 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, Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn declared a criminal organization, historic general strike in South Africa sees workers raise issues of job loss and corruption, Palestinian prisoner in dire state after hunger strike of over 70 days, Paraguayan students achieve victorious parliament passes free tuition law and British universities see COVID-19 surge. In our first story, a Greek court on October 7th that's Wednesday delivered a historic judgment convicting members of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party of the murder of Greek musician Paolo Sfisias and many other crimes. The court also declared the party a criminal organization. The case dealing with the murder of the musician in 2013 has been going on since 2015. The court was also hearing cases regarding the attempted murder of migrant fishermen and attacks on leftist activists. And on supporter Georgios Rupakis was found guilty of murdering Paolo Sfisias, 15 others were convicted of conspiracy in the case. The party's leader Nikos Michloliakos and other colleagues including former MPs were convicted of heading a criminal group. Five Golden Dawn members were convicted of the attempted murder of the migrant fishermen and four were convicted of the attempted murder of communist activists of the Palmer Union. 68 defendants were convicted in total. The leaders of the party could face over a decade in prison, the sentences will be announced after a few more days of legal proceedings. I heard of the verdict progressive sections in Greece organized massive mobilizations across the country on Wednesday demanding the imprisonment of the Golden Dawn fascists. Thousands joined rallies in Athens and other cities. 34 year old Paolo Sfisias was murdered in September 2018. The Golden Dawn leadership including its former MPs and carers were widely recognized to be complicit in the murder. In our next story demonstrations and pickets were held in numerous cities and towns across South Africa on Wednesday as part of a historic general strike. Across the country, workers marched to government offices, provincial legislatures, municipalities and police stations to submit memorandums. Corruption, job loss, failure to provide safe transportation during the pandemic and the government's refusal to honor the wage agreement it had signed with public servants are among the specific issues workers raised. The strike action was called by the Congress of South African Trade Unions of Kossatu, a traditional ally of the ruling African National Congress. With a membership of 1.8 million, it's the largest trade union confederation in the country. The strike is also a political challenge to the ANC whose neoliberal policies have been identified as the root cause of the grievances workers are facing. The left wing South African Federation of Trade Unions at SAAF2, which is the second largest federation with a membership of around 800,000 and the third largest federation that is the Federation of Unions of South Africa of Edusa, also joined the action. In the capital city Pretoria, workers represented by Kossatu gathered at Berger's Park and marched to the office of the National Treasury. The treasury had refused to allocate funds needed to finance the pay rise this year. The funds had been promised to public servants in a 2018 wage agreement. In Durban, SAAF2 led a rally first to the office of the public protector and then to the office of the premier of the provincial government of Kossatu Natal. The premier also received other memorandums from Kossatu which also led a separate rally to his office. In Johannesburg, in the business hub of the country, SAAF2's demonstration outside the legislature was joined by its affiliate National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa of Nunsa, which is the single largest trade union in the country. In our next story, Palestinian prisoner Mahir Akhras is in critical condition after being on a hunger strike for more than 70 days against his illegally administrative detention by Israel. Akhras launched his hunger strike shortly after being arrested on July 27th in the Janine district of the occupied West Bank. He has survived only on water since. Doctors at the Kaplan Medical Center in Israel, where Akhras was transferred after his health worsened, are now force-feeding him in an attempt to forcibly end his hunger strike. According to the Palestinian Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Commission, the health of the 49-year-old inmate has severely deteriorated. He is suffering from massive weight loss. He is also suffering from acute headaches, spasms, year problems, extreme fatigue, loss of consciousness, and severe body pain. Following his arrest in July, Akhras was sentenced to administrative detention for four months. This is part of Israel's policy to imprison Palestinians for indefinite periods of time without charge or trial. At the time of the arrest, Israel's Domestic Intelligence Agency, Shin Bet, had said that he was suspected of being an active member of the Islamic Jihad militant group, although they did not provide any evidence for the same. His wife, Hauer, has rejected his allegation, saying that her husband only campaigned for the human rights of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody. He has been arrested and imprisoned by Israeli security forces multiple times in the past. In our next story, students in Paraguay won a major victory when the Chamber of Deputies approved the zero tuition fee bill that establishes free admission and for undergraduate courses in all public universities and higher education institutes dependent on the state. The students have been protesting for this from August. To this law, the students who have previously studied in a public school or institution will be exempted from paying admission fee, tuition fee, and exam fee among others. However, students who have studied in private schools and want to pursue undergraduate courses in public universities will be exempted from this benefit. Both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate approved the bill in the past few months. On September 24th, the Chamber of Senators approved the detailed bill but proposed certain modifications. Yesterday, those modifications were approved in the lower house and now the bill will go to the head of state for president. Student organizations such as the Coordination of National Universities of the National University of Asuncion, the National Federation of Secondary Students, and others celebrated the decision and demanded that President Mario Abdo Benitez immediately approve the law. And finally, continuing with the education sector, this time in the UK, we bring you and I interview with activists of the Young Communists League on the recent rise in cases of COVID-19 in British universities. So the first thing I wanted to ask was could you first talk right now about what's happening in some of the major universities, especially where a lot of cases are being recorded, we've seen universities reporting hundreds of cases, 200, 400, etc. So could you talk about what's happening on the ground right now, what are the students feeling, what's happening? From what I know is that a lot of the students who have gone into halls have basically been trapped there with people who have tested positive which then you know will spread it to them and you're right the numbers are up in the hundreds, I think Sheffield has recently reported 800 cases like in the last you know I think we've been open for two, three weeks and yeah it's just you know they've been not allowed to go out, they're not allowed to use the washing machines that are in the buildings that they're in and they are having no financial support either from the unions or the government. Yeah just to go off of that point sort of two major hotspots for the outbreaks have been Scotland and Manchester and as you say Sheffield more recently, Scotland as they have separate government ministers they have taken a slightly different approach and no students have been allowed out in bars and pubs and all I believe all of the university halls that have coronavirus outbreaks are being locked down and those students might not even might face the threat of not even being allowed to go home for Christmas. So quite a horrible threat you know say in Manchester I know people that have got the virus from Manchester from universities in Manchester and it's these urban areas that the virus has been allowed to spread through government negligence and possibly I don't know if we're going to talk about this later but possibly the reasoning just being towards appeasing the landlords and the student accommodation providers who want the rent from the students. Absolutely yeah that is a different important issue we'll come to but first of all to maybe go a bit back and talk about the reopening itself so could you talk a bit about the context in which the universities having classes reopen that is physical classes to reopen what was the YCL's position then on the issue and what were the kinds of necessary precautions taken we'll talk a bit about that. So yes the government was adamant that the schools and universities were going back and it was sort of given the impression at first that oh it'd be online but perhaps maybe we'd get some in sort of face-to-face learning so that there was a reasoning why these students would want to come back to campus but as soon as students are back on campus it's been all online learning from my experience I'm not sure about Rosie's but for most students across universities in the UK it's been all online learning which is the appropriate thing to do absolutely but did it need university students to be moving to halls for this I'm not so sure but yeah the certainly the the approach to online learning has been a good one it's it's certainly a decrease in the in the quality of learning that we've had in previous years it's been face-to-face it's just not the same we're not paying for the same quality of teaching and this needs to be recognised as well. Just to go off what Jess said there with the online learning obviously is the best thing that we can have at the moment it is brilliant but there is so much inaccessibility with it as well because there are a lot of students who you know the university will say well my university has given a statement of you must have at least a computer at least this software and this and that and for me it's led the people dropping out of my course and out of uni because they just can't like they don't have the financial ability to be able to get those materials for it. 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.