Excerpt:
Sweden's mainstream political parties announced a deal on Saturday to preserve a minority center-left government, adopting the center-right's budget for next year and thus avoiding early elections that looked to strengthen the far right.
The bargain, announced by Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, cancels the early elections he had announced for March, which would have been the first snap elections in Sweden since 1958.
The deal preserves the Lofven government, only three months old, which lost a key parliamentary vote when the anti-immigration Sweden Democrat party joined the center-right in refusing to support the government's budget.