• NATO foreign ministers formally invited Montenegro to start talks on joining the military alliance.
• NATO ended its suspension of the NATO-Russia Council in order to resume cooperation with Russia.
• Moscow published a list of economic sanctions on Turkey.
• Moscow has also suspended negotiations with Ankara on the TurkStream natural gas pipeline project and Turkey's Akkuyu nuclear power plant, an unnamed source familiar with the situation said.
• U.S. President Barack Obama said he expects Russian strategy in Syria to shift over the next several months as it seeks to avoid getting bogged down in the region, as it did in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
• The British Cabinet has endorsed Prime Minister David Cameron's request that Parliament vote on whether to begin airstrikes in Syria.
• Al Qaeda-linked Syrian militant group Jabhat al-Nusra released 16 Lebanese soldiers and policemen held hostage since August 2014 as part of a prisoner swap.
• Iraq's November oil exports averaged 3.37 million barrels per day, up from 2.7 million bpd in October and the highest they have been in decades.
• U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced that the United States will send a small force of U.S. soldiers to assist Iraqi and Kurdish troops fighting the Islamic State.
• Lebanese lawmakers failed for a 32nd time to elect a president.
• NATO allies agreed to maintain troop levels in Afghanistan at around 12,000 in 2016.
• Azerbaijani law enforcement launched an operation in Nardaran, a highly religious suburb of the capital of Baku and the site of violent clashes that left at least seven dead Nov. 26.
• The European Union is warning Greece that it faces suspension from the Schengen passport-free travel zone unless it implements changes to its response to Europe's migrant crisis by mid-December.
• Myanmar's ruling party will hand over power as planned to the opposition National League for Democracy, which swept the country's landmark elections in November, outgoing President Thein Sein said.
