A cease-fire agreement with Azerbaijan was reached on Wednesday to end two days of fighting in the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh region, local authorities and Azerbaijani officials said.

The agreement was to go into effect at 1 p.m. local time (0900 GMT), and talks between Azerbaijani officials and the breakaway region's ethnic Armenian authorities on its "re-integration" into Azerbaijan were scheduled to take place on Thursday in the Azerbaijani city of Yevlakh.

Syria's President Bashar Assad will head to China later this week in his first visit to Beijing since the start of his country's 12-year conflict during which China has been one of his main backers, his office said Tuesday.

China has been expanding its reach in the Middle East after mediating a deal in March between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and it continues to support Assad in the Syrian conflict, which has killed half a million people and left large parts of the nation in ruins.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to have his long-coveted meeting with President Joe Biden on Wednesday — bringing together the two leaders for the first time since the Israeli leader took office at the helm of his country's far-right government late last year.

Netanyahu has been a frequent visitor to the White House over the years, and Israeli leaders are typically invited within weeks of taking office. The lengthy delay in setting up the meeting with Biden, and the White House decision to hold the meeting in New York rather than Washington, have been widely interpreted in Israel as signs of U.S. displeasure with Netanyahu's new government.

Explosions rocked parts of Nagorno-Karabakh early Wednesday, a day after Azerbaijani forces used heavy artillery fire on Armenian positions in the separatist region that local officials said killed or wounded scores of people.

Azerbaijan has called the artillery fire an "anti-terrorist operation" and said it will continue until the separatist government of Nagorno-Karabakh dismantles itself and "illegal Armenian military formations" surrender.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has demanded an end to US sanctions against the clerical state, after a halt in talks on restoring a nuclear deal.

"These sanctions have not yielded the desired results. It is time now for the United States to bring a cessation to its wrong path and choose the right side," he told the UN General Assembly.

Saudi Arabia on Wednesday praised the "positive results" of negotiations with Yemen's Houthi rebels after they visited the kingdom for peace talks, though Riyadh released few details on their discussions to end the war tearing at the Arab world's poorest nation.

The five days of talks, which represented the highest-level, public negotiations with the Houthis in the kingdom, come as Saudi Arabia tries a renewed bid to end the yearslong coalition war it launched on Yemen. That conflict had become enmeshed in a wider regional proxy war the kingdom faced against its longtime regional rival Iran, with which it reached a détente earlier this year.

Israeli military operations in the occupied West Bank and unrest in the Gaza Strip have killed six Palestinians, Palestinian health officials said Wednesday, the latest spike in a wave of violence that has roiled the region for more than a year.

The death toll from the most recent flare-up stood at four late Tuesday. But on Wednesday the Palestinian Health Ministry raised it, saying an Israeli raid into the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank killed four people and wounded some 30 others, while a raid in a separate refugee camp killed another Palestinian. A sixth Palestinian was killed by Israeli fire in unrest in the Gaza Strip, officials said.

Trying to lessen climate change's sweeping impact, experts are hoping that attempts to improve the sputtering global public health system and sometimes-stalled efforts to curb global warming through collaboration can combine — and create a better system for handling the problem along the way.

Leaders of both the World Health Organization and the upcoming climate negotiations said that for the first time, they are going to devote a day during December climate talks to public health issues. By concentrating on how climate change is causing death and disease, they hope, nations may act more on the root cause: carbon pollution.

Manchester United might have to summon the spirit of 1999 when it opens its Champions League campaign at old rival Bayern Munich.

United has started the Premier League with three losses in its opening five games and was booed by its own fans after the latest defeat against Brighton on Saturday.

History is not on Pep Guardiola's side as he tries to lead Manchester City to back-to-back Champions League titles this season.

Real Madrid is the only club to retain the trophy in the modern era by winning it three times in a row from 2016-18.