 Hello everyone, welcome to International Roundup by People's Dispatch. I'm Anushka and let's take a look at the stories for today. Israel and Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian militant group have agreed to an Egypt procured ceasefire. Musam Al-Braim, the group's spokesperson said that the ceasefire goes into effect from 5.30 a.m. local time. This comes after two days of intense fighting over Israel's targeted assassination of an Islamic Jihadi military commander and his wife in an airstrike on their home in Gaza in the late hours of Monday. 34 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed by Israeli aid and drone strikes since Tuesday morning, with 97 others, including 30 children suffering injuries ever since the violent clashes erupted between Israel and the Islamic Jihad. In response, the Islamic Jihad fired close to 400 rockets towards Israel, resulting in nonstop warning sirens in parts of southern and northern Israel, including as far as Tel Aviv, alerting people about incoming rockets. Schools and public institutions have been forced to close down in both Gaza and in Israel. People too, both in Gaza and Israel, are not stepping out of their homes to avoid being caught in the violence. At least 63 Israelis were wounded by the rocket fire from Gaza and were being treated in various Israeli hospitals. Israeli authorities had also put in place restrictions on citizens, which forbade all non-essential workers to go outdoors and cancel schools as soon as the fighting began. Following news of the ceasefire, Israeli authorities relaxed the restrictions it had placed on citizens in the southernmost border areas, adding that people can go to work provided there is a bomb shelter close to their work. In Gaza too, normal life and public activity started to resume even though Israeli drones could still be heard overhead. Moving on to our next story, the public hearings in Donald Trump's impeachment inquiry began yesterday. Two key witnesses came forward with their testimony on US President Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. William Taylor, the acting ambassador to Ukraine and George Kent, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, testified for over five hours. Taylor in his testimony said that he was concerned when he found out that the White House was withholding security funds amounting to nearly $400 million to Ukraine. The evidence for this came from a whistleblower who had submitted that Trump had asked Zelensky to initiate corruption proceedings against Joe Biden's son in a phone call in July in exchange for the security funds. Former Vice President Joe Biden is considered as a potential rival to Trump in the upcoming 2020 elections. However, the first day of the public proceedings did not present much in terms of new or strong evidence against Trump. Republicans rubbish most of the testimonies as being hearsay and secondhand information. Many have also pointed to the fact that the mainstream media is playing up these hearings and the Democrat version of events while trying to bury or sideline the damning evidence that does exist against Biden and his son. Our next story also comes from the U.S. Police tried to detain Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin on dubious charges of assault. Code Pink is an anti-war group based in the U.S. They were also part of the Embassy Protection Collective, a group of activists and movements that was invited to stay in the Venezuelan embassy by the Venezuelan government in April this year. This was after diplomatic relations between U.S. and Venezuela broke and Venezuelan diplomats had to vacate the embassy. The Embassy Protection Collective took up residence in the embassy in order to protect it from occupation by supporters of Juan Guaido, who is USA's main man in these operations, and was leading the coup attempts against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. In the demonstrations that occurred outside the Venezuelan embassy, many right-wing pro-Guaido Venezuelans had assaulted Maduro's supporters. In all of this, Medea Benjamin faced this arrest attempt yesterday without a warrant and on belated charges. She was accused of assaulting Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schulz months after the alleged incident occurred. The police also insisted that they had footage of the incident, but on reviewing it, they chose not to proceed with the arrest. Prior to Medea, journalist Max Blumenthal was arrested on similar dubious charges last month. He was released after spending a weekend in jail. Now over to Australia, reports about the fourth death comes in as the bushfires ravaged the eastern coast of Australia. The continent nation is facing one of its biggest ever bushfire crisis. Nearly 120 fires have spread across the eastern coast, spanning two states. The fires have so far killed four people and gutted over 300 houses. The states of Queensland and New South Wales that are affected by the fires have sent out crisis warnings to nearly 500,000 residents in the two states, calling them to prepare and evacuate if necessary. It is also estimated that the fires have gutted nearly a million hectares of land in New South Wales alone. The state government in New South Wales has already called it the most dangerous bushfire week in the nation's history and given out the catastrophe alert as firestorms begin to be reported in several parts of the state. Residents in the state of western Australia have also been warned of the fires expanding into their bushlands. While the source of the ongoing bushfires are yet to be a certain, a multitude of factors have been speculated for the crisis. While the police are now investigating a possible arson by a teenager in Queensland, meteorologists and climate activists have pointed to the fact that Australia since 2017 has recorded some of its hottest years, which was paralleled by a spike in bushfire incidents. Others have pointed to the underfunded emergency services like the fire department being already stretched to its limit even before the fires began under the current Liberal National Coalition government of Scott Morrison that has considerably brought down budgetary allocations for the services. That's all we have time for in today's episode. You can always follow more stories on peoplesdispatch.org and you can also follow us on Instagram and on Twitter. This is our Facebook page. Thank you for watching.