 Hello and welcome to the International Daily Roundup with People's Dispatch where we bring you some of the top stories from across the globe. Let's take a look at today's headlines. Number of COVID-19 deaths reaches 100,000 in the US. Brazil overtakes US in daily death toll. White spread outrage over police racism in the US after the murder of George Floyd. Indian social movements decry arrest of feminist activists despite bail orders. Noomsa criticizes commoners' management for failure to pay salaries. Costa Rica legalizes same-sex marriage in a victory for progressive movements. We begin with an update on the global coronavirus pandemic. The total number of COVID-19 infections has gone up to over 5.7 million with over 352,000 deaths as of today afternoon. The number of deaths in the US has crossed 100,000. Brazil, which has been witnessing an explosion of infections over the past week, on the other hand, has surpassed the US in the number of daily deaths. The South American nation reported over 1,000 new deaths on Tuesday compared to 770 in the US. In the meanwhile, doctors and health care workers are raising concerns about extremely unsafe working conditions. In a statement issued earlier this week, doctors at the Almanira Hospital in the Egyptian capital Cairo have threatened to resign en masse. This came following the death of one of their colleagues, Valid Yaya, who died from COVID-19 on Sunday. Three other doctors also died of COVID-19 on the same day in Cairo. Doctors complain that the Ministry of Health in Egypt has not provided them with enough PPEs. Doctors have also alleged that the government failed to take effective quarantine measures leading to a higher number of infections among medical staff. Some of them also complained of the lack of testing kits for frontline health care workers. A few doctors in other hospitals in Cairo have already resigned to protesting the lack of equipment, tests and adequate facilities. The Egyptian Medical Syndicate and National Trade Union Federation of Doctors has released a statement warning of a medical catastrophe in the country. The statement warned that the health system in the country could completely collapse due to failure and negligence of the Ministry of Health. According to the EMS, 19 doctors have died due to COVID-19 in Egypt since March of a total 350 who tested positive. In our in-focus section, we bring you a conversation between Vijay Prasad and Arun Dati Roy on the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns and the role of governments. Today is a very special day. We have with us Arun Dati Roy, the author of two luminous novels, The God of Small Things and the Ministry of Atmosed Happiness. Last year, she published her collection of non-fiction with a very great title, My Seditious Heart, a title that I think is not only very clever but very opposite. Recently, during the midst of the COVID-19 great lockdown, she's written two pieces in the Financial Times. First, the pandemic is a portal and now after the lockdown, we need a reckoning. Arun Dati Roy, welcome to NewsClick. Well, let's start with the first article, the pandemic is a portal which the Financial Times ran and I mean, I know this article circulated enormously. Could you tell us a little bit, firstly, it's written in your phenomenal style, it's really lovely, but could you tell us just a little bit about this idea of the pandemic as a portal? I think, you know, when I was writing it, I had just come back from actually walking to the border of UP and speaking to the people who were, you know, the great reverse migration, the great exodus from India cities and I realized that something was tectonically shifting, you know, the power of the entire world now over people. I don't think there's been a time in history where the whole world could be locked down for good or for bad. It was a very frightening idea for me that people, governments, states, authoritarian, democratic, communist, whoever could exercise such power. And then when you exercise that power, the chemical experiment of people who were outside the purview, outside the imagination, outside the calculations of these states were these millions of people who started to walk, you know. And then as the lockdown even, you know, went on for a few days, you saw in a city like Delhi, the sky is clear, the peacocks come, the birds sing, the, you know, smoke disappears. And I thought, you know, is this, are we dying or are we being born, you know? Because as individuals, we don't have a choice about when we are being born and when we are dying. But perhaps as a species, we do, you know. Some control we could exercise on this. And so I thought we are in a portal between worlds, you know. I used to think of this world as a graveyard full of people who are alive, but, you know, the light has faded, the stars have died and we're just pretending to be alive and we know we've destroyed this planet. But then suddenly when you saw the potential of healing that the show that the Earth put on, you know, we thought, okay, maybe there is a moment of hope in the midst of this despair or maybe it's just greater despair. But certainly it's a moment of rupture, a moment of choosing. So that's why I thought of it as a portal. Now going to South Africa, the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa or NAMSA has criticized the management of the airline for its failure to pay its workers their full salaries. The airline's management opted to go for the business rescue provision early in May whereby the company will be protected from its creditors but placed under the control of the business rescue practitioners. At that point, NAMSA had condemned the move as a way to escalate retrenchments. Fakamele, Lubi Majola, the national spokesperson of NAMSA spoke to people's dispatch on this issue. The National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa condemns in the strongest terms the fact that the management of ComAir has refused to date to pay workers their salaries. Our members have only received salaries for the months of April as well as for the month of March. In the month of April, the company made a unilateral decision to take leave and use that leave as a means to pay workers' salaries. This was not something which was consulted on, they simply took that decision. In the case of the month of May, workers have not been paid at all. There's no explanation from management about what the situation is or whether this money will be paid and if it will be paid, when it will be paid. We've just been told by the CEO, Renault Standard, that the company has applied for the COVID relief from the UIF but beyond that, there's no explanation and there's no detail about when workers can actually expect their income. Secondly, this situation is made very much, much worse by the fact that prior to the lockdown, ComAir issued Section 189 notices to workers of its intention to retrench. And it's very clear to us when you look at the behaviour of management and also the subsequent decision to place the company under business rescue that COVID-19 is actually being used as an excuse to restructure the company. The management, together with the BRPs, have unilaterally suspended benefits and conditions. I mean, this is unlawful, but they've done so anyway. And the BRPs have done it without even bothering to consult any relevant stakeholders. We see very clearly a pattern of behaviour between the BRPs at ComAir and the BRPs in SAA, where they literally are just a law and to themselves doing as they please and are accountable to no one. As Noomsa, we condemn this in the strongest terms possible. Our members are demanding that the CEO must resign. They say under her tenure disastrous decisions have been taken and the fact that the company finds itself in distress right now is a direct result of her poor leadership and they demand that she must be removed, because in their view, she has no strategy for saving this organisation. The statement was issued on behalf of Noomsa by Pagamile Khubimajola, who is the national spokesperson, and also the person who recorded the sound bite. Finally, Costa Rica has become the first Central American country to recognise same-sex marriage. In August 2018, the Supreme Court had asked the Costa Rican Parliament to amend the family code which bans gay marriages. The code had set a deadline of May 26, 2020, which was yesterday, to make the amendment failing which same-sex marriage was to automatically become legal. The parliament, which was deeply divided over the matter, neither voted to amend the law, nor did it appeal for an extension of the deadline. Nevertheless, Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado tweeted celebrating the new amendment to the law. Alvarado had promised to act on the ruling issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2018, asking the countries in the region to legalise same-sex marriages. The legalisation of the same-sex marriage is a big, big trip for the left and progressive movements in the country which have been struggling for it, for over a decade now. Movements after the legalisation, a lesbian couple, Darita Raya Agueta, and Alexandra Quiroz Castillo, got married. Their marriage was broadcasted on the state television. And this is all we have for this episode of The International Lady Roundup. 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