NATO chief Mark Rutte on Thursday issued a stark warning to "turbo-charge" defense spending, saying European nations need to do more to "prevent the next big war" as the threat from Russia grows.

About six months ago, Donald Trump was sitting in a courtroom in lower Manhattan listening to a jury make him the first former president convicted of a crime.

On Thursday, he will ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange just blocks from that courthouse and as he was recognized by Time magazine as its person of the year.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol defended his martial law decree as an act of governance and denied rebellion charges, vowing Thursday to "fight to the end" in response to attempts to impeach him and intensifying investigations into last week's dramatic move.

The main opposition Democratic Party quickly slammed Yoon's speech as "an expression of extreme delusion" and "false propaganda." Later Thursday, it and other opposition parties submitted a new impeachment motion against Yoon for a floor vote this weekend.

Ukraine attacked an airfield in southern Russia with US-supplied long-range missiles early Wednesday, the Russian military said, vowing it would respond with "appropriate measures".

Chancellor Olaf Scholz formally set Germany on course for an early election Wednesday by requesting a confidence vote in parliament next week.

Five weeks after his three-party governing coalition collapsed in a dispute over how to revitalize Germany's stagnant economy, Scholz's office said he had requested the confidence vote in parliament's lower house, or Bundestag, for Monday. The aim is to hold a parliamentary election on Feb. 23, seven months earlier than originally scheduled.

Romania's pro-European parties agreed Wednesday to form a majority government made up of groupings that were traditionally on opposite sides and shutting out far-right nationalists who made significant gains in the election on Dec. 1.

Pro-Western parties won the most votes, with the leftist Social Democratic Party, or PSD, topping the polls. The PSD reached agreement late Tuesday to form a grand coalition with the center-right National Liberal Party, or PNL, the reformist Save Romania Union party, USR, and the small ethnic Hungarian UDMR party.

South Korea's previous defense minister was stopped from attempting suicide while in detention over last week's martial law declaration, officials said Wednesday, as President Yoon Suk Yeol's office resisted a police attempt to search the compound.

The main liberal opposition Democratic Party is pushing for a new motion to impeach Yoon for his Dec. 3 decree that imposed martial law in South Korea for the first time in more than four decades. Its first impeachment attempt against Yoon last Saturday failed after ruling party lawmakers boycotted the vote. The party said it plans to submit the new motion on Thursday to set up a vote on Saturday.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the recent events in Syria, including the fall of its government, were part of a joint plan by the United States and Israel, state TV reported Wednesday.

“There should be no doubt that what has happened in Syria is the result of a joint American and Zionist plan," it quoted Khamenei as saying. “We have evidence, and this evidence leaves no room for doubt.”

French President Emmanuel Macron aims to name a new Prime Minister "within 48 hours", party chiefs who met him on Tuesday told AFP, after premier Michel Barnier was toppled last week.

Macron had gathered leaders of major political parties at his Elysee Palace office in a bid to thrash out the conditions for a new government that could escape losing a no-confidence vote in France's hung parliament.

A Russian strike on Tuesday killed three people and wounded 11 others in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, the local governor said.

"Three people were killed," said governor Ivan Fedorov, adding that "rescuers are searching for people under the rubble of a clinic destroyed by a Russian missile."