FRANCE-PLANE CRASH

PARIS — The co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 4525 appeared to practice a controlled descent on his previous flight, two hours before he crashed the A320 jet into a mountainside in March, French air accident investigators said in an interim report.

BRITAIN-ELECTION

LONDON — As Britain's political leaders spent a final day campaigning, the election race drew to a bumpy close for the U.K. Independence Party, which suspended a candidate for saying he would shoot his Conservative opponent. 

CATANIA, Sicily — Italian crews have rescued a boatload of migrants who say they were at sea for 12 days, as the U.N. Security Council gears up to hear first-hand about the Mediterranean migrant crisis. The rescue of the 98 passengers — a third of them women and three of them pregnant — was the latest as waves of migrants try to reach Europe aboard smugglers' boats. 

UKRAINE

KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine says five government troops battling separatist forces in the east have been killed in one of the worst single days of bloodshed since a cease-fire was declared in February.

WITH: —UKRAINE-DEFENSIVE WALL— As Ukraine erects defensive fence on Russian border, critics fear expensive failure. 

GERMANY-FAR RIGHT-RAIDS

BERLIN — Germany federal prosecutors say authorities have conducted raids across the country, arresting four people accused of founding a right-wing extremist group to attack mosques and housing for asylum seekers.