Europe

OSLO, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Two Norwegian reporters were arrested by police in Qatar this week and held in detention for some 30 hours, their employer said on Wednesday, drawing criticism of the Gulf nation from Norway's prime minister.

Journalists Halvor Ekeland and Lokman Ghorbani were in Qatar to report on preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, public broadcaster NRK said.

GENEVA, Nov 24 (Reuters) - As children and adolescents are at lower risk of severe COVID-19 disease, countries should prioritise adults and sharing vaccine doses with the COVAX programme to bring supplies to poorer countries, the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday.

Some rare cases of heart inflammation called myocarditis have been reported in younger men who received vaccines based on mRNA technoloy - Pfizer (PFE.N) BioNtech(22UAy.DE) and Moderna (MRNA.O) - but these were generally mild and responded to treatment, it said.

PARIS/WARSAW, Nov 24 (Reuters) - France assured Poland of European Union support in its stand-off with Belarus on Wednesday, but reminded Warsaw it needed to resolve a row with the bloc over its values and the rule of law.

STOCKHOLM, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson became Sweden's first female prime minister on Wednesday but immediately faced a crisis over a budget vote that her government looks set to lose.

Andersson, 54, won approval as prime minister after reaching a last-minute deal with the former communist Left Party. But a fragmented political landscape means her grip on power is already tenuous.

BRUSSELS, Nov 24 (Reuters) - European Union ambassadors approved the renewal of sanctions on four Chinese officials and one Chinese entity on Wednesday as part of an extension of a human rights blacklist, two diplomats said.

The decision, which will formally be adopted early next month, puts in jeopardy a Chinese-EU investment agreement signed in late December 2020.

China's envoy to the bloc said last week there could be no ratification of the deal until the EU lifted its sanctions, which Beijing sees as internal interference.

MOSCOW/KYIV, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Russia staged military drills in the Black Sea, south of Ukraine, on Wednesday and said it needed to sharpen the combat-readiness of its conventional and nuclear forces because of heightened NATO activity near its borders.

Ukraine, which with its ally the United States has said it believes Russia may be preparing an invasion, staged exercises of its own near the border with Belarus. 

STOCKHOLM, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Swedish parliament elected on Wednesday Magdalena Andersson as the country's new Prime Minister, the first female PM in Swedish history.

Less than half of the parliament members voted against Andersson, thus making her the country's new prime minister.

Under Sweden's system of negative parliamentarism, a prime ministerial candidate does not need a majority to vote for him or her, as long as the majority does not vote against.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Social distancing became mandatory again across the Netherlands on Wednesday as coronavirus infections soared and the country’s leading intensive care physician called for even tougher measures to rein in the pandemic.

Health Minister Hugo de Jonge said that a press conference on coronavirus measures that had been scheduled for Dec. 3 has been moved forward to Friday.

“The picture is somber and worrying,” De Jonge told reporters in The Hague.

BERLIN (AP) — The three parties negotiating to form Germany’s next government will present their coalition agreement Wednesday — a deal that will pave the way for center-left leader Olaf Scholz to replace longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The center-left Social Democrats have been negotiating with the environmentalist Green party and the pro-business Free Democrats since narrowly winning a national election on Sept. 26. The latter two parties said the agreement would be unveiled on Wednesday afternoon.

ESCHWEILER, Germany (AP) — Germany is set to mark 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 this week, passing a somber milestone that several of its neighbors crossed months ago but which Western Europe’s most populous nation had hoped to avoid.

Teutonic discipline, a robust health care system and the rollout of multiple vaccines — one of them homegrown — were meant to stave off a winter surge of the kind that hit Germany last year.