taly's deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini on Tuesday threatened to seek damages from European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker for scaring off investors by attacking Rome's budget plans.

The budget drafted last week raises spending and pushes the public deficit to around 2.4 percent of gross domestic product, which will hike public debt above its already sky-high level of 131 percent of GDP.

France's Emmanuel Macron accepted the resignation of his interior minister, the Elysee Palace said Wednesday, in the latest blow to the president who had earlier refused to allow his loyal ally to quit. Gerard Collomb, who had been seen as one of Macron's most robust defenders, had indicated two weeks ago that he intended to step down next year, but he came under increasing pressure and made an initial attempt to resign Monday, only to be rebuffed by the president.

Nearly half of women and one in three men are at risk of developing stroke or degenerative neurological diseases such as dementia and Parkinson's during their lifetime, according to a study published Monday.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is replacing his defence minister in a cabinet reshuffle that otherwise leaves key government positions largely unchanged, local media said Tuesday.

Two quakes struck in quick succession off the southern coast of Indonesia's Sumba island on Tuesday morning, the United States Geological Survey said.

A year after a banned referendum on secession from Spain, tens of thousands of Catalan protesters piled pressure on the region's separatist government Monday during an anniversary marked by road and railway line blockades and late-night clashes with police.

Two immunologists, James Allison of the US and Tasuku Honjo of Japan, won the 2018 Nobel Medicine Prize for research into how the body’s natural defences can fight cancer, the jury said yesterday.