 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. Trump nominee for US Supreme Court confirmed just eight days ahead of election. Demonstrations mark hundred days since the forced disappearance of Garifuna leaders in Honduras. UN demands independent investigation into Palestinian teenager's death. China takes action against US companies for arms trade with Taiwan. And the United States imposes yet another fresh set of sanctions on Iran. In our first story, in one of the most controversial Supreme Court appointments to be held this election season, the United States Senate has confirmed the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court. In a vote held in the Republican Party-controlled Senate on Monday, Barrett was confirmed by 52-48 division of votes, which took place almost entirely on partisan lines. She took her first oath for the post of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court just hours after the voting. With election day just eight days ahead away, Barrett's confirmation is the closest it has been to a presidential election in US history. With this, the Donald Trump administration and the Republican Party have decisively tilted the liberal conservative balance of the court. Conservatives now constitute six of the nine seats in the current court, three of whom, including Barrett, were confirmed under the current administration. The Democratic Party, which voted against her confirmation, has vehemently opposed the nomination. The opposition primarily stemmed from its influence on a possibly contested election outcome, and other prominent cases on social justice issues and federal welfare schemes. The post of a US Supreme Court judge is not a 10-year limited position. This means that they serve until they are impeached, retired, on their own accord, or die. While Supreme Court judges do not officially hold partisan positions, at least officially, they are often identified by their ideological leanings. Amy Coney Barrett's nomination came barely a week after the death of liberal inclined Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was appointed by the Bill Clinton administration in 1993. In recent presidential elections, the Supreme Court has often been approached by dissenting candidates over disputes and counting. This year, postal ballots have become a major point of contention between the Democrats and the Republicans. Nearly 64.7 million people have already voted through these postal ballots and early voting, which is already 6 million more than the early voting numbers in 2016. Of these, close to 44.8 million votes were sent by post. Already, concerns have been raised over the capacity of the US Postal Service to deliver all the ballots on time, with fears that more than 1 million ballots will not be done so. In the counting dispute in the 2000 presidential election, the Supreme Court controversially shut down a recount process in the state of Florida, where Republican candidate George Bush won by a wafer in majority of around 500 votes. A similar situation of a close contest is expected in the upcoming elections on November 3rd, and many observers have estimated that if a number of uncounted ballots grows, it could affect the outcome in favor of Trump. The Supreme Court also has two highly anticipated cases in its upcoming session that begins in November. One deals with a matter of discrimination against the LGBTQ plus community in a lawsuit filed by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese in Philadelphia. This is against city officials who barred them from participating in foster care programs because they barred same-sex couples as foster parents. The other is concerning the constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act, also called Obamacare. In our next story, Monday marked the 100th day since the forced disappearance of five young members of the Garifuna community in Honduras. These men were kidnapped by heavily armed men dressed in police and military uniforms. The incident took place on July 18th in Trifuno de la Cruz, a small town on Honduras' Caribbean coast. To mark the occasion, a small group of people, mainly women, demonstrated in the town demanding the safe return of the abducted members of their community. Various national and international social movements also demanded their safe return and also asked the national government of Honduras investigate the case and bring the perpetrators to justice. Four of the five men abducted from their homes were part of the fraternal black organization of Honduras or the OFRA NEH, and they had been working in defense of their ancestral land. The OFRA NEH is a grassroots organization that works with afro-descendant and indigenous Garifuna community in Honduras. Since the disappearance of its members, the OFRA NEH has denounced the government's lack of will to find the whereabouts of the young men. This has also increased the suspicion among the community of the involvement of the Honduran state in the crime. The organization had earlier denounced the right-wing government of President Juan Orlando Hernandez for presenting inconsistencies in the reports on the case before the Inter-American Human Rights Court. The organization rejected the government's disinformation campaign waged on social media with the aim of discrediting the disappeared by linking them to drug trafficking. Last week, media Miranda, the coordinator of the organization, denounced its seven officials, the National Armed Forces, arrived in the community of Santa Fe in the Colón department. These armed forces members proceeded to inquire about the leader of the recovery of Juan Ile's ancestral territory, Nilfóor Yosel Flores. Miranda wondered the organization and the community would hold the government responsible for what might happen to Flores. We now move on to the United Nations which demanded a fair and independent investigation into the death of a Palestinian teenager who was reportedly beaten to death by Israeli soldiers on Sunday. The UN Special Envoy to the Middle East, Nikolai Mladenov, while speaking at the UN Security Council said that they were conflicting claims about the circumstances and cause of the death. He demanded a prompt and independent investigation into the events that led to the death of the boy. The British Council in occupied Jerusalem also called on Israel to thoroughly investigate the Palestinian teenager's death. According to several eyewitnesses, 18-year-old Amir Abdul Rahman Snowbar was caught up in a clash with Israeli soldiers while they were raiding the Palestinian village of Tormuz, Aya, in the north of Ramallah. He was singled out and beaten mercilessly for around 10 minutes by several Israeli soldiers. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital in Ramallah. Now the Israeli military has been quick to say that the teenager's death was because of the fact that he was trying to escape being caught by the soldiers and that he fell and hit his head. This has however been contradicted by several bruise marks on his neck, chest and upper body, which doctors have identified as deliberate, targeted blows intended to cause injury. The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Palestinian expatriates have demanded a formation of an international commission of inquiry to carry out investigations into the incident. In a statement released on Sunday, the ministry made it clear that this crime reflects the extent of brutality and fascism that controls the police, security and military mentality of the ruling establishment. The Foreign Ministry also called on the International Criminal Code to take cognizance of the case and excise its authority to bring justice to the family of the victim. In our next story on Monday, the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian announced that China had imposed sanctions on U.S. based companies, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Defense and Raytheon. This was for a pre-agreement to sell arms to Taiwan. Last week, the spokesperson stated that China would provide a legitimate response after the U.S. State Department announced its intention to sell three lots of weapons to Taiwan. The weapons included SLAM, ER missiles and several high mobility artillery rocket systems, which is a multiple lightweight missile delivery system. China has demanded that the U.S. stop selling arms to Taiwan and cut military ties with the government in Taipei. The exact details of the sanctions have not been announced yet, but a spokesman pointed out that this will apply to U.S. individuals and entities that play a role in arms sales. In the past year, President Donald Trump's administration has moved to strengthen ties with Taiwan, including increasing arms sales and facilitating high-level meetings between U.S. and Taiwanese officials. This is the second time that China has imposed sanctions on U.S. arms company Lockheed Martin. The first time was in July when it reached a pre-agreement with Taiwan for U.S. dollars 620 million to repair PAC-3 missiles. And continuing with the U.S., on Monday, moving forward with its maximum pressure campaign, the U.S. Treasury Department issued a fresh round of sanctions on Iran's petroleum sector. The sanctions mostly target entities and individuals in the sector, including the Minister of Petroleum. Some of the entities in the list are Iran's Ministry of Petroleum, the National Iranian Tanker Company, and the National Iranian Oil Company. According to the U.S. Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnukin, the revenue generated by these companies is used to fund the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' Kutz Force. The sanctions on the petroleum industry companies are considered to be a reaction to the rise in Iranian oil exports in recent months, as per the estimates by tanker Tracker. This is despite multiple U.S. sanctions. The U.S. sanctioned Iranian oil export first in 2018 in May, after it unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, which was signed by the Barack Obama administration in 2015. The Iranian Petroleum Ministry in response to the new sanctions said that no amount of pressure can make the country yield to the U.S. The U.S. wants to renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal, which is also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Iran and the other signatories, which are China, Russia, the U.K., France, and Germany, have refused to do so. The Iranian Petroleum Minister has called the fresh sanctions a sign of failure of the U.S. so-called maximum pressure campaign. Iran's Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif called the fresh sanctions an overused economic warfare aspect against Iran. The foreign oil revenue due to the fall in exports has greatly hampered the Iranian economy and its ability to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak in the country. The U.S. has refused to heed international demands to end sanctions during the pandemic, thus making fighting against COVID-19 Iran more difficult. Instead, the U.S. has imposed more sanctions on Iran during the last few months. Due to the fear of secondary sanctions, more suppliers and banks have stopped doing business with Iran. This has led to a massive shortage of essential medical supplies in the country. 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.