Europe

BRUSSELS (AP) — Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel submitted his resignation Tuesday amid pressure on his government after the biggest coalition party quit over Michel’s support for a United Nations compact on international migration.

“I am taking the decision to offer my resignation. I am now going to see the king” to inform him,” Michel told Belgian lawmakers.

Before the prime minister gave his notice, lawmakers had been demanding he submit his new minority government to a confidence vote. But Michel refused, and a confrontation this week seemed likely.

MOSCOW, December 17. /TASS/. /TASS/. President of Syria Bashar Assad praised efforts of Russia and Iran to restrain the Western interference in the process of the political settlement of the Syrian conflict, SANA news agency reported on Monday.

According to the agency, during a meeting in Damascus on Sunday with Senior Adviser to the Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Jaberi Ansari, President Assad "stressed the importance of efforts exerted by the friendly and allied countries of Syria, particularly Iran and Russia."

MOSCOW, December 17. /TASS/. Missile defense facilities of the United States in Europe are located within a reach of Russia’s effective striking forces, Strategic Missile Force Commander Colonel-General Sergei Karakayev said in an interview with Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper.

"We must not forget that the European missile defense facilities are located within the reach of other [not nuclear] effective striking means of our Armed Forces," Karakayev replied to a question regarding the deployment of US missile defense facilities in Romania and Poland.

MOSCOW, December 17. /TASS/. Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Anton Siluanov has signed a directive requesting state-run companies move to locally-produced software by 2021, Vedomosti business daily wrote on Monday with reference to the document’s copy.

The Russian-US standoff in Syria has been intensifying, thus stonewalling efforts on stabilizing the situation to the east of the Euphrates River and in the south near Al-Tanf controlled by Washington, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said in a message to his US counterpart Jim Mattis last week, Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes.

17 Dec 2018; DW: A lawyer who represented victims of far-right violence had her daughter threatened, possibly by extremist police. The resulting investigation has revealed a neo-Nazi network within the Frankfurt police force.

State criminal police (LKA) are investigating an alleged right-wing extremist network in the Frankfurt police force, respected German newspaper Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reported Sunday.

16 Dec 2018; AFP: Nations on Sunday struck a deal to breathe life into the landmark 2015 Paris climate treaty after marathon UN talks that failed to match the ambition the world's most vulnerable countries need to avert dangerous global warming.

Delegates from nearly 200 states finalised a common rule book designed to deliver the Paris goals of limiting global temperature rises to well below two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit).

16 Dec 2018; AFP: Georgia on Sunday swore in its first female president, Salome Zurabishvili as opposition parties continue to denounce her election as fraudulent and demand snap parliamentary polls.

The inauguration paved the way for a new constitution to come into force, transforming the country into a parliamentary republic with a largely ceremonial president.

The event was held in the mediaeval town of Telavi in Georgia's eastern winemaking region of Kakheti.

17 Dec 2018; AFP: Protesters threw smoke grenades at police who responded with tear gas in Budapest on Sunday as thousands of people rallied against a new "slave law" passed by the government of conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

More than 15,000 people, according to local press reports, joined the demonstration -- the first rally since Orban returned to power in 2010 to bring together all opposition parties, from greens to the far right, under the same banner.

LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Theresa May is set to condemn calls for a second referendum on Britain’s departure from the European Union, saying it would do irreparable damage to trust in democracy.

In remarks released ahead of her speech in the House of Commons on Monday, May says that staging another referendum “would say to millions who trusted in democracy that our democracy does not deliver.”

She’s also expected to argue that such a ballot would exacerbate divisions rather than heal them.