Palestinian officials welcomed recent moves by the Joe Biden administration in which he reversed some of the previous administration’s policies that were seen as strongly biased toward Israel.

Iraq’s military said Abu Yaser al-Issawi was killed in a counterterrorism operation outside Kirkuk. Iraqi security forces killed the man believed to be the second-highest commander of Islamic State (IS) and the group’s top leader in Iraq, Abu Yaser al-Issawi, during an operation on Thursday, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi announced.

Until late last month, the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh had been mostly frozen, with occasional skirmishes, for over a quarter of a century.