 Hello and welcome to the International Daily Roundup with People's CIS Patch where we bring you some of the top stories from across the globe. Let's take a look at today's headlines. South Africa ranks fifth in COVID-19 cases as reported infections crossed 400,000. Leftist leaders and writers around the world have called to cancel all deaths. US Federal Watch Rock to investigate violence of federal forces in Portland and D.C. Bolivian elections postponed for a third time. MAS cries foul. We begin with an update on the COVID-19 pandemic. Globally the number of infections are close to 15.7 million cases with around 637,000 fatalities reported as of today afternoon. The number of new cases reported yesterday was around 276,000. In today's in focus section we take a look at South Africa where the government has failed to contain the numbers ever since the virus spread began. The country has reported over 400,000 cases so far, placing it at the fifth place worldwide. Despite over 6,000 fatalities so far and around 13,000 new cases reported daily, the government is pushing to reopen the economy. We talk to Lydia Cain Cross from the People's Health Movement about the situation there. Could we look at, could we talk a bit maybe about what's the situation on the ground right now because we do know that the government has been pushing for reopening and interestingly South Africa was one of the countries which did have a very strong lockdown. So how is it that despite that the number of cases continues to surge? Yeah, I think South Africa, you know, we started off with the approach to the pandemic of a very strict and very hard lockdown, one of the hardest in the world for about five weeks. And during that time there was quite slow transmission of the virus. We think that because it was mainly sort of initially a middle class inoculation into the society and we have a very class segregated society which is the legacy of apartheid and of capitalism. And so for some time the lockdown worked. But the lockdown came at tremendous cost, tremendous cost to primarily the poor and the poor black majority in South Africa. And it revealed the tremendous food insecurity within the country and income insecurity. And the state was not able to rapidly move to fill those gaps. So there was a pressure to lift lockdown both from a conservative sort of capital economy lobby which wanted to get profit going and get factories running. But there was also a pressure from the ground from people who were starving who actually were unable to fulfill their normal livelihoods which was the micro-economy in the townships, you know, the informal economy which had been decimated by the lockdown. And of course what we had needed at that stage was a very strong social support package to come in rapidly to support income security, to support food security, to bring to communities water and food and sanitation and money to allow them to survive the lockdown. But we were unable to make that shift. And so there was this pressure and a fairly uncoordinated opening of the economy. Sort of the strongest lobby pushing would get their sector open. So one of the first areas to open was mining which, you know, makes no sense in terms of a health and epidemiology point of view. And then kind of opening of churches and opening of big sectors of the economy that were not necessarily what we would consider to be essentials for life, you know, which is a more kind of social perspective on what do we need to survive and what can we keep closed in order to keep us safe. The other problem was that we didn't utilize the lockdown as we should have. So the lockdown time was really an opportunity to get two things going. The one is a mass popular education campaign to empower communities to understand the virus, to begin to know how when lockdown lifted, how to move safely in the presence of the virus. And that mass campaign has still not happened and there are pockets of education happening by NGO, social movement, health ourselves, but not nearly enough. And the other thing that needed to happen in that time was mass testing, tracing and quarantine. And our testing capacity really failed us at this time. And because we were not able to escape the logic of the capitalist system and bring together our public and private testing capacity, we still had a two system binary with private sector capacity with a short turnaround times and a few hours to one day or so. And the public sector capacity was just totally overstretched by the numbers. So we got our community health workers out, they screened and they sent for testing and within a few weeks we overwhelmed our testing capacity. So when we started to open up the economy, we didn't have the testing capacity that we needed to be able to test and to separate out those that were sick and take care of them in that way. So here we are. Now we are number five in the world. Our peak is coming later in other countries, but it's coming. And the numbers are always contested and the deaths are contested as well. But we are seeing this in our hospitals. So we are seeing the epidemic in for a long time our hospitals were quiet from a COVID point of view. But certainly started in the Western Cape province and now is moved to our most densely populated province in Kharting. And the hospitals are seeing the influx of patients with COVID symptoms short of break. So it's here. Earlier this week a group of seven prominent leftist leaders and journalists from across the world issued a joint statement demanding the debt cancellation for developing nations. The signatories of the statement state that debt suspension or moratoriums will only stall development instead of laying foundations for it. In April after a global campaign and the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, G20 nations announced postponement of debt servicing till the end of the year. The International Monetary Fund followed suit with partial postponement for the poorest 25 countries. Debt from private lenders however were left to be decided by the individual lenders, highlighting the fact that at a time when they need every penny to invest in their public health care developing countries will be paying 3.9 trillion US dollars for debt servicing. Given their financial health, these countries will be forced to continue harmful austerity measures recommended by the lending agencies. News of several countries such as Lebanon and Argentina defaulting on their loans have been making headlines recently and several other countries on the verge of doing so. These countries would have to deal with the emergencies created by almost a complete halt in the economic activities due to the pandemic. The economic strain can push millions in these countries out of their livelihoods until states step in in a big way and increase social expenditure. The signatories of the letter include Brazil's ex-president Dilma Rousseff, Thomas Isaac, Finance Minister for Kerala in India, Varis Varafocus, Greece's ex-finance minister Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Ariiza, Zambian Socialist Fred Mehmet and Juan Grabois from Argentina along with noted academic Vijay Prasad. Now to the United States as the George Floyd protests continue to grow, the Department of Justice's Watchtower will be investigating federal law enforcement agencies for violence against protesters. DOJ Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz stated on Thursday that his office has opened an investigation on allegations of excessive violence on peaceful protesters in Portland and the US capital Washington DC. The investigation was announced a day after Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler was reported to have been injured by a tear gas firing from federal forces. Wheeler was participating in a demonstration against a deployment of forces by the Donald Trump administration outside the federal courthouse in Portland. After public outreach over deployment of forces to quell protests, local and state administrations in Oregon have been at loggerheads with the Trump administration. Earlier this week, the state attorney general filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security over alleged unlawful detention of protesters, which many activists have claimed to be akin to abductions. Last week on Saturday, federal officers declared a demonstration outside a police association building in Portland to be a riot and used violent means to disperse the crowd. Protesters and journalists at the scene have said that the forces used tear gas and so-called less lethal munitions. In a similar incident earlier this month, President Trump deployed the US National Guard to clear demonstrators outside the White House to make way for a photo op. In Bolivia on Thursday, the Supreme Electoral Court or the TSE postponed the general election schedule for September 6 to October 18 and a second round on November 29, if necessary. The president of the TSE, Salvador Romero, said that the delay was prompted after medical experts warned COVID-19 infections would peak between August and September. This is the third such rescheduling of elections in Bolivia. However, the postponement of the elections was demanded by the right-wing presidential candidate Luis Fernando Camacho and his running mate Jorge Cuerroga. Camacho and Cuerroga were among those who orchestrated the November coup. Morales and his party in the movement towards socialism or the MAS rejected the decision and reminded that only Bolivia's parliament has the authority to approve a change in the date. Morales also alleged that the coup government wants to buy more time to continue persecution of social leaders and MAS candidates. The new decision comes within days of the Genina and his regime filing a lawsuit with the TSE to disqualify the MAS candidate Luis Arce were in alleged violation of electoral laws. Camacho has also threatened that his party would demand that the TSE ban the MAS from the upcoming elections and cancel its legal status. And this is all we have for this episode of the International Daily Roundup. For more such stories and videos visit our website peoplesdispatch.org. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thank you for watching.