From our newsroom:
Four U.S. students have been ordered to leave Russia after authorities there said they had the wrong visas.
The four were attending a two-week leadership conference in St. Petersburg on November 6 when immigration officers and police showed up and demanded to see their visas.
A father of one of the students told the AP news agency they were briefly detained while they were put on trial and fined the equivalent of $110 each.
They were questioned for a total of seven hours, first at their hotel and then at immigration offices.
According to the Tass news agency, Yulia Nikolayeva, a Federal Migration Service representative in St. Petersburg, said the four had come to Russia on tourist visas but the activity they participated in was considered "social-political activity."
The conference was led by the Association of Young Leaders, a Russia-based association that teaches young people leadership skills.
The four flew back to the United States on November 11.
Based on reporting by AP, TASS, and the "San Jose Mercury-News" and TASS
News agencies and other sources report heavy shelling in the rebel stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. Multiple explosions early today were said to have struck the city, one of two provincial capitals held by pro-Russian separatists.
An AFP correspondent said mortar shells were being fired from an area near the city center toward government-held positions around Donetsk's international airport.
Shelling occurs almost daily around the airport despite a September 5 cease-fire aimed to end the conflict that has killed more than 4,000 people since April. Each side has blamed the other for the continued fighting.
Via dpa:
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has accused Russia and the Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine of abandoning the peace accords agreed in September.
In a telephone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel late Tuesday Poroshenko said a recent inflow of troops and heavy weapons was evidence of this.
"The representatives of the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics have practically rejected implementing the Minsk agreements, while there is no progress in Russia's implementation," Poroshenko told Merkel according to his office.
The latest map from Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council:
