NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
1 Mosul counterattack: A major Islamic State counterattack Friday along the northern edge of Mosul’s Old City neighborhood pushed Iraqi Army forces back about 82 yards and is threatening recent gains in other Old City fronts, an Iraqi military officer said. The officer said the attack was carried out by 50 to 100 Islamic State fighters. Iraqi security forces have retaken almost all of Mosul — Iraq’s second largest city — from Islamic State militants who overran it in 2014.
2 Turkey raids: Turkish police detained 29 suspected Islamic State militants in raids in Istanbul on Friday, the country’s state-run news agency reported. Anadolu Agency said 22 of the militants detained are foreign nationals, but the report didn’t provide details on their nationalities. Seven of them are Turkish citizens. The suspects were detained in a police swoop targeting 20 different addresses around Istanbul, the agency reported. Police seized documents, digital material and one firearm during the raids.
3 Korea talks: South Korea’s president reiterated he’s willing to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un even as he condemned the North’s first intercontinental ballistic missile test-launch this week as a “reckless” move. President Moon Jae-in also proposed the two Koreas resume reunions of families separated by war, stop hostile activities along their heavily fortified border and cooperate on the 2018 Winter Olympics to be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
4 Building collapse: Rescue workers have identified three bodies in the rubble of a fivestory apartment building that partially collapsed south of Naples early Friday, firefighters said. Crews have been digging mostly by hand to find seven people reported missing in the residential building along a passenger railway line in the seaside town of Torre Annunziata, three miles from the Pompeii archaeological site. The cause of the collapse remains unknown, but authorities were investigating whether it was related to renovation work in the building.
5 Opposition leader released: Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader who organized a recent wave of large anti-Kremlin demonstrations across Russia, was released Friday after serving a 25-day sentence in prison. Navalny, the leading critic of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and the Kremlin, was convicted of conducting an unlawful rally by leading demonstrators in Moscow where they had no permit to gather. The opposition leader has said he wants to compete in the presidential election in March, but he is technically ineligible to run because of an embezzlement conviction that Navalny and independent observers have described as being politically motivated.
6 U.N. heritage site: UNESCO, the U.N. cultural organization, declared the ancient and hotly contested core of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank as a Palestinian World Heritage site in danger Friday, despite a concerted diplomatic effort by Israel and the U.S. to scuttle the decision. The Palestinian Authority administers most of Hebron, a predominantly Palestinian city, under the Oslo peace accords of the 1990s. But an enclave around the historic core remains under Israeli military control and is also home to several hundred ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlers. The area designated as a heritage site includes the Cave of the Patriarchs, an ancient shrine revered by Jews, Muslims and Christians as the burial place of the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs.