 Hello and welcome to International Daily Roundup by People's Dispatch, where we bring you major news developments from around the world. Our headlines? Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza hours after far-right flagged march in Jerusalem. NSA whistleblower reality winner released from prison in the US. COVID-19 cases across 5 million in Africa's vaccination rate stays below 1%. US-based NOVAX reports 90% efficacy of COVID vaccine in late-stage trials. In our first story, Israel launched several airstrikes on the besieged Gaza Strip in the early hours of June 16, that's Wednesday. The attacks targeted Gaza City and areas near the southern town of Canunis. While no casualties have been reported, the attacks have violated the ceasefire announced on May 20. Israeli forces claimed that the airstrikes were in response to the launching of incendiary balloons from Gaza. These balloons reportedly caused fires in some fields in southern Israel. The latest attacks come just weeks after Israel's 11-day bombing of Gaza. The attacks killed around 256 Palestinians and injured nearly 2,000. Hundreds of people across Gaza held a protest against Israel's occupation and violence in East Jerusalem on Tuesday. A day of rage was also observed in the occupied West Bank, with protests held in several areas. These actions were in response to the far-right Zionist flagged march held in Jerusalem. The annual march culminates Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem during the 1967 war. Israeli paramilitary forces set up checkpoints and blockades sealing off several areas in the city. Human barriers were also set up outside the Damascus Gate to prevent Palestinian protesters from gathering. Occupation forces proceeded to attack Palestinians with rubber bullets and stun grenades injuring around 33. According to the Red Crescent, at least three people have been hospitalized. Another 17 protesters were also arrested. Meanwhile, Zionist marches could be heard chanting, Death to Arabs and May Your Village Burn. Tuesday's march took place as Palestinians in the occupied East Jerusalem faced forced evictions and demolitions. The Israeli Supreme Court has announced that a hearing on the case of four families from Sheikh Jarrah will be held on August 2. In our next story, whistleblower and former U.S. intelligence specialist reality winner was released from prison on June 14. Winner was first arrested on June 3, 2017 when she was working as a contractor for the National Security Agency. She was accused of leaking a classified document which showed how Russian hackers had reportedly tried to breach a voting software supplier. It also contained details of an email phishing operation targeting election officials. She was arrested hours after the document was published by a media organization, The Intercept. The organization has been heavily criticized for the manner in which the documents were published. Winner was the first person to be charged under the SPNR Jack by the Trump administration. She pled guilty to one count of transmitting national security information and was sentenced to 63 months in prison. This is the longest sentence ever imposed for leaking government information to the news. Following a release on Monday, Winner remains in custody and has been transferred to a residential re-entry program. According to her attorney, she has been released on grounds of good behavior while incarcerated. She has been banned from making public statements or appearances. Meanwhile, her family has continued to demand that her sentence be commuted. Activists have drawn attention to other whistleblowers being prosecuted under the SPNR Jack, including Edward Snowden, Daniel Hale and Julian Assange. In our next story, the total number of COVID-19 cases across African countries has crossed 5 million as of June 15th. However, only 0.79% of the continents over 1.3 billion people have been fully vaccinated. As per the Africa Centers for Disease Control, over 70% of the continent's vaccine supply has already been exhausted. Vaccine rollout in Africa has been very limited with first doses administered to only about 2.37% of the population. Tanzania, Burundi, Eritrea and the Saravi Republic have not even received any vaccines at all. Another 11 countries do not have enough supplies to cover even 1% of their population. Out of the limited supplies that are available, tens of thousands of doses donated by rich countries have gone to waste. These doses did not have enough time left before expiring for countries with limited infrastructure to administer them. 44 African countries have received vaccines through COVAX. However, the initiative itself has been facing major supply shortages. The 3.94 million doses supplied to Nigeria under COVAX will barely cover 0.96% of its population. The over 167,000 cases registered in the country have believed to be a severe underestimation because of limited testing abilities. The Director of Africa, CDC, has warned that 14 countries are now heading towards a third wave. The WHO has called for an effort to secure at least 225 million doses by September. This will cover just 10% of Africa's population. Health experts have estimated that 11 billion doses will be needed to vaccinate 70% of the world's population. Continuing with COVID-19, pandemic for our final story, we take a look at the vaccine produced by NOVAX. The US-based company has announced that its vaccine has demonstrated an overall efficacy of 90.4%. Preliminary numbers also indicate 100% efficacy in moderate to severe cases in a study of 29,960 participants in the US and Mexico. The vaccine can be stored at normal refrigeration temperatures, making it easier to transport as compared to mRNA options. NOVAX intends to file for regulatory authorization in several countries between July and September. The company will partner with the CRM Institute of India to provide 1.1 billion doses to the COVAX initiative. Here is Dr. Satyajit Rath to talk more about the vaccine and the advantages of multiple vaccine designs. Preliminary data for the NOVAX vaccine exactly like all the other vaccines that have been tested and provisionally approved as emergency usage so far show very respectable protection against COVID-19, particularly even though the numbers are really small, particularly against severe illness and death of which there were more than a dozen cases in the unvaccinated group and not a single case in the vaccinated group. So therefore, there is another vaccine on the horizon. So let's keep in mind that the whole virus vaccine, inactivated vaccine and the NOVAX vaccine, both generate two specific kinds of immune responses. They generate so-called CD4 T cell responses, which are inflammatory responses that also help B cells make antibody responses. On the other hand, the mRNA vaccines and the adenoviral vaccines do this. They generate B cell responses. They generate CD4 T cell responses. But in addition to that, they also generate CD8 killer T cell responses that might be useful for antiviral immunity. It's not even clear that the CD4 T cell responses and the antibody responses between these two platforms are identical. And what this is doing is enhancing our diverse portfolio of generating immune responses by vaccination. And I am aware that our audience might say something is going on pedantically about his immunology. But I would urge everybody to keep in mind that the more diverse our immune response basis, the harder we make it for the virus population to throw up vaccine escape variants. If we use a single vaccine globally, then that's a singular target that will press the virus in a certain direction evolutionarily to emerge with variant. But if we have multiple vaccines, multiple vaccine platforms, multiple vaccine designs, and that are generating even nuancedly variable immune responses, I'm arguing that it adds to our portfolio of diversity and robustness in slowing down the likelihood of immune escape variant generation. So the two other issues that are brought up by the Novavax vaccine news is one, as you pointed out, it's yet another vaccine, unlike the mRNA vaccines that does not require ultra cold storage and is therefore robust for widespread, decentralized vaccination campaigns. Let's keep in mind that it increasingly becomes possible to now imagine, test and begin to make evidence based policies on vaccine mix and match strategies that will give us better responses, that will give us even more diverse responses. And as far as the adenoviral vector platforms are concerned, that allow us to sidestep one of the oft-cited limitations of the adenoviral platform, which is that if you keep boosting with the adenoviral platform again and again, you generate antibodies to the adenovirus itself, which reduce the effectiveness of boosted doses. And in all of these, crossing different vaccine platforms into immunization vaccination protocols becomes an extremely attractive strategy. And once again, I come back to my point of science and technology politics. All of this is something that we should have begun formally testing as soon as we began to approve vaccine platforms for usage, knowing that these mix and match are going to be of significance and relevance for the common good. And the fact that all of that has gotten so delayed into these now recent months, I tend to relate it to the fact that it's all pharma companies competing for profits holding the pipelines of these vaccines. That's all your time for today. We'll be back tomorrow with more news from around the world. Until then, keep watching People's Dispatch.