 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. UK government announces strict tier 3 lockdown measures in London. A top-class factory has reported that a worker has died due to COVID-19. More than 5,000 women and children are reported to have been missing in Peru this year. And in our video section, we look at the continuing farmers protests in India. In our first tour, the United Kingdom Government has issued orders to impose tier 3 restrictions in London and surrounding areas starting from December 16. The announcement was made as the country witnessed a record high in new COVID-19 cases on December 14th. Starting from December 16, all restaurants and cafes will be shut down and strict limits will be set on social gatherings. Local councils in and around London had initially opposed the tier 3 measures. Sakef Khan, the mayor of London, stated that the move would be incredibly harmful for business. The lockdown has also raised concerns about potential job losses ahead of Christmas. Trade unions are now demanding that the government boost its efforts to help workers during this period. However, the UK government has also overruled the decision made by local councils to shut down schools as tier 3 measures come into force. The government has stated that keeping schools open is to help compensate for the months-long loss of education during the previous phase of lockdown. The new tier 3 measures are being put in place a few days after the UK began administering the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. However, the British government is set to relax restrictions for a five-day period starting from December 23 to allow households to meet over Christmas. However, a joint statement issued by the British Medical Journal and the Health Service Journal has warned that lifting restrictions may worsen the impact of the third wave. In our next story, a worker at a top-claw factory in Malaysia has died due to COVID-19. The company confirmed the death on December 14 as the Malaysian government lifted a nearly one-month-long lockdown on top-claw factories. More than two dozen factories have been reporting massive outbreaks for more than a month. This has made them the largest COVID-19 cluster in the country. Shutdowns were first announced now, but 23rd, when nearly 5,000 employees were reported to have been infected with the virus. Moreover, a majority of the workers were migrants from South Asia and as such were forced to live in cramped omitries. Yubaraj Khatka, an employee in one of the factories, had revealed the unsafe working and housing conditions in a series of photographs leaked to labour activists in May. He was subsequently fired by Topkar in September just before a massive outbreak was discovered among the workers. Migrant workers have been forced to work in dangerous conditions while companies such as Topclaw have raked in profits. The company recorded an increase of 355% in net profits by June and was controlling over a quarter of the global market. In our next story, we go to Peru where more than 5,100 women and children have been reported missing since January this year. These figures were published and reported by the Peruvian Ombudsman's office on December 12th. The report titled What Happened to Them states that nearly 15 women go missing in Peru every day. In November alone, 190 women and 390 children were reported missing. As compared to the previous month, there was a 20% increase in the disappearances of women and a 12% increase in the disappearances of children. The departments with the highest missing cases include Lima, Arecapa, Calao, Cusco and Pura. The report further pointed to the possible links between the disappearances and other cases of crimes committed against women and children. Out of the 127 cases of femicide reported over the past 11 months, 33 victims had been previously reported missing. The Ombudsman's office had also stated that 188 instances of attempted femicide and 50 cases of death have been reported in 2020 so far. These cases are still under investigation and the precise costs of death are still uncertain. And our final story, we take a look at the ongoing farmers protests in India. There was a hunger strike stage yesterday as the protesters entered its third week and farmers are determined not to retreat until the government listens to the demand. Here is a video on the issue. We've been involved with student activism and then with the Kisan Sabha now almost for 25 years. I have not seen this kind of a movement and the solidarity that has been generated around that movement. The cross-class alliances, the kind of varied number of different organizations coming together. Firstly, the different farmer organizations under the All India Kisan Sangar Support Nation Committee, the Punjab organizations and also the trade unions and different mass organizations, civil society groups, coming out in support of the farmers. This is something I've never seen before. And if you see the farmers from Punjab and Haryana who are mainly at the two Tikri and Singhu borders, also those at the Ghazipur border, they know it is a long haul. They know that this government is bent on pushing the corporate interests but they are also prepared to go take the fight to the finish. A government in the midst of a pandemic with second or third worst in the world with daily cases has a thousand things demanding its attention but it passed these laws. There was a reason for that. Its calculation was that the farming community and the working class are at this moment helpless, cannot hit back, cannot organize. They are cowed down by COVID, pulverized by the pandemic. These guys can't hit back at us. That was a terrible miscalculation. Logically, it was a very, very valid assumption to make but it misfired in that the farmers of Punjab, Haryana and nearby states did not accept that assumption and flouted it. The second thing is that I love this idea of consultation after the fact. Even the government in its supposed discussion is admitting that these amendments, these new laws, were enacted for trade and commerce and any consultation that took place, took place with the biggest of big businesses in these countries. It did that. There was no consultation of farmers. It's committed to WTO and government is committed to Ambani and that is like corporate. So government can't go back from their words to these corporate. That is number one. But that itself shows that as always, this government is always keeping in mind the profit and well-being of the poor. 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.