From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm David DeForest reporting.
U.S. and Iraqi authorities say Islamic State fighters are surrounded and contained in western Mosul. Iraqi troops seized control of the last road leading out of the city on Sunday.
U.S. Envoy Brett McGurk, speaking Sunday in Baghdad, said "ISIS is trapped." "In total, in Iraq and Syria, coalition-enabled operations - that means our coalition-supporting local partners, including Iraqi security forces - have cleared 50,000 square kilometers of territory from ISIS."
The envoy spoke as Iraqi General Abdul Amir Rashid Yarallah reported that elite troops of the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service spearheaded a push toward the edges of Mosul's densely-populated Old City.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told the Netherlands Sunday that it would "pay a price" for refusing to allow Turkey's foreign minister into the country and expelling another minister Saturday.
The action was taken to keep them from holding rallies with Turkish immigrants. Those rallies were intended to generate support for Mr. Erdoğan's bid to gain sweeping new powers in a referendum.
South Korea's ousted President Park Geun-hye apologized Sunday to her supporters for failing to fulfill her duty as president.
Park Geun-hye left the presidential Blue House two days after the Constitutional Court issued a verdict removing her from office over a corruption scandal.
She arrived Sunday at her private home in Seoul where hundreds of her supporters have been protesting her ouster.
This is VOA news.
With little more than a week left before the start of spring, the northeastern U.S. is bracing for a major blizzard.
The National Weather Service is forecasting a bitter blast will roll up the coast Monday night and into Tuesday for most of the region.
A blizzard watch has been issued for parts of the northeast, including New York City and Boston.
The U.S. House Intelligence Committee is calling on President Donald Trump to produce evidence by Monday on his claim that his phones were wiretapped during last year's presidential campaign.
Last week, the president wrote on Twitter that former President Barack Obama had the phones at Trump headquarters tapped, but he has offered no evidence.
An Obama spokesman has said Mr. Trump's charges are "simply false."
France's conservative presidential candidate François Fillon has apologized for his party's anti-Semitic tweet aimed at rival Emmanuel Macron.
Fillon has said he always fought against such thinking [and was] and has asked Republican Party officials to take action against whoever was responsible.
He was once favored to win the French presidency, but now trails Macron and Marine Le Pen.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the death toll from two bombings on a religious shrine in the capital Damascus has risen to 74. Most of the dead were Iraqi Shiites.
Images from the scene showed several wrecked tourist buses.
An al-Qaeda-linked alliance claimed responsibility for the blasts.
At least 34 people have been killed when a bus involved in a hit-and-run accident veered into a crowd Sunday in the Haitian city of Gonaives.
The vehicle first knocked over two pedestrians, killing one. Then as the driver tried to flee the scene, he rammed the bus into a band of street musicians, leaving 33 of them dead at the scene. Another 17 people were injured in the crash.
It was not immediately clear what caused the accident.
Republicans Sunday dismissed an upcoming analysis that is expected to conclude that more people will lack health coverage under their plan than under former President Obama's. The report is being released by the Congressional Budget Office.
Meanwhile, opponents from the right and left seemed to be hardening their position against the plan supported by President Donald Trump.
Bangladesh's Supreme Court ruled Sunday that a 16-story building occupied by clothes makers should be torn down. The building is seen as a symbol of corruption.
The builders of the structure openly flouted the country's construction laws.
The court says it now must come down.
From the VOA news center in Washington, I'm David DeForest.
That's the latest world news from VOA.
