Europe

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices edged up on Monday as supply jitters and U.S. stimulus plans offset fresh concerns about the hit to global fuel demand from renewed lockdowns to curb spikes in COVID-19 infections.

Brent crude futures for March rose 34 cents, or 0.6%, to $55.75 a barrel by 1008 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude for March was up 37 cents, or 0.7%, at $52.64.

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Estonia’s two biggest political parties clinched a deal on Sunday to form a new government to be led by a female prime minister for the first time in the Baltic country’s history, replacing the previous Cabinet that collapsed into a corruption scandal earlier this month.

The party councils of the the opposition, center-right Reform Party and the ruling. left-leaning Center Party voted in favor of joining a Cabinet headed by Reform’s prime minister-designate and chairwoman Kaja Kallas.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Rioters set fires in the center of the southern Dutch city of Eindhoven and pelted police with rocks Sunday at a banned demonstration against coronavirus lockdown measures, while officers responded with tear gas and water cannons, arresting at least 55 people.

Police in the capital of Amsterdam also used a water cannon to disperse an outlawed anti-lockdown demonstration on a major square ringed by museums. Video showed police spraying people grouped against a wall of the Van Gogh Museum.

PARIS (AP) — After increasingly strained U.S.-France relations under Donald Trump, President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed Sunday to work closely together to fight the coronavirus pandemic and climate change.

Their first conversation since Biden’s inauguration aimed at mending frayed ties between the historic allies. Biden “stressed his commitment to bolstering the transatlantic relationship” via NATO and the EU. Macron pledged his “determination to work at the side of the U.S.”

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — Portugal’s president was returned to office for a second term with a resounding victory Sunday in an election held amid a devastating COVID-19 surge that has made the European country the worst in the world for cases and deaths.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who had been widely expected to win, captured 61% of the vote.

Rebelo de Sousa, a center-right moderate and former leader of Portugal’s Social Democratic Party, will serve a 5-year term that will be his last due to term limits.

MOSCOW, January 24. /TASS/: Russia expects that Moscow and Washington will manage to establish dialogue, and if the new US administration is ready for this, Russian President Vladimir Putin will certainly take a reciprocal step, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.

"The thing is that the Russian Federation has been consistently and traditionally calling for kind relations [with the US]," Peskov said in an interview with "Moscow. Kremlin. Putin" program on Rossiya-1 TV channel.

MOSCOW, January 24. /TASS/: The Russian delegation managed to remove the issue of human rights in Crimea from the agenda of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Bureau’s meeting, the delegation’s Head, Deputy Speaker of the State Duma (lower house) Pyotr Tolstoy wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday.

MOSCOW, January 24. /TASS/: The temporary commission of the Federation Council for the Protection of State Sovereignty and Prevention of Interference in Russia's Internal Affairs has grounds to believe that foreign countries’ specialists are involved in organizing unauthorized rallies in Russia, the commission’s Chairman Andrey Klimov told the Vesti Nedeli news program on Rossiya-1 TV channel on Sunday.

MOSCOW, January 24. /TASS/: It is impossible to "rock the boat" in Russia because President Vladimir Putin is supported by a much larger number of people than illegal protests draw, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with "Moscow. Kremlin. Putin" program on Rossiya-1 TV channel.

In comment on the "so-called revelation" about Putin's alleged palace, the Kremlin spokesman noted that it is beneficial to "those who want to continue rocking the boat," however, "in fact, this is not happening."

BRUSSELS/ANKARA (Reuters) - After a five-year hiatus marked by grievances over their rival claims to Mediterranean waters, Turkey resumes talks with Greece on Monday in the first test of its hopes to reverse deteriorating relations with the European Union.

While diplomats say that rebuilding trust will be a hard slog, the talks follow Turkey’s decision to stop its search for gas in disputed waters which angered Greece and Cyprus and a cooling of rhetoric around Ankara’s wider disputes with the EU.