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.

LBJ tried jawboning. Richard Nixon issued a presidential edict. The Ford administration printed buttons exhorting Americans to "Whip Inflation Now.''

Over the years, American presidents have tried, and mostly floundered, in their efforts to quell the economic and political menace of consumer inflation.

A center-left-led alliance of parties on Wednesday announced a deal to form Germany's new government, replacing Angela Merkel's cabinet and putting the Social Democrats (SPD) in charge for the first time in 16 years.

Sweden's parliament on Wednesday approved Magdalena Andersson as the country's first female prime minister, tapping the finance minister who recently became the new leader of the Social Democratic party.

Andersson was tapped to replace Stefan Lofven as party leader and prime minister, roles he relinquished earlier this year.

The Iran judo federation's appeal against a four-year ban from international events for refusing to let its athletes face opponents from Israel was heard on Tuesday.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport said the Iranian appeal against an International Judo Federation ruling was held by video link. A verdict is expected to take at least several weeks.

The United Nations' top envoy for Libya is resigning weeks ahead of presidential elections seen as critical to the country's stability after nearly a decade of chaos, the world body said.

Jan Kubis decided to step down after just 10 months in the job. With the presidential vote set for Dec. 24, the U.N. is "working as quickly as possible to ensure continuity of leadership," spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said at a news briefing at U.N. headquarters.

Tech giant Apple has announced it is suing Israel's NSO Group, seeking to block the world's most infamous hacker-for-hire company from breaking into Apple's products, like the iPhone.

Apple said in a complaint filed in federal court in California that NSO Group employees are "amoral 21st century mercenaries who have created highly sophisticated cyber-surveillance machinery that invites routine and flagrant abuse." Apple said NSO Group's spyware, called Pegasus, had been used to attack a small number of Apple customers worldwide.

Security forces in Qatar detained two journalists from Norwegian state television for over 30 hours and deleted footage they gathered at a migrant labor camp as they tried to report on worker issues ahead of the FIFA 2022 World Cup, authorities said Wednesday.

Qatar's government later accused NRK journalists Halvor Ekeland and Lokman Ghorbani of "trespassing on private property and filming without a permit" as the two returned early Wednesday to Norway following their arrest. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre responded by saying their arrest was "unacceptable."

The smuggler had said the car would come in 10 minutes, but Zaid Ramadan had been waiting in the dense forest straddling the Poland-Belarus border for three hours, desperate for signs of headlights in the mist — and a new life in Europe.

His pregnant wife Delin shivered under a blanket. She had been against leaving their life in Dohuk, a mountainous province in the northern Kurdish-run region of Iraq. The journey was perilous, expensive and the change too drastic, she told him.

The leaders of three Central European countries have expressed their solidarity with Poland in an ongoing migration crisis on its eastern border with Belarus, and urged the European Union to increase its support for the protection of the bloc's external borders.

At a news briefing in Hungary's capital of Budapest following talks between the prime ministers of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said the situation on his country's eastern border went beyond migration.