the lowest since the Gulf War. In our in-focus section, Newsweek's Pravir Purkhaisa talks about the relevance of their discussion and the agreement and the impact it will have on the global economy. Today, we are going to discuss the emerging oil scenario as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to a complete collapse of demand and consequently crisis in terms of the prices. Of course, a number of countries depend on the oil as their major source of income, particularly countries in West Asia like Saudi Arabia, even Iran, as well as a lot of other countries. What happens to the economy if the oil prices collapse the way we are seeing? And today, even the United States of America as well as Russia are major producers of oil. In fact, US is the number one oil producer today, particularly because of shale oil, Russia is the third largest producer. So all the economies are also likely to be hit if oil prices collapse. Of course, as a consequence of this, OPEC countries have met on what has been known as OPEC plus, because a number of other producers are also a part of this mix. They have met, G20 has met, and there has been a set of discussions how to bring back the oil prices. And specifically, if the oil prices have to stabilize, then it requires production cuts of at least 20% of the output. Now, the recent OPEC meeting, which I talked about followed by G20, has decided that Saudi Arabia and Russia will cut production by 5 million barrels per day. Other OPEC plus members, which would be the people who originally belong to OPEC and joined OPEC plus loosely what is called as the Vienna Alliance, which is another 10, 11 countries, they will cut by another 5 million barrels per day. That means OPEC and OPEC plus countries will cut total 10 million barrels per day. They expect the non-OPEC members that includes the United States as well, which as I said is the largest producer of oil today, that they will also cut by a certain amount. Mexico was a holdout, it said it will not cut as it was demanded by 400,000 barrels, but the United States has bailed it out by saying they will absorb some of Mexico's cut, which the OPEC members had wanted, and therefore that crisis seems to be over. There seems to be an agreement now that there would be some serious cuts. The question remains, will it bring back the oil prices? Will it bring it back to a level which would make shale oil for instance, or Canadian tar sands, or Argentinian shale viable in the current market? Now this is a question we are going to take up later, but the link to this is the question, is the party for the United States over, which started really after the Second World War, in which oil was specced to the dollar, US controlled West Asian oil. Now if that control weakens, as it now appears to be doing, because as you can see that it was not the United States that demanded these cuts, it was initially a spat between Russia and Saudi Arabia about decreasing the oil well, which finally made the US realize that its whole economy, particularly the oil economy, considering it is a major producer, was at risk, and therefore they are interceding, both with Russia and with Saudi Arabia, that they should try and do oil production cuts, crude oil production cuts, and only then will the oil market survive. So that has shown also the dependence of the United States on oil, particularly as it is now the leading producer in the world. So when did the United States start controlling the oil, as I said after the Second World War, but this arose out of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then the President of the United States, meeting Ibn Saud aboard a naval ship, that set really this underpinning of the world's oil market, pegging it to the dollar, and then de facto letting the United States control the oil market. We must not forget the reason that dollar is a preeminent financial marker, shall we say. The currency of choice is because that it is spec to the dollar, oil is the biggest commodity that is traded in the world, therefore a huge part of global trade is a dollar trade because of oil, and this has made it the de facto currency of trade world over. This allows the United States to impose sanctions on others, it allows the US to use the dollar transactions to be considered as in some sense under US law, and therefore has allowed US to sanction a whole number of financial entities in the world, which otherwise US could not have done. This has also led to what was the joke, or not exactly a joke, except that it did also have a certain reality, that the United States regarded the West Asian oil as a part of US strategic reserve, strategic interest, and that's why the picture that you see on the screen, how did our oil get under their sands. Now before we think this is purely a joke, let's not forget Henry Kissinger on record saying that oil is too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs. So he was essentially saying in a different way, essentially what the poster said, how did our oil get under their sands. If you look at what changed after that, is that instead of the United States becoming net import and avoid, round about 2010 to 2016, shale oil becomes important, and particularly after the crisis of shale, because the prices have dropped at that point of time also, the shale oil becomes more efficient, more cost effective, and is able to produce at around 40-45 dollars per barrel to break even. Now if you look at the picture of production, you will see that 63% of our US crude production is shale oil. If we consider this shale oil production, you will see that shale oil therefore is essentially a very, very important part of US oil production, and this is the reason that it has become the largest producer in the world. Now if we look at the other picture, the question that we have is that who are the biggest importers? China is a big importer, major producers who are not part of the US alliances, who are essentially under US sanctions, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Saudi and Russia, the cost of production is low, so they can survive low dollar prices, but US shale oil can't, US no longer controls the US market, as we said, biggest importer is China, then other importers like India were also big, Japan is a big importer, so all of them put together and of course European Union is a big importer, so US is no longer in control of the larger oil market as a consumer, which it was, and as a producer, it cannot sustain the level of production it has, because shale oil will probably not be competitive for the next two, three years, so can we see a new oil alliance, a new oil access emerge, Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela coming together, but that's a separate question, the question is if we want to look at the amount of cuts that have been made, is it sufficient? Now let's look at the bigger picture, if you look at the picture of what happens in January, February, this is the time that China demand fell, the world's demand fell by about 6 million barrels per day, and the OPEC even tried to install deeper cuts, essentially learned by Saudis, Russia did not agree, now Saudis increased production, tried to beat the prices down, thinking Russia would then call, basically agree to the Saudis demand, Russia did not, the prices crashed, when this happened, unlike what people believe, it did not lead to the United States essentially benefiting from all of this, as some of the oil and this had created and anticipated, but it led to a huge impact for domestic production in the United States, as a consequence you can see how much the price falls in this process, and it comes to something like $20 a barrel, now that rate, at that rate of price $20 per barrel, Saudis and Russia can still break even, but huge number of other producers in the world can't, so it's interesting that the United States which is always said it is for free market, called for some arrangement by which a cartel could be formed, they would not be a part of the cartel and they would control production, so that the prices could be controlled, in this period when the prices were crashing, the surplus crude production was still there, it went to the finalies, the finalies started storing all of this in whatever temporary storage they had, even hiring tankers to just simply store the produced refined oil, but this is expected, it was expected by end April early May, the world would run out of storage and that is why the urgency of the crisis and Trump essentially interceded with Russia and Saudis for it alliance, if you look at what happened to US production, this whole jump that we saw is to what we talked about is a shale oil production, the question that we would like to ask that currently we are seeing something like 20 million barrels per day surplus and if the 20 billion barrels per day is a surplus, then we are going to see that the prices will really crash further, that means it won't come back from what we saw as a 20 dollar to back to 40, 45 dollar, it will rise at the most to 30 dollars per barrel, even that is doubtful, it will depend how quickly the Chinese demand comes up and how quickly other demands come up, but if they don't, then you are likely to see even this 30 dollars will be difficult to sustain, so it doesn't look like the next three, four, six months, shale oil is going to come back and if shale oil doesn't come back, it's not that it will be knocked out forever, it is that till the price is run again, rise again, which could be next year, the year after, we don't know, till that point of time it is clear that the United States would not become the dominant player in terms of oil production and what it can do which Trump has been threatening that it will have protection, it will still keep the domestic prices high in order to compensate for shale producing producers cost, which as I said will not break even below 40, 45 dollars, so that means the US consumers will have to pay more money if this is what Trump chooses to keep shale oil alive, but the bigger issue that is there is that the United States has not agreed to the matching cuts which the OPEC plus has demanded, that we are cutting this amount of oil, but how much oil are you going to cut is a question they have asked United States, to that the Trump's reply has been that under our laws and this is what the US the other spokesperson are saying, it's not possible to cut oil production because that will be like cartilization, it's not permitted to domestic law, now the reality is quite otherwise, Texas which is the largest producer of oil in the United States including shale oil has a commission, monopoly commission which allows it and it has done it in the past allows it when wasteful production takes place, it can decide to cut production, that means that the US has a law by which production can be cut in the United States and it is completely wrong for it to claim all its analysts to claim that the US does not have a law which allows it to cut oil production, it definitely does have, this in fact is an argument of the market fundamentalist who say only the market should decide what the price of oil should be, but that doesn't apply of course in their view to the entire globe, who should not depend on the market, but who should actually cut production in order to keep prices high enough for American producers to produce oil, now that is an agreement which is not likely to happen, so we'll have to see whether the OPEC plus or the RIADA alliance as it is called its agreement to cut will actually work in spite of the fact that the United States has said it will let only market decides how much the amount of cuts that the United States will undertake and though it's the biggest producer it refuses unlike Saudi Arabia and Russia to come into an agreement to cut its own oil supply, so that is a question that we have to leave for the future, so we leave you with two or rather three questions, one is the party for the United States which is a global financial monopoly it has had over dollar being the basic currency in which oil is priced, is that party over and if that happens what are the repercussions for its financial control of the world's markets, it's a much bigger issue than simply the issue of the dollar than simply the issue of the oil market, the third issue is what are the geo-strategic consequences of this weakening of the United States of its triangle hold of the over oil and it's particularly it's being the global currency of choice by almost all countries or at least all the big capitalists, capitalist firm firms in the world because if you see in the current crisis the flight of currencies that took place that most currency space places most places in the world saw currency flight to the dollar which means de facto dollar still remains the biggest underpinning of the world's financial system it's a part of it is of course oil part of it is village now given both of this at the moment weakening what happens to US's financial control of the world market is a question that we'll leave you with thank you very much that's all we have in this episode of 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