 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. 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. Algerian parliamentary elections held amidst widespread boycott, Tunisian protest police brutality against working-class communities, China denounces G7 communique for slander, interference in internal affairs, and survivors and victims of Grenfell fire away justice four years after the tragedy. In our first story, parliamentary elections were held in Algeria on June 12th, and amidst widespread boycott, around 24 million people were eligible to vote and elect 407 members of the National People's Assembly. However, the unofficial voter turnout on Saturday stood at 30.2% the lowest ever recorded in the country. Turnout was below 1% in several places including the Kabila region and the cities of Tiziozu and Bejaio. The highest turnout of 36.1% was reported in Tindu, however, as reported by media organizations, the area mainly houses military barracks and combat units. It had been called by the Algeria anti-government-Hirag protest movement. Since 2019, protesters have been demanding a systemic change to the country's political system. This includes the inter-corruption, economic reforms, and an end to the military's influence on the government. The movement forced former long-time president Abdulaziz Boutaflika to resign in 2019. This is the second election boycotted by the Hirag protesters. Incumbent president Abdul Majid Tabune himself came to power in 2019 with an election with just a 40% voter turnout. Saturday's election was held following months of repression and violence against Hirag protesters. The government has also enforced a ban on unauthorized protests. As per local reports, around 6,200 people have been arrested during the weekly Hirag marches since February. Over 226 political activists are currently imprisoned. The police have also targeted journalists covering the protests in several national and international news channels have been blocked. Seven activists and opposition figure Karim Tabu were arrested on June 10. Tabu and prominent journalists Khalid Rarani and Esan Al-Qadi were released from detention on June 12. Hirag protesters have stated they will boycott elections as long as candidates have ties to the Boutaflika administration. President Tabune had held a referendum on an amended constitution in 2020, which saw a turnout of only 25%. Hundreds of people took to the streets of Tunisia's capital on June 12 for a fourth successive day of protest. Andres began following news of the custodial death of a man on June 8. As per local reports, the victim had been arrested and suspicions that he was dealing drugs. The Tunisian League of Human Rights stated that he was killed in suspicious circumstances. His family has accused the police of beating him to death. While an inquiry has already been opened, authorities have already denied that any physical abuse took place. Left-wing activists and people from working-class areas held a protest outside the Interior Ministry in Tunis on Saturday. Also present were the mothers of three other people who had died in police custody over the past three years. Among them was a mother of 19-year-old Omar Labd Labidi who died in 2018. Protesters were also held in the Hsiddhi-Haseen area where people threw chairs, water bottles and sticks at the police. Forces then deployed tear gas and arrested several protesters. Outrage grew following footage showing plainclothes police beating an underage boy who was naked. The incident was also reported from the Hsiddhi-Haseen area. The officers involved have been arrested. The Tunisian League for Human Rights denounced the violence as an attempt to silence protests. The organization has reportedly received over 700 complaints of police violence in detention centres or while transporting detainees. Rights abuses have by police have continued almost a decade after the 2011 revolution that overthrew President Zainab bin Ali. We now go to the G7 summit where the countries have issued a joint communique following the three-day meeting held in the UK. Starting June 11, heads of state from the seven countries met in the county of Cornwall. Leaders from India, South Africa, Australia and South Korea were also in attendance. The summit focused on four key policy areas including climate change and COVID-19 pandemic recovery. However, the G7 have also pushed for an increasingly aggressive stance towards China and Russia. The joint communique released on June 13 calls for collective approaches to counter China's policies. These include actions which supposedly undermine fair and transparent operations of the global economy. The G7 have also asked China to cooperate with an investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes the infamous LAAP leak or manmade theory previously floated by the Trump administration. The communique also calls for a free and open Indo-Pacific with regard to relations between mainland China and Taiwan. The Chinese embassy in London has strongly condemned the communique. A statement urges the G7 countries to stop slandering China and stop interfering in its internal affairs. It further states that global decisions can no longer be dictated by a small group of countries. In terms of other issues, the G7 has committed 100 billion dollars per year to poor countries to cut carbon emissions. However, this is long overdue given that rich countries had pledged its amount in 2009 until 2020. The measure is now being put in place to counter China's trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative. The G7 has also pledged to provide 1 billion COVID vaccine doses over the next year. However, this amount fear holds way short of 11 billion doses needed to vaccinate at least 70% of the world. And for our final story, we go to the UK, which has marked four years since the Grenfell Tower tragedy. These two people died after a fire broke out in residential building on June 14, 2017. The fire was caused by a malfunctioning fridge freezer on the fourth floor. However, it soon spread through the building and continued to burn for around 60 hours. It is found that the building's external insulation or cladding had repeatedly failed safety tests. The cladding was the central reason why the fire spread. An ongoing public inquiry has revealed that manufacturers had been aware of the risks posed by the materials used in Grenfell. Since 2017, authorities have found over 120 high-rise buildings fitted with cladding that failed safety tests. Grenfell survivors have condemned delays in inquiry and unsafe housing, still affecting thousands of people. Here is an excerpt from a conversation with rapper and activist Loki on this issue. Now, when we look at how it transpired to have this poisonous cladding put on the side of the building, we cannot look at Grenfell as completely detached from the Kyoto Agreement, because when the British government came out of it, they had an obligation to lower carbon emissions. One of the lobby groups waiting for the British government at that time was Brofoma. They were a group of foam insulation companies who lobbied the British government and persuaded them to not only subsidize them, but support them plastering cladding on residential buildings across the country. The problem was, though, that since Thatcher had taken building regulations, which at the time were 324 pages, and replaced them with about 25 pages, from when building regulations had gone from prescriptive in terms of material to being performance-based, what it meant was that these companies were able to more cheaply get materials onto buildings that turn out to be very dangerous. We also see the privatization of BRE, which was the building research establishment. It is the mechanism through which the British government tests these materials. It was privatized during the Blair years, and the privatization meant that BRE was reliant on money from the insulation industry in order to keep it afloat. So that logic, that neoliberal logic, was active in these different ostensibly institutions of government. Now, when we look at the three manifestations of neoliberalism that led to the fire, we look at, as I said, number one, the council working for private interests. That's local government that changed the choice of cladding from a zinc fire-resistant cladding to an arconic five millimetres of polyethylene cladding, which was chosen in the end. It was called PE-Renabon, but the philosophical basis for the council's disdain for people living in social housing was, as put in this way by a main figure at the council, their belief that social housing embeds disempowerment. They were dealing with this community with a form of managed decline. The idea was to run down the area and then demolish the homes and replace them with more expensive and smaller private properties that could be sold to global capital. These are companies like Celotex who provided the insulation, which was an important part of the fire, along with the arconic cladding. They put on their website in 2011, this company called Celotex, they are a subsidiary of Sangerban. On their website, they put the following words, we have entered government and we are now shaping building regulations to maximize profit to our industry. We even rented out a bright pink bus and plastered it with the words, building regulations are changing, go with Celotex. Now imagine during the inquiry, Sangerban, the parent company of Celotex, actually had the audacity to suggest that those people that died in the tower could have died from pre-existing medical conditions. We also know that Celotex's technical director, a man by the name of Mark Allen, was an advisor on building regulations to the housing minister at the time of the fire, who goes by the name of Sajid Javed. What the inquiry has revealed is that all of these companies knew the material they were using was combustible and were only doing it because they knew that the British regulatory system was adequately penetrated by them and people with interest like them for Britain to be a suitable market. The last point, of course, is austerity. You had a fire brigade that had had 100 million pounds cut from it. The fire doors had not been put in place. Gas pipes were exposed along the stairway. You had a cut for funding for the fire service in the borough by 50%, despite the fact that deaths by fire had increased by 20%. The fire brigade went in with walkie-talkies that didn't work. Also, there was a stay-put policy at work in the fire, meaning that if you were dealing with a building that didn't have flammable cladding on the outside of it, then people should stay put to avoid a stampede and isolate the fire. A previous fire that had taken place at Trelik Tower, which is a stone store from Grenfell, two weeks ago had led to zero casualties, but that's because the outside of the building was brick, not flammable, equivalent of petrol, essentially. Now, that stay-put policy was deemed to have failed by 1.23 am, but it was only changed to a policy of evacuation at 2.37 am. 107 people were still in the building at that point, and only 36 of them got out alive. That's all we have time for today. We'll be back tomorrow with more news from around the world. Until then, keep watching People's Dispatch.