Europe

LONDON, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States to face espionage charges, the Royal Courts of Justice ruled here Friday as the body overturned a lower court ruling earlier this year.

Assange, 50, is wanted in the United States on allegations of disclosing national defense information following WikiLeaks's publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked military documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars a decade ago.

MOSCOW (AP) — A senior Russian diplomat warned the United States and its NATO allies Friday that their own security would suffer if they “torpedo” providing Russia with certain military guarantees.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has urged the West to provide guarantees that would preclude NATO from expanding to Ukraine or deploying troops and weapons there. Putin brought it up during a video call with U.S. President Joe Biden this week.

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — The leaders of four Bulgarian parties on Friday said they’ve agreed to form a centrist-led coalition that would end a months-long political crisis, giving a country beset by economic and health problems its first regular government since April.

The agreement followed lengthy talks between the winner of last month’s general election, the centrist We Continue the Change (PP) party, two right-leaning parties and a Socialist party.

LONDON (AP) — A British appellate court opened the door Friday for Julian Assange to be extradited to the United States on spying charges by overturning a lower court decision that the WikiLeaks founder’s mental health was too fragile to withstand incarceration in America.

The High Court in London ruled that U.S. assurances about Assange’s detention, received after the lower court decision, were enough to guarantee he would be treated humanely. Assange’s lawyers say they will ask to appeal.

WARSAW, December 9. /TASS/: The European Commission (EC) has sufficient grounds to immediately launch antitrust proceedings against Gazprom and must do it immediately, Polish Minister of Climate and Environment Anna Moskwa said in an interview with the national radio on Thursday.

"We strongly demand that an antitrust investigation be launched against Gazprom immediately," she said.

MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/: Russia has registered 30,209 new confirmed COVID-19 infections over the past 24 hours, with the total number of infections reaching 9,925,806 cases, the anti-coronavirus crisis center told reporters on Thursday.

According to the crisis center, the relative increase of new infections is at the level of 0.3%.

MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/: The launch of an Angara-A5 heavy carrier rocket from the Plesetsk spaceport is scheduled for the evening of December 23, the administration of the Kargasoksky district of the Tomsk Region announced on Thursday.

"The launch of an Angara-A5 space rocket from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome [the Arkhangelsk Region] is planned. The launch time is 18:00 Moscow time on December 23, 2021 (the launch back-up date is December 24, 2021)," the administration said in a statement posted on the VKontakte social network.

BELGRADE, December 9. /TASS/: The Serbian government and Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom signed an agreement on the construction of a nuclear technology center in the republic, the press service of Serbian Innovation Minister Nenad Popovic announced on Thursday.

"The Serbian government and the state corporation Rosatom signed a general framework agreement on the construction of the nuclear technology center and an agreement on the establishment of a joint venture that will implement this project in Serbia," the statement says.

MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/: The standoff in eastern Ukraine is escalating but any provocations by the Ukrainian authorities to settle the strife in Donbass involving the use of force will be thwarted, Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov cautioned at a briefing for foreign military diplomats on Thursday.

WARSAW, Dec 9 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A four-year-old Iraqi migrant girl went missing in an icy forest after being separated from her parents in a scuffle with Polish border guards, humanitarian groups said as they pressed for access to the border region to help find the child.

Poland has sealed off the region along its frontier with Belarus to outsiders as it has sought to keep out thousands of people from the Middle East and Africa who travelled to Belarus in the hope of crossing into European Union territory.