 Hello and welcome to the International Daily Roundup by People's Dispatch, where we bring you major news developments from around the world, our headlines, leaders and activists demand end to coercive measures against Cuba as Biden imposes sanctions, COVID-19 crisis worsens in Indonesia as hospitals near full capacity, U.N. appoints commissioner to examine abuses in Israel and occupy the Palestinian territories, and in our video section we take a look at the billionaire space race and its implications for the NASA-dominant space market. In our first story, the U.S. has imposed fresh sanctions on Cuban government officials. Among them is an entire security unit under the Interior Ministry. The head of the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, General Alvaro López Miera, has also been sanctioned. These sanctions follow the 240 unilateral coercive measures imposed by the U.S. on Cuba since 2017. A statement by the Treasury Department reads that the Cuban Armed Forces played an integral role in the so-called repression of protests. This is related to small-scale protests held on the island of July 11th. Hundreds of people had taken to the streets to raise complaints over shortages of food and medicine. Cuba's tourism-dependent economy has been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. More importantly, the country has been placed under the crushing blockade by the U.S. for over 60 years. Following the protests, Cuban officials immediately met with the people and tried to address their concerns. However, far-right opposition activists took the opportunity to call for regime change and U.S. intervention, supposedly to save Cuba. Social media campaigns were launched under the hashtag SOSCuba, accompanied by false information on the jailing and torture of activists. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people held protests across the island in defense of the revolution and the government. Internationally, over 400 people have written an open letter to President Joe Biden. Former heads of state activists and artists are calling for the lifting of Trump-era coercive measures. These actions cost Cuba billions of dollars every year in restrict stability to procure basic necessary goods. Despite having developed five COVID-19 vaccines, Cuba does not have the syringes needed to administer them. The country has also been designated as a state sponsor of terrorism. Amid this economic and political campaign against Cuba, progressive leaders have continued to offer their support. We now go to Indonesia, which has now become the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the continent. The country reported over 49,500 new cases and 1,449 deaths on July 22. The recent surge in infections has been largely driven by the highly infectious Delta variant. As per the WHO, 17 provinces reported an increase of over 50% in new cases between July 12 and 18. While daily cases are gradually declining, experts have attributed this in part to low testing rates. An outbreak is considered uncontrollable by the WHO if more than 5% of tests come back positive. As per reports, the figure in Indonesia currently stands at over 30%. The country's health system is struggling to cope with the surge. Seven provinces have reported hospital occupancy rates above 70% on January and July 21. The situation is dire in the Papua region, which is among the lowest vaccination rates in the country. The occupancy rate in some hospitals had hit 100% as of Thursday, according to the Papua Health Agency. Local activists argue that people have been resistant to getting vaccines in part due to their distrust to the central government. The Papua provinces are witnessing a conflict between federal furloughs and pro-dependence ant-surgeons. Meanwhile, several health workers across the country have contracted the virus, while others are facing severe exhaustion. The Indonesian Doctors Association reported this week that 114 doctors had died between July 1st and 17th. Only 6% of Indonesia's around 270 million people have been fully vaccinated so far. In our next story, the UN Human Rights Council has appointed a commission to look into abuses in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. The three-member body will be held by South African former judge Navi Pillai. She is also served as a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014. Pillai will be joined by Miroon Kotari from India and Chris Sidoti from Australia. The commission of inquiry was established during a UN special session in May. The commission of inquiry was established during a UN special session in May. It will look into systemic abuses, including identity-based discrimination and repression. As per the UN HRC, the body has been tasked with looking into the root causes of recurrent tensions. It will also examine the Israeli attack on Gaza in May. The reactions of Hamas and other Palestinian groups will also be investigated. At least 256 Palestinians were killed in over 2,000 verandah during the 11-day bombardment of Gaza. As per the UN OCHA, 113,000 people were displaced with the peak of the attacks. Over 1,200 housing units were destroyed and under 1,500 damaged beyond repair. Over 800,000 people did not have proper access to water and there were widespread electricity blackouts. As per a UN report released on July 8, over 8,200 Palestinians still remain displaced. Meanwhile, hundreds of Palestinians were arrested and injured when protests took place in the occupied territories. The commission will look into all the human rights violations leading up to and since April 13, 2021. This is an open-ended investigation and annual reports will be submitted to the UN starting June 2022. And for our final story, we look at the recent spaceflights by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Virgin Atlantic owner Richard Branson. Bezos was aboard his inaugural spaceflight on his company Blue Orion earlier this week. This was just nine days after Branson's Virgin Galactic suborbital spaceflight. The two have now joined Tesla and SpaceX, co-founder Kieron Musk, in a shift towards private space travel and even tourism. With tickets for Virgin Galactic's future flight selling for $250,000, it is important to note that these ventures have been heavily reliant on public funds. SpaceX received nearly $4.9 billion in government subsidies. Bezos had also applied for a $10 billion federal contract earlier this year. While it is passed by the Senate, it is blocked in the Hauser representatives in June. Here is D. Raghunandan to talk more about this new space race. Do you think that these three players are in some sense the future inheritors of what NASA was doing and they will gradually become private players in space at least for the Americans? Yeah, I think at least at present between the three, I think Elon Musk with his SpaceX range of rockets is ahead of the other two in that regard. He's got a more powerful rocket. He's seriously into the launch markets, whereas neither Virgin Galactic nor Blue Origin offer any great services in terms of launches given the low altitudes to which they are able to reach, which will hardly sustain satellites for Earth observation or any of those purposes. But I think the SpaceX range is actually seriously vying for a large part of the NASA subcontracted space market. That is where I think at least Elon Musk is pushing for. He's already now ferrying crew and cargo to the space station. He's also planning to launch his own space station sometime in the future. So he'll have a private space station there, which will then offer services for scientists, for astronauts from the US, from other countries to go spend time in the space station, do scientific experiments, et cetera, as well as space tourists to go and spend longer time in the space station as we spoke about last time when the first space tourist went aboard the Soyuz aircraft to the space station. Way back in 2001, he spent seven days there. So the Virgin Galactic quick trip to space is not really a first in that sense, it's been done before. So Elon Musk can offer that longer stints at the space station. And if his plans work out the way he wants, he would be able to or he's aiming to develop a rocket close to the performance, at least of the Atlas range, which is based on the Russian RD-120 rocket engines that you spoke of. He would at least be able to, his current range of rockets is aiming at roughly twice the power of the Atlas V series, not yet reaching the kind of power that the Saturn V had. But Elon Musk, given his ambitions, he's already announced one of his engines, which he's now kept reserved. He had earlier thought of it as a first stage, booster stage, et cetera, but he's now kept that model purely for what he calls his Mars vision for a long-range launch, either direct to Mars or a hopping space flight to moon and then to Mars. So if he succeeds in those, then I think he would offer these kinds of services to NASA, which then does not have to launch its own rockets and boosters and Musk would provide those for NASA. And if there are other countries interested in paying him tons of money to do this, then he will be able to provide some services for that. So he's got a niche which he's trying to reach to carve himself for launch services in Earth orbit, for geostationary orbits tomorrow, and then for deep space missions, both towards the moon as well as to Mars and his own private space station. So he's got multiple options that he's got, many of which are going to depend on the success of his engines, which are under development, except what he's already got now, which is the Falcon Heavy, which he's using to take people to the space station. That's all we have time for today. We'll be back on Monday with more news from around the world. Until then, keep watching People's Dispatch.