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"Iraq faced the prospect of a deepening political crisis Saturday, after four days of unrest left at least 64 people dead, and authorities lifted a round-the-clock curfew in the capital meant to quell the anti-government demonstrations."

"Most of Hong Kong's metro system remains shut after a day which saw stations and businesses attacked in violent anti-government protests."

"After years of growing hostility and competition for influence, Saudi Arabia and Iran have taken steps toward indirect talks to try to reduce the tensions that have brought the Middle East to the brink of war, according to officials from several countries involved in the efforts."

A top U.S. military commander says embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is slowly but surely losing his grip on power, forced to rely on countries like Cuba and Russia, and even on drug cartels, to stay in office.

"ISIS has mounted low-level efforts to replenish its ranks from members held in detention facilities and displacement camps across Syria and Iraq since late 2018. Some ISIS members have paid bribes to guards in order to buy their freedom."

"On the anniversary of the Oct. 4, 2017 ambush that killed four American soldiers near the village of Tongo Tongo, Niger, family members of three of the fallen expressed continued frustration with how U.S. Africa Command handled the investigation."

"The U.S. is offering a $5 million reward for information that leads to the arrest or conviction of the militants who committed or aided in the deadly Oct. 4, 2017, attack on a joint U.S.-Nigerien military patrol that left four U.S. soldiers dead."

"In April 2017, U.S. forces dropped one of the largest non-nuclear bombs on an ISIS cave complex in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan. Dubbed the ‘mother of all bombs’ it killed dozens of fighters."

"Just days before U.S.-Taliban talks were put on freeze earlier in September, I was in Istanbul for a negotiations workshop with 25 Afghan women leaders. These women were expected to play an integral role in intra-Afghan talks that would follow a U.S.-Taliban deal."

Efforts to resolve the nearly five-year conflict in Yemen are increasing following drone and missile attacks on Saudi oil facilities last month.

Six people were killed during anti-government protests in Iraq Thursday, raising the death toll to at least 27, authorities said. Police and medical officials said the protestors were shot to death in Nasiriyah, a city south of the capital of Baghdad. Since Tuesday, the demonstrations have spread in Baghdad and in areas south of the capital.

"The turmoil in Iraq, a country central to America’s Middle East policy, comes at a critical moment in the region amid soaring tensions between Iran and the United States - both allies of the Iraqi government."

"Iraq faces a threat of Iranian subversion that is, to a large extent, a function of a deepening geopolitical rift in which Iran stands on one side and the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia are on the other. To protect its own interests and avoid falling prey to Iran’s apparent desire to become the regional hegemon and assimilate Middle Eastern capitals into its sphere of influence, Iraqi leaders would be wise to chart these waters carefully."

The United States and other countries hoping to deal the Islamic State terror group an enduring defeat risk failure by ignoring the tens of thousands of fighters, women and children stuck in prisons or camps across northeastern Syria, key U.S. officials warn.

"Iraqi security forces fired live bullets and tear gas against protesters in Baghdad on Thursday, despite a curfew that was announced in the Iraqi capital hours earlier amid deadly violence gripping the country and anti-government protests that killed 19 people this week."

"A major incursion could prompt Trump administration to withdraw troops, essentially ending fight against Islamic State in Syria."

"Israel is fighting off Iranian expansion across the Middle East, but danger for the Jewish state lurks near its own borders. Painstaking work by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and their loyal proxies has succeeded in laying the groundwork for a second Iranian front with Israel in the Golan Heights."

"The Taliban announced Wednesday they are sending a high-level delegation to Pakistan’s capital as part of a tour that has included Russia, China and Iran in a push to resurrect an Afghanistan peace deal with Washington that seemed imminent just a month ago."

"U.S. forces in northern Iraq, working with partners on the ground, are confident that the remnants of the Islamic State can be confronted, two years after ISIS lost the last pockets of land it held. It has been five years since Washington committed forces to Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve."

"Russia and European powers, eager to end a protracted military conflict in war-torn eastern Ukraine, welcomed a new accord between Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists, but many in Ukraine dismissed the election agreement Wednesday as a capitulation to Moscow."

"There are several reasons Afghan officials are struggling to determine how people voted in the presidential election last week — possible fraud, misplaced biometric data and the country’s vast geography. But there is one factor that has complicated the effort more than any other: the Taliban’s tactic of destroying cellphone towers."

"It would be erroneous and dangerous to believe that ISIS has been defeated. ISIS today is no longer confined to the territories it held in Syria and Iraq but has a wider international presence. It is more dispersed and is geared up for an unrelenting insurgency. It is time that the United States takes ISIS’s resurgence seriously and develops a clear strategy for combating the group on multiple fronts."

"Iran has no interest in a wide-ranging conflict that it knows it could not win. Israel is satisfied with calibrated operations in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza but fears a larger confrontation that could expose it to thousands of rockets. Saudi Arabia is determined to push back against Iran, but without confronting it militarily. Yet the conditions for an all-out war in the Middle East are riper than at any time in recent memory."

"Talks to end the five-year conflict in eastern Ukraine produced the first major breakthrough since a lapsed 2015 peace accord, paving the way for an international summit to cement progress."

U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban political negotiators have arrived in neighboring Pakistan amid a renewed diplomatic push to resurrect peace talks between Washington and the insurgent group.