JERUSALEM / AP A close associate of Israel’s prime minister says the presidency of Donald Trump could be a chance for the Palestinians to return to peace negotiations with more “realistic” expectations. Regional Cooperation Minister Tzahi Hanegbi said on Monday that Trump offers the Israelis and Palestinians an opportunity to start fresh, after years of tough pressure on Israel from ...

  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 ...

  BISHKEK/ AP A cargo plane crashed on Monday in a residential area just outside the main airport in Kyrgyzstan, killing at least 37 people, the Emergency Situations Ministry said on Monday. The Turkish Boeing 747 crashed just outside the Manas airport, south of the capital Bishkek, killing people in the residential area adjacent to the airport as well as those ...

  PHNOM PENH / AP Cambodia has informed the United States that it is canceling an annual joint military exercise this year, even though planning for the event had already begun, officials from both countries said on Monday. Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Chhum Socheath said the Angkor Sentinel exercise had to be postponed because Cambodian forces would be unable to fully ...

  MANILA / AP The Philippines has filed a low-key diplomatic protest with China after a US think tank reported that Beijing appears to have installed anti-aircraft and anti-missile weapons on its man-made islands in the strategically vital South China Sea, the country’s top diplomat said on Monday. Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said the diplomatic communication was issued after the report ...

  What would it take to convince American drivers to buy a Chinese-branded car? China’s automakers have tried and failed to answer that question for at least a decade. Now another one wants to try: This week, on the eve of the Detroit Auto Show, Guangzhou Automobile Group Co. (GAC) announced that it will begin exporting cars and sport-utility vehicles to ...

  Attendees at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week could play around with a dizzying array of unmanned aerial vehicles. Drones that take selfies. Drones equipped with thermal imaging cameras to see at night. Drones that help fishermen chase their prey. No use is too niche as drone-makers chase a market that’s forecast to grow an average ...

  Next week, the nation’s retailers — and, more to the point, the people who want to sell things to the nation’s retailers — will gather at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center on the western edge of Manhattan for the National Retail Federation’s “Big Show.” On the advice of a reader of the column I wrote in early December ...