 Hello and welcome to the International Daily Roundup by People's Dispatch where we bring you major news developments from across the world. Our headlines. Mickey Leakes founder Julian Assange's extradition trial begins, survey points to MAS lead in upcoming Bolivian elections, demonstrations take place in Budapest over alleged takeover of University by Orban, Palestine to cut ties with countries at open embassies in Jerusalem, and India now has its second highest number of COVID-19 cases. We begin with the trial of Julian Assange, whose extradition hearing resumed on Monday in the context of a fresh indictment that is filed only a few weeks ago and his additional allegations. The key aspects of today's hearing had to do with this fresh indictment that was announced by the US in July and in August. The defense feels that these allegations regarding Assange's conduct have been framed in such a way that he could still be extradited based on them, even if the charge of conspiring with Chelsea Manning is rejected. Defense tried to get these new allegations removed, and when that failed it tried to seek an adjournment. However, the defense's argument was that the nature of these new allegations required more time to prepare. Earlier, Judge Bredser also excluded over 40 applicants from remote access for the trial. This includes journalist John Pilger, the representative of Amnesty International. Meanwhile, the petition drafted by reporters without borders to the British government to dismiss the US extradition request was turned away by the Prime Minister's office. The petition was signed by more than 80,000 activists and groups. Demonstrations were also held outside the 10 Downing Street in Old Berry by Assange supporters condemning the extradition attempt and the repression of journalists world over. The trial may last up to 3 weeks. In our next story, in Bolivia, a recent survey conducted by a company suggests that the movement towards socialism or the MAS, the party of former president Eva Morales and its candidate Luis Arce is likely to get 26.2% of the intended votes for the upcoming elections in Bolivia. This is 9 points more than his rival Carlos Mesa, who is 17.1%. The survey also shows that 32% of those interviewed remain undecided. With just over 10% support, the current leader of the coup regime, Johnny Nanes, who came to power following that coup, came third in the survey. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal had announced that the campaigns for the elections would start on Sunday. In July, another study by the Latin America Strategic Center for Geopolitics had also pointed to the overwhelming support for the MAS in the coming elections. The survey had prompted leading indigenous Aymara Bolivian activists to raise concerns about the intensifying crackdown from the coup regime on MAS activists. Candidates can begin their political campaigns in accordance with the health authorities' recommendations to avoid the spread of COVID-19 in the country. We now go to Hungary where thousands of people have come out in demonstrations across the capital Budapest, protesting the takeover of a top arts university by the country's nationalist government. The protests are being held over concerns of a new board at the University of Theater and Film Arts led by an ally of Prime Minister Viktorovan. The university is among the institutions which are said to be transferred to foundations where the board of directors will be selected by the government. The government claims that a move aims at making universities financially independent of the state and more competitive. However, protesters have alleged that this is just a way to control these institutions. On Friday, the students of the university protested against a move by blockading themselves inside the university building and sealing off the main entrance with red and white hazard tape. In 2019, the Central European University in Budapest moved most of its courses to Vienna, claiming that it could no longer operate as a free institution in the Hungarian capital. On Sunday, the Palestine Liberation Organization Secretary-General Saab Erakat said that the Palestine will break relationships with any country that moves or opens its embassy in Jerusalem. The statement was made in the backdrop of Serbia and Kosovo, deciding to move their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem following separate discussions with the U.S. on Friday. In a statement, Erakat said that they urged all nations to respect international law, including Security Council resolutions 478 and 2334. U.N. Security Council resolution 478, which was adopted on August 20, 1980, prohibits countries from establishing diplomatic missions in the occupied territories of Jerusalem. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in the aftermath of the 1967 war and formalized the move in 1980. Most of the international community has rejected Israel's annexation and refused to recognize Jerusalem as the capital. We now go to Sudan, where on Thursday the Prime Minister of the interim government Abdullah Hamdoq and Abdul Aziz Al-Hiru, the leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement North, which is a tribal group, signed a declaration that ends 30 years of Islamic rule in the country. The document states, The Sudanese Prime Minister has stated that they believe separating religion from the state is necessary to address the country's conflicts. Sudan's 45 million population is approximately 91% Muslim and 6% Christian. The country adopted Islamic law in 1989 following Omar al-Bashir's seizure of power. He implemented a hardline interpretation of Islamic law through which he wanted to make Sudan the vanguard of the Islamic world. And finally, in today's COVID-19 update, the total number of cases reported worldwide crossed 26.9 million with a total number of deaths crossing 880,000. With the highest daily spike reported in any country since the beginning of the pandemic, India overtook Brazil to become the second most infected country. On Sunday, India saw its second consecutive day in which over 90,000 cases were reported. India has crossed 4.2 million cases in total. Newsweek's Prabir Purkayasar talks about the situation in the country. India, on the other hand, which had a very draconian lockdown, it's interesting, it didn't serve any purpose, except of course, destroying the productive forces of the economy. So, you don't see in India any impact of the lockdown because it was premature, there was no preparedness for the lockdown. That is, it explains why India's had the biggest hit to the economy of any of the large economies. If you take the large 20 economies of the world, what's called the G20, you will find India's GDP drop is the sharpest. That's also because India made no preparation for the lockdown, imposed a lockdown without any warning. And that is why the economy took a big hit. At that time, when the lockdown was imposed, India had only about 600 odd cases. So it is also a completely premature lockdown in the belief that we'll be able to crush the epidemic completely. What they didn't realize is that in order to do that, you need really a good system by which you can identify who are the people infected. At that stage, people who are really coming in from outside who are infected and interdict them, stop the disease further by isolating them, quarantining them and of course treating them and also completely contact tracing. It was manageable at that stage without such a draconian lockdown. Instead of that, the lockdown meant that we focused on the other hand, how to stop people from meeting each other, how to impose a lockdown, how to get food to people. All the paraphernalia which a lockdown requires for a state to deliver, focus was really on that. So instead of really the focus being on what should have been, which is how at the initial stage to look at the people who are coming from outside who could be infected and stopping that. And don't forget, India has close connections to West Asia. It has close connections to Southeast Asia and also to the United States and Europe. So you had various sources of people coming in, not many from China. So these were the sources to which infections did arrive. And if you could have focused on that in the first three months, maybe the economy would not have taken such a big hit. Instead of that, we closed the economy down. It didn't help. The economy not only suffered, but even the quarantining of the people, all those measures failed because at the end of it, people had to go home to eat, eat. They had families to survive. So essentially the lockdown became porous. And therefore the purpose of the lockdown, when the infection started to increase, that is the time and the purpose of the lockdown was defeated. As a consequence, the lockdown served very little purpose in terms of stopping the epidemic. And now we are in various phases of unlock down. We are calling it the unlock down four, by which even the metros will start, for instance, in Delhi. Once we do that, you can see the epidemic which Delhi had started to come down again going up. So you are starting to see a repeat search after the various measures were taken that it came down. It's also starting to go up again. So it simply shows that there does not seem to be a thinking in the government, how to combine health, economy, society, all of it together. And the three months, four months of the lockdown, unlock down, as we call it, sequence that we have built. In this, the health stretch system, which needed to be strengthened, does not seem to have been strengthened. We find, for instance, ventilators not available in district towns, in other states, which are relatively economically poorer. In those places, these things don't seem to be there. So the strengthening of the public health system, which should have been attempted in this period, was also not possible because you are under a lockdown. That's all your time for today. We'll be back tomorrow with more news developments from the world. Until then, keep watching People's Dispatch.