 Hello and welcome to International Daily Roundup by People's Dispatch where we bring you some of the major news developments from across the globe. Our headlines. COVID-19 cases crossed 860,000. UN Secretary-General clogged with the worst crisis since World War II. Workers around the world protest for labour rights and against government mismanagement. Venezuela rejects US proposal to lift sanctions in exchange for transitional government. Cupid doctors to provide assistance in Caribbean islands. We begin with our daily COVID-19 update. The total number of cases is close to 861,000 with nearly 42,500 deaths. The death toll of the US has also crossed that of China and it is now the country with the third highest number of deaths after Italy and Spain. Yesterday, Spain, France and UK reported the highest number of deaths over the past 24 hours. Italy too reported close to 850 deaths yesterday. Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the pandemic was the most challenging crisis faced by the world since World War II and might bring about an unprecedented economic recession. Three major states of Africa's most populous country, Nigeria, entered into a two-week lockdown beginning on Monday. This was after the second fatality due to COVID-19 was reported in the country. The total number of officially confirmed cases are 139 as of March 31. This is in Nigeria, eight of which were reported yesterday, including three in the state of Osul, three in the federal capital territory of the FCT, one in the state of Lagos and one in the neighboring Ogun state. The lockdown has been imposed on the latter three states. Lagos, the country's commercial hub, has become the epicenter of the disease in the country with a total of 82 out of 139 cases. With over 20 million residents, Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa. Even though the president has announced an advance payment of US dollars 13 for the poorest of the poor, many fear that this ambiguous category leaves out millions, especially the self-employed, who may not be able to acquire daily necessities without pay for two weeks. In the meanwhile, after a nationwide lockdown over the pandemic, workers in Sri Lanka's free trade zones were found to be stranded in boarding houses. According to an industrial report, the union has urged the government to ensure that due wages are paid. Most of the factories, including offices, are shut, except few essential services that are still working. In a letter to the Minister of Labour, the free trade zones and general services employees union requested an immediate intervention. They have also asked the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka to supply food relations to boarding houses as they are in charge of the free trade zones. The union has also demanded that the companies provide wages to their workers. The union found that the boarding houses are not suitable for social distancing and fall short on many counts required for COVID-19 containment measures. Even as the government has transported several workers, many countries need to be left behind. In our in-focus section, here is an interview with NewsClicks Prabir Purkayastha with the US-based media project Breakthrough News. The pandemic so far is affecting the standing, the view of the United States in the global sense. It really does seem that, both from the international response, the contrast between, say, Cuba and China and the assistance and the solidarity they're offering other countries, and what the US has been doing internationally, the gap there seems to be very large. But even just in the sense of the inability of the so-called greatest country on earth by its own reckoning to deal with any of these logistical challenges. Around the world, what do you think this does overall? Maybe it's too hard to know right now to the standing of how the US is viewed and how that affects its ability to act on the world stage. Let's just take a little distance from that question and look at how, for instance, Modi, Bolsonaro and Trump have addressed this issue right now. And I must say that each of them have handled it. It seems differently. Bolsonaro is saying no lockdown. This is crazy. He seems to be Trump three weeks back. Now, he was India's independent, Republic Day guest. So, Modi and he get along very well. Now, Trump, after a denial phase, went on to a phase where he wanted to be a war leader. Now he seems to be vacillating again. He really doesn't know what to do. And his thing is, well, do I collapse the economy or do I try and fight the pandemic? So he seems to be going on where Boris Johnson was about two weeks back. So this is a sort of waffling model, as I would call it. Starting from, shall we say, I'm the strong guy. I'm going to fight this boat that he's on right now. I don't know where he will go in three weeks. But at least while not really addressing the problem in terms of the whole national challenge we face, at least scientifically has understood one thing, that if the pandemic continues, the India's health system will be completely overwhelmed. And we are looking at very, very large numbers of deaths. And that would be politically something for any leader. This is not something they can face. So you do see that each of the countries are having different responses. And a part of it is we don't get the same unified response, shall we say, which we would expect the right-wing figures like Modi, Bolsonaro, Trump, Boris Johnson and all of them to give. So we do see some fractures on that. The other thing that what you raised, what is the role of the United States? I think it's very clear that the United States under Trump has basically said, we do not have a global view of how the US should lead. We have only a view of how we look at different countries and it will be completely dog-in-dog model that whoever can extract benefits from the relationships, they should do so. We are strong. We can browbeat people. We can use an economic cloud or political cloud, military threats and all of that to really try and dominate over the world politically, economically and militarily. So the other part of it, which is that the United States really does not see itself as a leader of the global community, which is the cover it used to have till Mr. Trump became the president. He said that I don't need to lead the global community. They have to follow me and that's their role and my role is to extract the best I can get. Having said that, therefore he advocates the role of the global leader. This is not only what was happening earlier, where he went on this unilateral mode, the European Union doesn't count. They have to pay us for having our basis. The Koreans have to pay us. Everybody has to pay the United States. Now it was more of an extortionist model. If I have my troops to do the job of occupying your countries, you have to pay me for it. And the worst was when Iraq wanted the American troops to go. They said, yeah, you have to pay me first. So the whole model has been of one, which is very different from at least the kind of relationship the US claimed it had with the rest of the world. So in some sense, it's a more in your face imperialism that we have been seeing lately. With this, the problem has come when there's a global challenge, the real global challenge. The United States never recognized, at least by parties and terms, the climate change being a global challenge. So for them, the economy was never a global challenge. It was just everybody had to open itself to the Americans while they could protect their own market. So I think the pandemic proposed a completely different challenge. It's happening after 1918. We are happening really all just about 100 years later. We have a second global pandemic. We didn't have a pandemic all these years. We had threats of having one, but it really never took place. The global system is also being tested as never before. That do we have solidarity? Do we have international cooperation? Or we also in the process of pandemic, do we get the neighbor policies? So shall we say all the equipment that I can get, I shall take to my country and the others can go to hell. What about medicines? Do I say patents need to be protected right now or break the patents? This is something that if you remember the anthrax times, the US had said, break the patents is necessary. We have the legal mechanism to do so, which is there, of course. So all of this are now coming to the fore. And as you can see, the US position has been, I airlift equipment, my protective gear from Italy swabs from Italy at the height of their crisis. I do not offer any support. Neither European Union nor United States provided any support to Italy. China did. Cuba did. Now, those are pictures that you see is automatically doing enormous damage to the US image in the rest of the world. And particularly when Mr. Trump tries to also get the cure vac, the company which is developing a vaccine against COVID-19. These are things which show United States today in a bad light, but I know more than that Eugene. The basic problem is the way the US has dealt with its own epidemic compared to what China has done also shows them up in a very bad light. That even after three months, the test kits were not there. So CDC's test kits failed. After that is taken almost a month. Even now the US testing figures don't look that good compared to what the needs are. So what you are seeing as cases which are actually being identified as COVID cases are really a tip of the iceberg. The figures we have is that in the initial phase, 87% or 84% of the patients were not identified. There were really unidentified cases and even after the whole epidemic in Wuhan was over, the figures that they are now saying is at least 60% of the people were never identified. That's their figures. So that would show that even with extensive testing, they could not identify 60% of the cases if countries like the United States, like India, where we are, if we don't identify or don't do extensive testing, then we have probably a much higher number of people in the population than we see. And the sudden rise of figures in the United States, particularly in New York, shows its extension of testing. That's all that there is to it. So I think the United States comes off not only the way it has behaved internationally, but also the failure it has had on its home front. CDC was respected all over the world till this fiasco when they could not provide the leadership. Now, why it has happened, how it has happened is a different issue. Who is to blame for it is a different issue. But America's credibility to lead the world fades if it is not able to lead its own country. In our next story, we look at protests by workers across the world as governments are failing to combat the virus effectively and ensure enough supplies and amenities. Hundreds of construction workers and street vendors took to the streets of Colombia's capital Bogota to protest shortage of food and other essential items while a national quarantine is in place. The protesters demanded that the district and national governments fulfill their promise of providing financial aid to the country's vulnerable population to survive the quarantine period during the health emergency. The majority of these were daily wages who have become unemployed because of the quarantine. Far right president Ivan Duké decreed a national quarantine from March 24 to April 13 to contain the spread of COVID-19. Similarly, in Tunisia, workers were forced to take to the streets after many were left without work. They demanded that the government provide them adequate support and protection from the economic distress caused by the lockdown. In the US too, delivery and warehousing workers at Whole Foods Market were on strike on March 31. Workers have taken what they call sick out by calling in sick in protest against what they deemed to be inadequate protection for workers during the outbreak. The original plan was to schedule the strike on the international workers that's made first but it has moved ahead because of the spiraling of the outbreak in the US. Delivery and warehousing workers have been consistently demanding an improved policy to protect workers from the coronavirus outbreak and hazard pay. In some places, workers secured limited victories from the management while elsewhere it is not received very well. In our next story, Venezuela has dismissed outright a proposal by the US to end sanctions on the country. According to this offer made by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday, the US would lift sanctions if the constitutionally elected President Nicolas Maduro stepped aside and handed over power to a five-member governing council. Four of the members of this council would be nominated by the opposition, dominated National Assembly, while the fifth would be the interim president and selected by the other four. The interim arrangement would be in place until presidential elections are held. Pompeo said that Juan Guaido, the self-proclaimed president and the instigator of a number of failed coup attempts can contest in these elections. Meanwhile, he added that their goal was to ensure that Maduro, who was actually elected in the last elections in 2018, never rules Venezuela again. Responding to this offer, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Ariasra rubbished it, saying they can say what they want and when they want and how they want. However, the decisions on Venezuela are made in Venezuela with its institutions and constitutions. We are not supervised by the United States. The gripling US sanctions on Venezuela have led to thousands of deaths and have severely affected the fight against COVID-19. In our final story, the French government has invited the services of Cuban doctors in the fight against the COVID-19 outbreak in the Caribbean territories of Martinique, Guadaloupe and French Guadaloupe. The decision was made at the request of the senator from Martinique, Catherine Conquon, and the senator from Guadaloupe, Dominique Teufil. Conquon said that the decision was taken mainly to strengthen their teaching hospitals. The senator also said that they are lacking in certain medical supplies and territories are struggling to bring in doctors from mainland France. States like Nicaragua, Granada, Suriname, Jamaica and Belize also recently benefited from human assistance. That's all we have for 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. Thank you very much.