 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. Breakthrough in Libyan peace talks is rival factions agree to work towards elections. Conflict in Ethiopia's Tigray leads to hundreds of deaths, thousands displaced. Australian Senate votes to investigate media monopoly held by Rupert Murdoch's news core. Hurricane Eta makes landfall in Florida after ravaging Central America and Cuba. We begin with Libya, where rival factions have concluded a pathbreaking agreement to hold national elections within the next 18 months. The preliminary agreement announced on Wednesday lays out a roadmap to hold presidential and parliamentary elections in the war-ravaged country. The talks under the banner of the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum that began on Monday are being held under the mediation of the United Nations in Tunis. They follow a recent ceasefire agreement reached in October between the Tripoli-based government of National Accord or the GNA and the Tobruk-based government led by Khalifa Haftar, which is supported by the Libyan National Army or the LNA. The ongoing talks will now try to chalk out a united interim government in the months preceding the elections. UN Envoy Stephanie Williams, currently mediating the talks, welcomed the agreement. She also added that the factions have agreed to merge and ultimately unite all important Libyan institutions to form a cohesive government. The talks involve the participation of scientific delegates selected and invited by the UN to represent various local armed groups and political entities. Concurrent talks were also held in the Libyan city of Sirte between the GNA and the LNA. This Sirte talks led to the establishment of a joint military commission to oversee mutual demilitarization. These talks have successfully brought an end to a decade old conflict that followed the NATO invasion of Libya in 2011 to overthrow the socialist Arab Republic, followed by Muammar Gaddafi. In our next story in Ethiopia, the conflict in the Tigray region intensified as airstrikes and ground fighting entered the second week on Thursday. Hundreds are reportedly died and over 3,000 have been displaced across the western border into Sudan. Earlier this month, the United Nations had warned in a report that up to 9 million people could end up being displaced if the conflict continues. Tension between the TPLF and the Abiy Ahmed-led federal government escalated after the Prime Minister declared a state of emergency in Tigray on November 4th and deployed federal troops to dislodge the TPLF from power. The TPLF controls the regional government. Abiy accused Tigray and troops of attacking a base of the federal army in the city of Mekelia on November 4th. The TPLF has been unhappy with the peace agreement which Abiy negotiated with Eritrea in 2018 after becoming the Prime Minister. The agreement won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. The conflict between the two governments has since then escalated into a civil war. According to reports, over half the armed forces in Ethiopia have pledged loyalty to the Tigray government led by the Tigray People's Liberation Front of the TPLF. The TPLF was in the forefront of the war with Eritrea on its northern border in the late 1990s. Together with the militia supporting it, Tigray's forces are estimated to number around 250,000. The government has made use of its airpower to deal with the disadvantage of numbers on the ground. In our next story, the Australian Senate voted in favour of an inquiry into the media monopoly held by Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp. The move to hold an inquiry was proposed by Green Party Senator Sarah Hansen Young and it was pushed with a backing of other opposition groups. The move comes within a week after a petition by former Prime Minister Kevin Rood attracted over half a million signatures from across Australia. The investigation moved by the Senate will primarily focus on the monopoly held by Newscorp and its affiliates, its effect on democracy and the consequent challenges it poses to public broadcasters and the digital media landscape. Hansen Young has also asked for investigating the cozy relationship the ruling Conservative-Liberal National Coalition has with the Murdoch control media. She also highlighted the record-breaking support that Rood's petition receives as indicative of the massive concerns over the influence of Murdoch's media empire. The petition accused the Murdoch control media of holding a virtual monopoly over print media also accusing it of having a chilling effect on free speech in the country. It included signatures from former Conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and other Conservative parliamentarians. Even though Kevin Rood's own Labour Party leadership refused to take up the petition to Parliament, the Green Party took charge of pushing the petition's demands. In our next story, Tropical Storm ETA has made landfall in Florida on Thursday morning and threatens to disrupt life in the region again. ETA, which was classified as a hurricane till Wednesday, left behind a path of destruction in various Central American countries in Cuba. ETA first hit Nicaragua as a category 4 hurricane on November 3rd. It then weakened into a tropical depression but unleashed torrential rain in the neighbouring Honduras in Guatemala between November 4th and 5th. ETA passed through Belize's coast on November 6th and through Chiapas in southeastern Mexico on November 7th. On November 8th, it struck western Cuba. It is now swirling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico bringing strong winds and pouring flooding rains in different parts of Florida. The hurricane has killed at least 150 people in Central America so far. The president of Guatemala reported that at least 100 people died after flooding in landslides. In Honduras, the death toll reached 38. Mexico reported a death toll of 20 people and Panama reported 8 deaths. Nicaragua registered 2 fatalities while Cuba registered none. Close to 2 million people are estimated to have been affected with thousands displaced, hundreds of homes damaged, inundated, highways, bridges and roads, and blackouts in several affected countries. 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.