Latest from the news desk:
Talks involving representatives of the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists are under way amid hopes for agreement on a cease-fire and steps to end their conflict.
The talks, also attended by representatives of Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), are being held in the Belarusian capital, Minsk.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and separatist leaders have said they are ready for a truce if agreement on a plan to end the five-month conflict is reached.
The talks follow a telephone conversation between Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 3 in which they discussed ways to end the conflict that has killed more than 2,600 people in eastern Ukraine since April.
Ukrainian representative Leonid Kuchma and Mikhail Zurabov of Russia both said before the talks that they hoped agreements would be signed. (Reuters, AP, and AFP)
Hopeful signs at the talks, if Donetsk separatist leader at the talks said to be a "Ukrainian patriot"?
LATEST: NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen says that alliance leaders have approved a rapid response force to counter a Russian threat and that no country has a veto over NATO enlargement.
Pressure is being put on non-Orthodox religious communities in Crimea by the Russian-installed authorities there, Forum 18 reports:
All but five of 23 Turkish imams and religious teachers invited by the Crimean Muftiate under a 20-year-old programme have been forced to leave Crimea as Russia's Federal Migration Service refused to extend their residence permits. The rest will have to leave when their residence permits expire. "We can't invite anyone now as they say we have no legal status," Jemil Bibishev of the Muftiate lamented to Forum 18 News Service. "If they want to begin mission work in Crimea they will have to get a visa from the Russian embassy in Turkey in accordance with Russian law," Yana Smolova of the Federal Migration Service insisted to Forum 18. Representatives of a range of religious communities have told Forum 18 that they are under surveillance by the FSB security service. Greek Catholic priest Fr Bogdan Kostetsky has been summoned several times. Among the questions were some about his attitude to Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, who led the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church until his death in 1944. The duty officer at the Yevpatoriya FSB told Forum 18 he had never heard that Fr Kostetsky had been summoned.
Here is today's map of the military situation in eastern Ukraine, per the National Security and Defense Council:
Reports of a cese-fire agreement coming out of Minsk: