 Hello and welcome to the International Daily Roundup by People's Dispatch, where we bring you some of the major news developments from across the world, our headlines. COVID-19 cases close to 1 million, US continues blame game. Protests break out in the Philippines against government in action. US sends anti-drug boats to Venezuela. Protests break out in Jaffa and Palestine against Israeli high-handedness. We begin with our daily COVID-19 segment. The total number of cases is likely to cross 1 million either today or tomorrow, and some of the worst-hit countries continue to face record death tolls. Yesterday, the US, UK and Spain reported their highest death tolls, the population, in 24 hours. Spain has become the second country with a death toll of over 10,000. Russia also recorded over 750 new cases, raising concerns about the spread of the pandemic there. Meanwhile, the US continued its campaign against China with a confidential intelligence report which made its way to the media. This report says that China has underreported a number of cases. China called these allegations shameless and said that the US should focus instead on saving its own people. In the Philippines, hundreds of residents of Manila's poorest districts took out a protest against a delayed disbursement of relief and aid by the Philippines government. Currently, the country is on nationwide lockdown as enhanced restrictions were put in place earlier this week to contain the spread of the disease. People across the country have complained that they have yet to get any of the benefits of close to 5 billion US dollars worth of income assistance that was sanctioned by Congress more than a week ago. The police forcefully disbursed a demonstration and arrested 20 people. Within hours, the far-righting President Roderico Duterte delivered a shocking response to the protest, calling on the police to shoot them dead for violating government-imposed restrictions. He also accused left-wing activists of supporting unrest. Duterte's response has evoked widespread outrage across the Philippines, with hashtags like Aus Duterte now and relief not arrests trending on social media platforms. Meanwhile, in a major bloat of the US economic war on Iran, European countries have finally bypassed the sanctions to send medical supplies to the country. The instrument in support of trade exchanges or INSTECs is a special purpose vehicle formulated by France, Germany and the United Kingdom in January 2019 to trade with Iran. INSTECs was created after the US withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions. However, the first transaction was only completed on Tuesday when the three countries sent medical supplies and aid to Iran that is also struggling to contain the coronavirus outbreak. In our in-focus section, we look at US foreign policy during this crisis and talk to Prabir Purkhaisar of NewsClick. Hello and welcome to NewsClick's International Roundup. Today we joined by Prabir Purkhaisar and we are going to talk about the global world order and especially US foreign policy as the COVID-19 crisis continues. Thank you Prabir for joining us. Prabir, so over the past few weeks, we've seen a number of curious developments. So on the one hand, we see that the US certain sections of the US establishment are continuing a very strong anti-China line, especially with regard to the number of cases. We saw the report yesterday on Bloomberg where a leaked intelligence report, a so-called leaked intelligence report, said that there were underreported cases. At the same time, we also have negotiations going on between the Trump administration and China. They have been personal protective equipment from China has been brought to the United States. There is a possibility of greater cooperation, at least on this front. So to begin with, especially keeping in mind the previous trade rivalry that had been going on between the two countries, how do we see this phase of US-China negotiations? Well, it marks a welcome change from Trump calling it the Wuhan virus and calling it the Chinese virus, the kind of denification of China that started really from the top echelons of the US government and that includes President Trump himself. The fact that he has dialed it down and particularly because the need for the hospital systems in the US of protective equipment for the hospital staff, there are n number of reports which are now coming out. Hospital staff do not have adequate equipment at risk from COVID-19. They're being asked even to their suffering from infection themselves to come on duty if they're not very sick. And the fact that most of the staff are inadequately prepared with both N95 masks and other protective equipment, as we know, the virus can actually infect you because your eyes are open to the infection, even from hair. So even your hair has to be covered. So Prashant, your beard would be a huge risk under COVID-19. So all of this, if you take into account the fact that huge criticism has come internally of the fact that the hospital system is failing. I have a colleague who was in New Sling, but one half years back, she's a young woman in York right now and she's run up numerous times saying that she has fever, symptoms of COVID-19. All that she has been told is if she has with difficulty, go to the nearest pharmacy, get an inhaler and use that for the time being and whatever medicine you can have for lowering the fever, et cetera, there's no other medicine and we don't have hospital capacity to even test you. So given that kind of condition they are in, it's not surprising that the most critical issue for Trump and his presidency is to save the hospitals themselves because the hospitals don't say, get saved, then the death rate is going to be very high. We have seen yesterday that more than 800 people have died in the United States in one day. So given those numbers, these have now taken over completely from Italy as the worst affected hospitals, I'm not talking of the total number of cases, that particularly in the New York New Jersey area. I think it's clear to President Trump that he has to provide urgently at least protective gear and let's face it, other parts of the world are at the moment of the lockdown and dislocation. China is the only one whose industries have come up and they have surplus ability because the way they ratchet it up the production, particularly for the Wuhan cases, they produce millions of masks in the two months. So therefore they have the ability now to supply the other places also. Therefore the only place an emergency airlifting could take place is a medical equipment with China. So I think Trump was forced to bury the hatchet at least temporarily and therefore asked President Xi for help during the phone conversation they had and this is a temporary lowering of hostilities if you will. I do not know what the long term consequences are but at least some lowering of hostilities, it does not mean that the United States administration and it's what I will call not the deep state but state itself is going to let go of its enmity with China. They do see China as a long term existential threat if not just a competitor and therefore this backing between China and the United States is going to continue. But you will remember about two weeks back the most foreign affairs article which said that though China is very bad we don't like them but United States has no option as of today to work with China regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic and other dislocation to create. So it's both in the United States self-interest as well the interest of the global order that China and the United States jointly now come together to provide global leadership de facto agree that sole hegemony of the world that United States thought it had up to 1990s those days are now finally over. So I think that is this is I would not say that this particular step by President Trump indicates a watershed moment it's more of the immediate crisis to which he's responding and the fact that he needs desperately equipment now to save the US hospitals but we have to see after this immediate crisis is over which can be anything between three to next six months what is the likely you know rear post far or does it go back back to hostilities again. So this is something that we'll have to see. In our next story on Wednesday the United States deployed its patriot missile defense system in Iraq citing repeated attacks on US NATO military bases in the country. This is despite the US having recently withdrawn from three bases in Iraq. One of the patriot missile defense systems was deployed last week to the Anil Asad air base in western Iraq another was deployed to the capital at the base in Erbil the capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish majority region. In our next story the Trump administration has sent more naval warships and aircraft to boost its military outposts in the Caribbean. The move was justified by the US as part of its anti-drug crackdown in the region which it alleges Venezuela to be part of. Recently US federal prosecutors had accused senior Venezuelan leaders and judicial officers of running an illicit drugs cartel. According to reports sources within the administration stated that the US intends to send warships and other military apparatus very close to the shores of Venezuela indicating a possible blockade of the nation. This move to heightened military presence in the region can only escalate tensions. This is in addition to years of brutal sanctions that have seriously affected Venezuela's health system. And our final story hundreds of Palestinian citizens in Jaffa city took to the streets of Venezuela to protest against police high handers in the name of COVID-19 restrictions. The Israeli police responded by firing rubber coated bullets and stun grenades, injuring and arresting at least four of them. People in Jaffa's Ajami neighborhood came out onto the streets in large numbers despite the imposition of the lockdown and restrictions on movement due to the coronavirus infection after a video showing police pulling and pushing some local residents including a woman and issuing tickets of around 5000 shekels or US dollars 1300 was circulated on social media. The incident on the video shows a policeman stopping a teenager and asking for his identification. Police try to arrest him after he fails to produce the identification. Local residents including family members of the boy try to resolve the matter when the police turn violent. Later the police tried to justify the incident quoting quarantine guidelines issued by the Ministry of Health in Israel according to which no person is allowed to go beyond 100 meters of their house. However according to local residents who spoke to Middle East Thai the teenager was not in violation of the rule and the police reaction was a result of a prevalent hostility against minorities in Israel in general and Palestinians in particular. That's all we have in this episode of the International Daily Roundup to know more about these stories visit our website peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on Facebook Twitter Instagram thanks for watching