• Listen to this segment with Robert Jensen

Uprising’s guest expert Robert Jensen, an author and a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, analyzes today’s news headlines:

A break in the war on Gaza seems to be holding as Israel agrees to a 72 hour ceasefire. Israeli forces say they have left Gaza starting this morning at 8 am local time. Israeli media were reporting that the country had completed its mission of destroying Hamas-built tunnels. Nearly 2000 Palestinians have been killed during operation, a large number of them children. Meanwhile Human Rights Watch has just released a damning report accusing Israeli troops of committing war crimes for firing on Palestinian civilians as they fled. Click here for a Guardian newspaper article, and here for an RT.com article about the story.

Dozens of heads of African states are in the US this week for a 3 day US-Africa summit to discuss corporate and military relationships. The Obama White House this morning announced, as part of the summit, a financial commitment to the tune of $14 billion in business investments in the continent. The move is apparently an effort to cash in on the financial success of several African economies, and to compete with the Chinese who have long invested in Africa. President Obama is scheduled to address the summit today where alongside African officials, will be executives from Coca Cola, IBM, and Chevron. Click here for a New York Times article about the story.

A ban on drinking water in Toledo, Ohio, has been lifted after several days of residents being told to rely only on bottled water. A bloom of harmful algae in Lake Erie that release poisonous bacteria led to the temporary ban. While residents have now been told the water is safe to drink, test results have not yet been released to the public. Harmful algae blooms are growing rapidly, apparently fueled by pesticide runoff from agricultural operations, and by a warming climate. Lake Erie already has a number of dead zones from algae blooms and those dead zones are expected to multiply. Click here for an Al Jazeera article and here for a Think Progress article about the story.