BELGRADE, May 11. /TASS/: Serbia is one of Russia’s key partners in Europe and in the world, Chairman of the Russian Federation Council's (upper house of parliament) Foreign Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev stated on Saturday in an interview with Serbia’s RTS channel.

TEHRAN, May 10 (Xinhua): The U.S. government of President Donald Trump dare not wage a war on Iran despite its threats, a senior Iranian commander said Friday.

"Negotiations with Americans will not take place, and Americans will not dare take a military action against us," Yadollah Javani, head of the political bureau of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, told Tasnim News Agency.

MOSCOW, May 11. /TASS/: Wildfires have scorched over 44,000 hectares in 18 Russian regions, the Federal Aerial Forest Protection Service (Avialesokhrana) said in a statement on Saturday, adding that 155 forest fires had been extinguished in the previous 24 hours.

"As of May 11, 2019, a total of 54 forest fires are active in Russia, which engulf 44,245 hectares, active efforts are underway to extinguish the fires," the statement reads.

MINSK, May 11. /TASS/: Minsk has no intention to take advantage of oil pollution incident and link it to the situation surrounding Russia’s tax maneuver, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said.

"It has nothing to do with the tax maneuver," he said, as cited by the BelTA news agency. "An incident occurred. Was it done deliberately and on purpose? Let them [Russians] sort things out for themselves. I am told that our oil refineries are getting clean oil, a portion of the polluted oil was pumped into our storage facilities," Lukashenko added.

KANPUR: Patients were availing the benefit of free medical tests at Dufferin & Ursula Horsman Memorial hospitals in the city. Two different pathology centers were making available all those various types of tests free of cost to the patients. As there was a government’s contract with the private laboratory which was done three years ago, the patients did not realize the load of costs usually faced by them.

New Delhi, May 10 (PTI) Industrial output contracted 0.1 per cent in March due to slowdown in the manufacturing sector, official data showed Friday.

Factory output as measured in terms of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) had expanded 5.3 per cent in March 2018.

During the entire 2018-19 fiscal, industrial output witnessed a 3.6 per cent growth as against 4.4 per cent in the previous fiscal, according to data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

New Delhi, May 10 (PTI) The AAP Friday sent a notice to the BJP and its East Delhi Lok Sabha seat candidate Gautam Gambhir demanding an apology for the derogatory pamphlet allegedly circulated against Atishi Marlena, failing which "appropriate legal proceedings will be initiated".

Filed by advocate Mohammad Irsad, from the legal cell of the AAP, the notice termed the pamphlets "offending publication" and alleged that those were published by Gambhir and the BJP.

BEIJING, May 11 (Xinhua): The Ministry of Water Resources and the China Meteorological Administration issued an alert Saturday for mountain torrents in parts of southern China.

From Saturday night to Sunday night, some areas in the central and southwestern provinces of Hunan and Guizhou and Chongqing Municipality will be prone to mountain torrents.

To guard against mountain torrent disasters, the two agencies told local authorities to strengthen real-time monitoring and flood warnings and brace for evacuation.

WASHINGTON, May 11. /TASS/: The United States has decided to move a Patriot long-range all-weather air defense system battery and USS Arlington to the United States’ Central Command (CENTCOM) zone of authority, which primarily contains the Middle East and Central Asia, the Pentagon’s press service said in a statement on Friday.

"The Acting Secretary of Defense (Patrick Shanahan) has approved the movement of USS Arlington (LPD-24) and a Patriot battery to US Central Command (CENTCOM) as part of the command’s original request for forces from earlier this week," the statement said.

Bhubaneswar, May 10 (PTI) Over one million trees that once stood tall and provided green cover to the Odisha capital have been felled by the raging winds of Cyclone Fani, the uprooted trunks and bare branches testimony to the intensity of the storm that barrelled through the state last week.

The extremely severe cyclonic storm on May 3 did not result in major casualties but the environmental damage in the city is immense and it will take more than a decade to recover, officials said.

New Delhi/Jaipur, May 10 (PTI) IAF fighter jets on Friday intercepted a Georgian An-12 aircraft flying from Tbilisi to Delhi via Karachi and forced it to land at the Jaipur airport after the plane entered the Indian air space from an unscheduled point, officials said.

The crew members of the cargo aircraft, which entered Indian airspace at 3:15 PM, were questioned at Jaipur, they said, adding the investigation lasted several hours and the plane was being allowed to leave.

BANGKOK, May 11. /TASS/: Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service Rosstat has presented a project on keeping statistical accounting at a seminar of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok, head of the Russian delegation, Deputy Head of Rosstat Sergey Egorenko told TASS on Friday, adding that the initiative would help raise the research potential of countries for forming a larger number of sustainable development indicators.