Europe

London, May 1 (PTI) Fugitive diamond merchant Nirav Modi would make another bail plea on May 8 at the UK court where he is undergoing extradition proceedings to India in the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud and money laundering charges amounting to up to USD 2 billion.

BERLIN, May 2. /TASS/: Germany’s ruling party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), backs the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, while understanding some countries’ concerns, its leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said in an interview with DPA news agency.

MOSCOW, May 2. /TASS/: Russia’s oil output on the last day of April stood at 229,000 barrels per day, lower than the level of October 2018 considered as basic in the OPEC+ deal, excluding output under production sharing agreements (PSAs), Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Thursday.

MOSCOW, May 2. /TASS/: Police have detained a man who went on a shooting spree in Moscow, wounding four people, the Interior Ministry’s press service told TASS on Thursday.

The shooting occurred at 1.00 a.m. in the town of Moskovsky, in Moscow’s southwest. Police, who arrived at the scene, found out that a conflict had broken out at a dog area among several citizens.

"One of them rushed home, took a pump-action shotgun, according to preliminary information, and shot his opponents several times. Four people were wounded," the police said.

LONDON, May 2. /TASS/: The next hearing on the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is scheduled for May 30, a TASS correspondent reported from the Westminster Magistrates Court on Thursday.

Presiding Judge Michael Snow also ruled that the expanded hearing on the Assange case will be held on June 12. The WikiLeaks founder said via a video link-up that he did not want to be extradited to the US.

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been invited by U.S. President Donald Trump for a “working meeting” on May 13, an official said Thursday.

the meeting in Washington will cover issues like energy security, defense cooperation, bilateral relations and regional security, Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs tweeted.

In July 2016, Orban became the first national leader in the European Union to endorse Trump in the U.S. election campaign.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Scandinavian Airlines is canceling more flights as talks between the carrier and the striking pilots continued in the Norwegian capital.

The airline says 429 more flights were canceled Thursday on top of the 280 announced earlier for the day, totaling 709 flights being grounded which is affecting about 54,000 passengers.

The cancellation comes in addition to hundreds more since pilots began an open-ended strike on Friday because of the collapse of pay negotiations.

1 May 2019; DW: Julian Assange was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for breaching conditions of bail in London on Wednesday, but the WikiLeaks founder's focus is liable to be on his next date in court. 

This Thursday, Assange will appear before a British judge in an initial hearing on his possible, and controversial, extradition to the US.

MOSCOW, April 30. /TASS/: Experts of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) have successfully retrieved doping samples from the Moscow laboratory, the WADA press service informed on Friday.

"WADA can confirm that a five-person team has successfully retrieved 2,262 samples from the laboratory, which had been split into A and B samples and contained within 4,524 collection bottles," the press service stated. "The samples have now been taken out of Moscow and are on their way to a WADA-accredited laboratory outside of Russia".

1 May 2019; DW: A court in London on Wednesday sentenced Assange to 50 weeks in prison for jumping bail in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden.

Assange, who was arrested last month after Ecuador revoked his political asylum, had raised his hand defiantly upon arriving at court in a prison van.