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."

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday peace talks on ending Russia's war in Ukraine could begin this "winter", as Warsaw gears up to take over the rotating EU presidency in January.

"Our presidency will notably be co-responsible for what the political landscape will look like, perhaps how the situation will look during (peace) negotiations, which could begin -- though there are still question marks -- in the winter of this year," Tusk told reporters.

Britain, France and Germany on Tuesday pressed Iran to "immediately halt its nuclear escalation" after the IAEA reported Tehran had sharply stepped up uranium enrichment activity.

A week after President-elect Donald Trump's victory, Elon Musk said his political action committee would "play a significant role in primaries."

The following week, the billionaire responded to a report that he might fund challengers to GOP House members who don't support Trump's nominees. "How else? There is no other way," Musk wrote on X, which he rebranded after purchasing Twitter and moving to boost conservative voices, including his own.

President Joe Biden said Sunday that the sudden collapse of the Syrian government under Bashar Assad is a "fundamental act of justice" after decades of repression, but it was "a moment of risk and uncertainty" for the Middle East.

Biden spoke at the White House hours after rebel groups completed a takeover of the country following more than a dozen years of violent civil war and decades of leadership by Assad and his family. Biden said the United States was monitoring reports of the whereabouts of Assad, with Russian state media saying he had fled to Moscow and received asylum from his longtime ally.