BAGHDAD / AP A senior Iraqi commander says fierce clashes between special forces and IS militants are taking place in two neighborhoods in eastern Mosul. The head of Iraq’s elite counterterrorism forces, Gen. Abdel Ghani al-Asadi, told Iraqi state TV on Monday that his forces pushed deeper into the Shurta and Andalus neighborhoods. Al-Asadi described the streets as “clean” of …

  DAVOS / AP The heads of major UN organizations on Monday called for access to civilians cut off from humanitarian aid in Syria, saying the world “must not stand silent” even though the high-profile siege of the Syrian city of Aleppo is over. The joint appeal from the UN’s refugee agency, humanitarian aid coordinator OCHA, children’s agency UNICEF, the World …

  SEOUL / AP In a departure from the leniency typically given South Korean big businesses, prosecutors on Monday requested the arrest of the de facto head of Samsung Electronics, the country’s most valuable company, in an influence-peddling scandal that has toppled the country’s president. Lee Jae-yong, the 48-year-old vice chairman at Samsung Electronics, faces allegations of embezzlement, of lying under …