 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. As COVID-19 cases crossed 470,000, will world leaders be able to arrive at a plan? Libya reports the first case in the pandemic. Julian Assange's bail declined. An international intervention in Yemen reaches its fifth year. We begin with an update on the ongoing coronavirus pandemic as the number of reported cases are at roughly 470,000 worldwide and are set to go to up to far half a million by Friday. Of these, there are currently over 337,000 active cases and nearly 21,000 deaths have been reported. The number of very critical cases around the world has reached close to 15,000. Italy has added another 5,200 cases since yesterday and is very close to overtaking China in terms of total reported cases. Spain has also crossed China in terms of the deaths due to coronavirus infections, making it the second most affected country in the world. The deaths in the US have crossed 1,000 even as the Senate passed a $2 trillion package to deal with the crisis. Meanwhile, the leaders of the G20 countries are meeting today to address the crisis. It is unclear if there will be any success in global coordination as divisions on many issues are likely to come to the fore. This is especially as the US seems to be more concerned with pinning the blame with the virus on China. Yesterday, following a meeting of the foreign ministers of the G7 countries, the closest allies of the US, the European countries themselves, rejected a US bid to refer to COVID-19 as the Wuhan virus in a statement. US President Donald Trump has been in the forefront of making such references, which have been followed by racist attacks on people of Asian origin in the US. In such time, what form global coordination will take remains to be seen. In other COVID-19 news, Australia has set to take measures to protect millions of tenants from eviction during the COVID-19 outbreak. The Legislature of Tasmania, one of the states of Australia is debating a major amendment to rental laws that could protect tenants from eviction up to four months during the outbreak. The proposed legislation could be taken up by other states to protect the over 8 million tenants in the country. According to reports, the federal government led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been in talks with the state and territorial governments about tenant protection, as rent and tenancy laws are within the ambit of the state and not the federal government. Similar measures have been proposed around the world to protect the working class from evictions during the pandemic. Meanwhile, the Watt on Libya has reported its first coronavirus infection. Yesterday, a 73-year-old Libyan who had returned from a trip to Saudi Arabia via Tunisia on March 5th was tested positive. It is not clear if he was infected in Saudi Arabia where only five cases were reported at the time of his departure on March 5th or in neighbouring Tunisia where only one case was confirmed. As of now, the total number of infections in Saudi Arabia has risen to 900 while in Tunisia it has reached 173. Over 26 people he came into contact with including his family members have reported Libyan quarantine. Libya is currently facing a major crisis after the Libyan national army under the command of Khalifa Haftar established a parallel government in the east and launched an assault on Tripoli. COVID-19 cases have also been reported in besieged Gaza. Here is a video feature of the impact of the siege by Israel and Egypt on Gaza and its health system. The announcement of the first two positive cases of COVID-19 in Gaza on March 22nd has rightly set off alarms particularly among health officials and international health organisations. The two Palestinian men detected with the novel coronavirus infection had recently travelled to Pakistan. They have since been placed in a quarantine facility near the Egyptian border with Gaza. The two individuals were also not allowed to mix with the wider population of Gaza. The Palestinian territory has been under a debilitating blockade since 2006 imposed by both Israel and Egypt. Fears of a deadly outbreak in Gaza had been growing given the extremely frail and insufficient healthcare infrastructure that caters to a population of close to 2 million people. The healthcare system has not only suffered due to the brutal Israeli-Egyptian blockade of close to 14 years but has also undergone destruction and massive setbacks during the three Israeli invasions of Gaza in 2008, 2012 and 2014. The resulting destruction of many of Gaza's hospitals and related infrastructure has made it difficult even under normal circumstances for Gazans to access adequate healthcare. This now makes Palestinians in Gaza especially vulnerable to the coronavirus. Another major healthcare issue plaguing Gaza is the shortage of essential and life-saving medical equipment and medicines, mainly due to Israeli restrictions on the movement of goods through the Israel-Gaza border. This is compounded by the restrictions of the Gaza-Egypt border imposed by the Egyptian government of Abdel Fateh al-Sisi. Palestinian Health Ministry sources have recently said that there is a massive shortage of ventilators and intensive care unit beds in Gaza. The current count of 56 ventilators and 40 ICU beds can at most be increased to 100 beds for dealing with emergency situations. The Gaza Strip also suffers from a shortage of electricity averaging between 4-6 hours per day because of Israel's destruction of its power plants as well as the lack of adequate fuel supply to keep generators running at hospitals for medical treatment. The WHO and the UN have both raised these concerns and called for the state of Israel to immediately lift the air, sea and land blockade on Gaza to help avoid a catastrophic human disaster. The territory also faces a shortage of qualified doctors, besides lacking vital supplies of necessary medical equipment such as disinfectant sprays, testing kits, protective masks and suits that can help control the spread of the virus. Under international law, Israel is obligated to help the health ministry in Gaza to treat and control the potential outbreak. The violent repression against the Great March of Return protests that the Palestinians had embarked on since March 2018 has also added burden on Gaza's already under-pressure hospitals and medical centres. The number of injuries inflicted by Israeli forces through live and rubber-coated metal bullets, tear gas canisters, water cannons on Palestinian protesters has trained the hospitals and medical personnel. Around 25,000 injured men, women and children have failed the hospitals. As a result, many hospitals are overcrowded beyond the capacity, with patients lying on stretchers in the corridors and outside the hospital buildings awaiting treatment. The COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 13,000 people worldwide and infected more than 300,000. A large-scale outbreak in Gaza will spell doom for the extremely vulnerable civilian population which is already living on the edge of human survival. To help mitigate the impending crisis, Israel must immediately lift its siege on Gaza. The international community and organisations such as WHO, UN and other medical relief organisations must also assist the people of Gaza to prevent the spread of the deadly virus in the occupied Palestinian territory. In our next story, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's bail application was denied by a London magistrate's court yesterday. His legal team had filed for bail over concerns of the spread of the novel coronavirus in prisons. Assange's defence team had argued that due to his frail health, he is highly vulnerable to an infection. His deteriorating health, which is a display which is on display in the past hearings, has been noted by journalists and doctors alike. Assange has been held under judicial remand at a high security prison in Belmarsh since September 2019. Assange's bail application highlighted the vulnerability of prison inmates to the COVID-19 threat. UK prisons have so far reported two coronavirus infections in the past week in Manchester and Surrey and there was a report that one more prisoner had died yesterday. Experts in civil society activists have warned that an outbreak in prisons could be a major public health disaster. A study had estimated that an outbreak in prisons could result in 800 avoidable deaths, which is nearly 1% of the prison population. Many civil society activists and public health experts have called for either alternative detention or early release of old and high-risk inmates in the light of the outbreak. In our next story, the international intervention in Yemen entered its sixth year today. The intervention, which was started by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in support of President Abdurrahman Sur Hadi's government, has turned Yemen into what the United Nations steps as the worst humanitarian crisis of the century. The current crisis in the Arab world's poorest country was started after Ansar Allah, often called the Houthis, began a rebellion and took control of the northern parts of the country. The movement went on to take over the capital of Sanaa, effectively overthrowing the Hadi government. The Ansar Allah alleged that the Hadi government was corrupt and had failed to efficiently govern the country. On March 26, 2015, Saudi Arabia and UAE with the support of the U.S. and other regional and international allies started bombing the country, alleging that the Houthis were supported by Iran. The comprehensive land, sea and air blockade was imposed on the country, which depends heavily on imports of foreign grains and medical supplies. According to the reports, nearly one-third of all the airstrikes undertaken by the Saudi-led coalition Yemen target civilians, including medical facilities, hospitals, food stores, water supply and electricity supplies. According to the Yemen data project, the Saudi-led coalition is responsible for causing the death of at least 10 civilians per day. Oxfam is reported that nearly half of Yemen's population does not have access to clean drinking water due to the war. The five years of the intervention have killed more than 100,000 people. The blockade has led to a severe scarcity of food and medical supplies, turning 24 out of 29 million Yemenis dependent on some kind of humanitarian aid. Today, more than two-thirds of the Yemenis are on the once-in-a-verge of famine. The war has destroyed most of Yemen's medical and health infrastructure as well. It is reported by the UN that only half of the health facilities in the country are operational today. Even though they're operational, do not have adequate medical supplies or trained professionals to deal with the daily health issues. In case of any large-scale outbreak of COVID-19, a huge number of deaths may take place in the country. 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, and Instagram. Thanks for watching.