 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. Thousands of students in Thailand demand resignation of Prime Minister and reforms to the monarchy. Russia announces new vaccine. What does this imply? Algeria sentences journalist Khalid Daredi to three years in prison for Facebook posts. Protests in Sudan's Khartoum demand an end to militia violence in Darfur and trade union secures reinstatement of government workers in Myanmar. We begin with Thailand where an estimated 4,000 students in the capital, Bangkok, hit the streets at Thammasar University. This was part of a series of protests by students in and around Bangkok. Students have been demanding the resignation of the junta-installed government of Prime Minister Prayod Chanochha and reforms to the powers of the monarchy. The demonstration is the largest such to be held by students in recent times. Some students also raised the issue of reforming the monarchy. The Thai constitution has strict laws that criminalize criticism of the monarchy with imprisonment. Those accused of it often face long pretrial detentions and are often denied bail. Ultra nationalists and pro-hunter groups have often used the law to persecute democracy advocates, trade unionists and social activists. A similar demonstration was also held on Monday, August 10th at Thammasar, where students released a charter of demands calling for wide-ranging reforms to the powers and privileges of the monarchy. The demonstrations at Thammasar followed a large protest on Saturday, August 8th when thousands hit the Patumans' skywalk in Bangkok to protest the arrest of student leaders under charges of criticizing the royalty. Students were also joined by pro-democracy advocates and human rights activists and also those who raised issues of attacks on labor and trade unions. They also called for the government to address growing gender discrimination in the country. We move to an update on the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 20.1 million cases has been recorded so far globally. The total number of deaths has increased to 737,000. Meanwhile, Russia announced that industrial production will begin on a new vaccine called Sputnik 5. There have been a lot of questions on the vaccine. We talked to Dr. Satish Dhrath on the implications of this announcement. Could you take us through what exactly has been the development process around this and also the announcement itself because there is of course a geopolitical issue but keeping strictly sticking to the medical aspect and the scientific aspect of it. How do you parse this announcement? So, we keep saying what the Russians have been doing but more properly what the Gamalaya Institute in Moscow has been doing is pretty much what a couple of dozen other laboratories and groups across the world have been doing. There is certainly a Chinese vaccine candidate, there is certainly the Oxford vaccine candidate. All of these are one of say five or six different vaccine technologies and this particular set of technologies as far as I can tell and we'll come back to why I'm being cautious about this but as far as I can tell this particular technology is akin to one of the Chinese technologies I think Sinovac or one of them, no Sinovac and to the Oxford vaccine technology in the sense that it uses a basic virus into which the SARS-CoV-2 target has been inserted. So, you take a different virus, a virus that doesn't cause disease but into that virus you insert the information for the SARS-CoV-2 target that you want to immunize with and then you basically you infect people with this virus. Now, since the virus doesn't cause illness, infect people shouldn't really cause harm and both the Chinese and the Oxford vaccine and I think one of the vaccine candidate have all shown that while there are some redness and fever kind of effects, there is no serious adverse effect to this category of vaccine delivery system. So, the Gamalai Institute has made apparently therefore let me use the technical word an adenoviral vector based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate. They also seem to have, like everybody else has, registered after animal experiments, human trials, phase one clinical trials that should show safety in a small number of people, phase two clinical trials that should establish whether the vaccine generates an immune response, primarily an antibody response in humans in a slightly larger number of normal people. As far as anybody can tell, these two trials at least as far as documentation can be passed. Have not yet been completed. Leave alone their data being analyzed and released more properly published in peer reviewed fashion but even released. None of that seems to have happened. Instead, and this is where the major departure comes, we have the press conference and the show that was put on yesterday or yesterday. So, now, this is an enormous departure. Many of us have been thinking and saying ever since the pandemic started that it's possible that sheer anxiety, desperation and nativist nationalist competitiveness coupled to the consequences of neoliberal capitalism as behaving as though the world is a competitive marketplace. All of these together are going to put enormous pressure on regulatory, on drug and vaccine regulatory authorities which are nation specific to take shortcuts for vaccine approval. This one seems to be the first such example. An Algerian quote on Monday sent this journalist Khalid Doreini to three years in prison. He was charged with inciting an unarmed gathering and endangering national unity. The charges were based on his Facebook posts. He was held in detention since March 29 while awaiting trial which commenced on August 3rd. The verdict is being widely condemned by rights groups who compare the current situation to the rule of deposed president Abdul Aziz Bouteflika. Doreini has reportedly been targeted for his coverage of the Iraq movement that began in February last year against the Bouteflika government. Protesters have continued to demand political reforms in the country and have carried forward the movement which is still ongoing. The Algerian quote which sentenced Doreini to three years in prison also ordered him to pay a fine of 50,000 Algerian dinars which is approximately 400 US dollars. The two co-accused in the trial who were members of the Iraq movement were also sentenced to two years in prison. As part of the evidence the prosecution used one of his Facebook posts in which he stated that conditions remain unchanged since the election of Abdul Majid Taboneh as president. The journalists had also called in political parties on the Iraq movement to continue the agitation. Following the verdict, supporters of Khalid Doreini including the Iraq movement members as well as dozens of fellow journalists demonstrated outside the courthouse. They denounced a sham trial and called for his release. In our next story earlier this week residents of the Sudanese capital Khartoum who hailed from the south Darfur state held a demonstration outside the offices of the transitional government. This was in protest against the transitional government's failure to protect the people of Darfur from attacks by the pro-government militia. These attacks left dozens dead and thousands displaced in the Darfur region. The Nadorese militia, the rapid support forces or the RSF, is reportedly behind the violence in the south and west Darfur states. The RSF is also accused of being behind separate incidents of violence in the South Kordofan state. In a memorandum to Prime Minister Abdul Lahumdok, the protesters demanded relief for the displaced and disarmament of the militias. The protesters insisted that peace be restored before the onset of the agricultural season. The protesters further demanded the release of political prisoners. Most of these political prisoners are members of resistance committees who are organized to the neighborhood level. These committees coordinated the mass uprisings that led to the Sudanese revolution which overthrew dictator Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. The committee members have allegedly been arrested in a series of crackdowns since July 29th by the RSF. The RSF is a militia primarily comprising Janjaveed Arab tribesmen formed during Omar al-Bashir's rule. It stands accused of genocide in Darfur and other regions populated largely by non-Arab groups. It has been deployed alongside the official armed forces and the UN and African Union peacekeeping forces in the troubled regions. And finally, we go to Myanmar, where in Yangon, several government workers were reinstated this week after direct intervention from the Industrial Workers Federation of Myanmar or the IWFM. The union had been in negotiations with Camp Kain Manufacturing and the Futeli government factory for the reinstatement of workers who were fired by them during the pandemic. The COVID-19 outbreak triggered large-scale layoffs in Myanmar with government industry workers being the most affected. As for an agreement reached between the IWFM and Camp Kain Manufacturing, 57 workers including five local union leaders would be reinstated with full-paying benefits, industrial, global reported. Camp Kain had justified the terminations on the ground of COVID-19. However, IWFM has accused Camp Kain of union busting as fresh hires were made after the dismissal of its members in March. The IWFM also secured reinstatement with full compensation for 111 workers of the Futeli government factory, who were terminated during the lockdown in March and April. Since February, 44 government factories have been shut down in Myanmar, resulting in the loss of over 22,000 jobs. Myanmar's government industry is the worst affected by the pandemic after Cambodia, due to factories relying heavily on raw material imports from China. That's all we have time for today. We'll be back tomorrow with more news developments from around the world. Until then, keep watching People's Dispatch.