Here's a Savchenko update from our news desk:
A Russian court on September 15 ruled that Ukrainian helicopter pilot Nadia Savchenko must stay in a Russian jail for at least another six months as her trial continues.
Savchenko, already in pre-trial detention since June 2014, faces up to 25 years in prison for what Russian authorities allege was participation in the 2014 killing of two Russian war correspondents in eastern Ukraine.
Savchenko, who denies the charges, says she was captured by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine who illegally transferred across the border into Russia.
She has spent more than 80 days on hunger strike to protest her detention.
Savchenko appeared in court on September 15 in the town of Donetsk, in Russia's southern Rostov Oblast, near the border with eastern Ukraine for a second preliminary hearing after her lawyers' request for the trial to be moved to Moscow was denied.
The court on September 15 rejected calls to release Savchenko during the trial on the basis of her diplomatic immunity as a Ukrainian delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
(AFP, rapsinews.ru, Interfax)
Ukrainian Natalia Buksa won the Youth World Chess Championship held in Russia.
Buksa won eight matches, had four ties and lost one match. All in all, the 19-year old champion gained 10 points out of 13 possible. Buksa got ahead of Russian Alina Bivol, who came second, trailing by just half a point.
American economist Arthur Laffer has been appointed as an adviser to Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, according to a statement on the ministry's website.
Laffer will advise Jaresko on tax reform in Ukraine.
"This will allow for creation of a transparent, efficient tax system that will encourage investment, economic growth, and creation of jobs," the statement says.
Laffer is a Yale graduate and also received a PhD from Stanford University. He was an adviser to U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
He is an author of the Laffer Curve, an economic term for a possible representation of the relationship between rates of taxation and hypothetical government revenue.
The RBK-Ukraine news agency has reported that Odesa Governor Mikheil Saakashvili stopped criticizing Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk because the president asked him to.
"Saakashvili attacked Yatsenyuk to divert attention from the fact that it has been 100 days since he became a governor and, traditionally, he has to report now. But he had nothing to boast about. However, Poroshenko explained to him that public criticism of the boss was wrong, even if the criticism was formal," RBK-Ukraine quoted an anonymous source in the presidential administration as saying.
Saakashvili denied there was any truth to the report.
"I don't know what kind of source the author had (I doubt it exists at all) or whom he was trying to calm down, but each one of these claims is a 100 percent lie," he wrote on Facebook.
Two Ukrainian fighters were wounded in the Donbas over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksandr Motuznyak said.
He said separatists violated the cease-fire regime seven times over the past day.
At the same time, Motuznyak noted that for the first time in 16 months it has been quiet in the western suburbs of Donetsk.
“However, the frontline zone is still life-threatening," he said. "In Stanitsa Luhanska and Hranitne village in Donetsk Oblast, locals were injured by exploding land mines. Two people were hospitalized."
Separatists, for their turn, claimed that Ukrainian forces had violated the cease-fire regime six times over the past 24 hours.