Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Saturday that he and Poland’s president had agreed that sanctions ought to continue against Russia until Ukraine regained the territory it lost in Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.    Zelenskiy, accompanied by some members of his Cabinet, was on his first visit to Poland as president for political talks and to attend ceremonies planned for Sunday to mark the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II.    He said he and Polish President Andrzej Duda had discussed the next steps needed to end the war in eastern Ukraine and to return the Crimean Peninsula to Ukraine.    “We have agreed on our next steps to stop the war in eastern Ukraine and to bring back occupied Crimea,” Zelenskiy said. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 in a move that Ukraine and almost all the world views as illegal. The European Union and the U.S. imposed sanctions.    In eastern Ukraine, a deadly conflict between government forces and Russia-backed separatists has gone on for five years.     A member of the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service gives a sign to people to stop as they approach a checkpoint at the contact line between pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian troops in Mayorsk, Ukraine July …

Police said there were “multiple gunshot victims” in central Texas on Saturday after one or more suspects opened fire.    The Midland Police Department said one of the suspects was believed to be driving a gold-colored vehicle and had a rifle. Authorities in Odessa said the other shooter was believed to be driving a U.S. Postal Service vehicle.    Police in Odessa said one or possibly two suspects hijacked the postal vehicle and were firing at random, hitting multiple people.    The University of Texas Permian Basin campus went into lockdown. There have been no reports of fatalities.    The Texas Department of Public Safety urged residents to avoid major highways in the area, including Interstate 20.  …

Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she’s on her way to being “very well” following radiation treatment for cancer.    The 86-year-old justice spoke Saturday at the Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington. The event came a little over a week after Ginsburg disclosed that she had completed three weeks of outpatient radiation therapy for a cancerous tumor on her pancreas.    It was the fourth time since 1999 that Ginsburg has been treated for cancer. In announcing the news, the Supreme Court said in a statement that after the treatment there was “no evidence of disease elsewhere in the body.”    Ginsburg was treated for colorectal cancer in 1999 and pancreatic cancer in 2009, and she had lung cancer surgery in December.     …

President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, until now mainly an abstraction for American consumers, is about to hit home.    Beginning Sunday, the U.S. government will begin collecting 15% tariffs on $112 billion in Chinese imports — items ranging from smartwatches and TVs to shoes, diapers, sporting goods, and meat and dairy products. For the first time since Trump launched his trade war, American households face price increases because many U.S. companies say they’ll be forced to pass on to customers the higher prices they’ll pay on Chinese imports.    For more than a year, the world’s two largest economies have been locked in a high-stakes duel marked by Trump’s escalating import taxes on Chinese goods and Beijing’s retaliatory tariffs.    The two sides have held periodic talks that seem to have made little progress despite glimmers of potential breakthroughs. All the while, they’ve imposed tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of each other’s products in a rift over what analysts say is Beijing’s predatory tactics in its drive to become the supreme high-tech superpower.    American consumers have so far been spared the worst of it: The Trump administration had left most everyday household items off its tariff list (valued …

Italian bodybuilder, boxer and actor Franco Columbu, one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s closest friends, has died at age 78.    Columbu died in a hospital in his native Sardinia on Friday afternoon after becoming ill while he was swimming in the sea.    His longtime friend Schwarzenegger tweeted: I love you Franco. I will always remember the joy you brought to my life, the advices you gave me, and the twinkle in your eye that never disappeared. You were my best friend. https://t.co/X3GhZKlgAd — Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) August 30, 2019  After starting his career as a boxer, Columbu progressed into Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting and later bodybuilding, winning the prestigious title of Mr. Olympia in 1976 and 1981.    Besides his athletic career, Columbu also acted in popular TV series and movies. He appeared in Schwarzenegger’s films The Terminator, The Running Man and Conan the Barbarian.      Columbu was Schwarzenegger’s best man at his marriage to Maria Shriver in 1986.  …

Turkey’s president threatened Saturday to launch a unilateral offensive into northeastern Syria if plans to establish a so-called safe zone along Turkey’s border fail to meet his expectations, including a demand that Turkish soldiers control the corridor.    Speaking to graduates of a military academy in Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the U.S. had up to three weeks to satisfy Turkish demands.    Earlier in August, Turkish and U.S. officials agreed to set up the zone east of the Euphrates River. Ankara wants U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters, considered terrorists by Turkey, to pull back from the border.    “If our soldiers do not start to control the area actively, we will have no choice but to activate our own operational plans,” Erdogan said.    Turkey has been pressing to control — in coordination with the U.S. — a 19-25-mile (30-40-kilometer) zone within civil war-ravaged Syria, running east of the Euphrates all the way to the border with Iraq.  Temporary accord   On Friday, Erdogan said Turkish officials had “temporarily” agreed to a safe zone proposed by the U.S. that was narrower than 20 miles (32 kilometers).    The two countries set up a joint operations center in Turkey’s border province of Sanliurfa this month and started …

After canceling a trip to Poland to stay stateside to oversee the federal government’s response to an approaching hurricane, President Donald Trump took time out to golf and to send a thinly veiled warning to his ousted Oval Office gatekeeper. The president, on Saturday morning, was flown on Marine One from Camp David in Maryland to his Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.   Camp David has a driving range and a single golf hole with multiple tees, but the president, keeping to his weekend routine when the weather is fair, chose to head to the nearest of his private 18-hole courses. Before departing the presidential retreat, which he rarely has used, Trump dispatched a blizzard of tweets – at a rate of nearly one per minute over an hour – on his personal @realDonaldTrump account. Some of his tweets referenced Hurricane Dorian, a Category 4 storm poised to damage the southeastern U.S. coast, with Trump noting it could pose more of a threat to South Carolina and Georgia than the original forecast of landfall in Florida. Looking like our great South Carolina could get hit MUCH harder than first thought. Georgia and North Carolina also. It’s moving around …

The Colombian military has killed nine rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces in Colombia (FARC), President Ivan Duque said. A FARC commander and eight other guerrillas were killed in a bombing raid in southern Colombia on Friday, just days after the group announced it was taking up arms again to ensure their political rights under an historic peace agreement. Duque said the attack occurred in the municipality of San Vicente del Caguan, located in the province of Caqueta, after he authorized a military operation in rural areas in the southern part of the country. Duque said Friday’s bombing sends “a clear message” to FARC members to lay down their weapons. Among those killed was a rebel known by his alias, Gildardo Cucho, a member of a group led by former FARC chief negotiator Luciano Marin, who was trying to recruit potential rebels for a new guerrilla movement. On Thursday, former FARC commander Ivan Marquez announced in a video that a new offensive would be launched, three years after FARC signed a peace deal with the government, ending five decades of armed conflict in the South American country. “This is the continuation of the rebel fight in answer to the betrayal …

Current Time TV is a Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA. MOSCOW — Thousands of Russians defied authorities and marched in central Moscow, ignoring officials’ warnings and pressing demands to let independent candidates run in upcoming city council elections. Police did not interfere with the August 31 protest, which was markedly smaller than previous ones. However, camouflaged officers linked arms to keep marchers out of the road when demonstrators arrived at Pushkin Square — a symbolically important public park closer to the Kremlin. A heavy presence of detention buses and water-cannon trucks were visible on nearby side streets. Neither police nor independent watchdogs reported any arrests or detentions from the action — in contrast to other recent protests in which thousands were detained, sometimes violently. The August 31 action was the latest in a series of confrontations between liberal activists, and Moscow city authorities — and the Kremlin. Demonstrators clapped and chanted “Russia Will Be Free!” and “Down With The Tsar!” (in a reference to President Vladimir Putin, who has been in power in Russia for two decades), as they walked along a leafy boulevard just a few kilometers north of the Kremlin. A leading opposition figure …

This story originated in Russian military vehicles and personnel are reportedly seen from a birds-eye view near the village of Chorchana, Khashuri municipality, Georgia. (Social media) Georgian police had quickly erected the tower after observing the “mobilization of military equipment and personnel” by Russia near the village of Chorchana, in Georgian territory, about three kilometers south of territory controlled by the Russian-backed South Ossetian de facto authorities. Russia has been engaged in a process of “borderization” in the Gori region, where the Russia-Georgia War happened in 2008. The Russian occupation forces have been erecting fences and other barriers to separate land it occupies from the remainder of Georgian territory. VOA footage shot from the Georgian police observation post Friday morning shows a partially constructed barrier along the edge of Chorchana. The new Russian barrier is the first in the Khashuri region. Georgian police set up the observation tower overlooking the wall construction site to determine whether it crossed into Georgian-controlled land, which would physically expand the footprint of Russian-occupied territory. Pro-Russian separatists have objected to the police presence, saying the observation tower is right next to a village on South Ossetian territory called Uista, known as Tsnelisi in Georgia. Georgian …

Baik Sung-won and Kim dong-hyun contributed to this report. WASHINGTON — Muted U.S. criticism of North Korea’s missile tests is encouraging Pyongyang to escalate its weapons program, undermining Washington’s own diplomatic efforts aimed at denuclearization, experts have told VOA in recent days. “Trump’s casual dismissal of seven rounds of [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un’s ballistic missile tests [since late July] is an inexcusable act that, in effect, is viewed by Kim as license to continue to pursue his weapons of mass destruction programs,” Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told VOA by email Thursday. North Korea has conducted U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper speaks to reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon, Aug. 28, 2019. Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters at a Pentagon news conference Wednesday that the U.S. is concerned about North Korea’s short-range missile tests. But Esper said, “On the other hand, we’re not going to overreact.”  He continued, “We want to take a measured response and make sure that we don’t close the door to diplomacy.” The Trump administration has largely played down North Korea’s missile tests, in an apparent move to continue diplomacy aimed at denuclearizing the country. In response …

A Sudanese judge formally indicted former president Omar al-Bashir on charges of possessing illicit foreign currency and corruption on Saturday. Questioned in court for the first time, Bashir said that he had received $25 million from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as well as funds from other sources, but that he had not received or used the money for his own benefit. A lawyer for Bashir said that his client denied the charges against him and that witnesses for the defense would be presented at the next hearing. The judge denied a request for bail and said a decision on the duration of Bashir’s detention would be taken at a hearing on Sept. 7. Sudan’s military ousted and arrested Bashir in April after months of protests across the country. His prosecution is seen as a test of how far military and civilian authorities now sharing power will go to counter the legacy of his 30-year rule. Bashir was also charged in May with incitement and involvement in the killing of protesters. He has been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague on charges of masterminding genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region. A police detective told the court earlier …

The Taliban have staged a “large-scale” predawn attack on an important city in northern Afghanistan, even as leaders of the insurgent group are engaged in marathon peace talks with the United States on ending the deadly war. Residents and officials said Saturday insurgents assaulted Kunduz, the capital of the province with the same name, from several different directions, triggering intense gun battles with Afghan government forces. Both sides reportedly have suffered casualties and civilians also have been harmed, though exact details of the battlefield losses could not be ascertained from independent sources. The fighting disrupted power supplies and cell phone services to Kunduz, cutting off all communications. Afghan security personnel walk on a street in Kunduz, Afghanistan, Aug. 31, 2019, in a still image taken from video. Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Roohullah Amadzai told reporters the Taliban managed to enter central parts of Kunduz and took positions in civilian population, including the main hospital. Ahmadzai said security forces, backed by airpower, were responding to the insurgent attack to force them out of the city while making sure civilians and patients were not harmed in the process. He confirmed both Afghan and foreign forces carried out airstrikes against Taliban positions in …

About two million people living in India’s northeastern state of Assam face the unnerving prospect of becoming stateless as authorities wind down a mammoth process to identify illegal immigrants.   Their names did not appear on an updated citizens’ register published Saturday. Human right activists say they would potentially add up to the largest number of people effectively stripped of their citizenship.   The state government has said they will be given the opportunity to prove that they are Indian citizens before foreigners’ tribunals, but many will find it difficult to navigate the legal process as they are poor and marginalized.   In an unprecedented exercise that began four years ago, the state’s 33 million people were called on to show documentary evidence that they or their ancestors had resided in India before 1971. Mandated by the Supreme Court, it aimed to weed out migrants from neighboring Bangladesh – an emotive issue that had triggered communal strife in the past in a border state where local communities complained of losing jobs and land to migrants.   The controversial exercise was backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party which has vowed to end “illegal infiltration.” It left …

A worsening drought is pushing parts of eastern Australia towards a “Fish Armageddon,” according to senior politicians. With not much rain on the horizon, as well as record low river levels, there are fears eastern Australia will witness more fish dying at a higher rate than last summer. A million fish died in January at Menindee, 1,000 kilometers west of Sydney, when a sudden drop in temperature caused algae to die. As the algae decomposed, oxygen was sucked out of the river, suffocating marine life. Farmers and conservationists accused the state government of allowing cotton growers to drain too much water from the Murray-Darling River Basin, one of Australia’s key waterways. Officials, though, blamed a worsening drought. They have announced a multimillion dollar fish rescue plan to help avert an “ecological disaster.” Modern Noah’s Ark The New South Wales Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall says vulnerable native fish will be relocated from the river to hatcheries for safety. “I cannot sugar-coat it, it will be the equivalent of a ‘Fish Armageddon’ in New South Wales this summer, and I say that based on all the evidence. We will use hatcheries like this to create a modern-day Noah’s Ark for native fish …

In Russia, countrywide celebrations have been held to mark the 350th anniversary of the national flag. Yet, only 50 percent of respondents polled in a recent survey could correctly name the sequence of the colors on the flag. Russia recently saw a surge of patriotic celebrations orchestrated by local and federal authorities. Yulia Savchenko has more from Moscow on the state-promoted events.   …

Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg took her Friday school strikes to the gates of the United Nations, surrounded by hundreds of other young activists, calling on adults to take action on climate change. Thunberg will speak at a climate change summit of world leaders next month at the U.N. General Assembly. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from Washington.   …

While millions of people continue to live under a prolonged security lockdown in Indian-controlled Kashmir, villagers near the border on the Pakistani side of the disputed territory complain intensified military skirmishes between the two countries are also impacting their routine life. Ayaz Gul reports from the border town of Chakothi.   …

Sirhan Sirhan, imprisoned for more than 50 years for the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, was hospitalized Friday after being stabbed by a fellow inmate at a San Diego prison. A statement from the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said the stabbing occurred Friday afternoon at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego. “Officers responded quickly, and found an inmate with stab wound injuries. He was transported to an outside hospital for medical care, and is currently in stable condition,” the statement said. The statement did not name Sirhan, but a government source with direct knowledge confirmed to The Associated Press that he was the victim. The source spoke under condition of anonymity, citing prison privacy regulations. The stabbing was first reported by TMZ. Corrections officials reported that the alleged attacker has been identified and has been segregated from the rest of the prison population pending an investigation. Kennedy assassination Sirhan, 75, was convicted of shooting Kennedy shortly after midnight June 5, 1968, immediately after the New York senator had declared victory in the previous day’s California Democratic presidential primary. Kennedy had just finished delivering his victory speech to cheering supporters at Los Angeles’ Ambassador …

Indonesia is investigating incidents that led to widespread violence in the territory of West Papua. Days of unrest and protests followed racially charged incidents in two cities involving alleged abuse of Papuan students. Nova Poerwadi narrates the story by Yuni Salim.   …

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Friday that Hurricane Dorian has strengthened into a Category 4 storm and called it “extremely dangerous.’’ The storm is moving toward the Bahamas and the U.S. state of Florida. The Bahamian government has issued a hurricane warning for the northwestern Bahamas, while U.S. President Donald Trump has declared a state of emergency for the state of Florida. Tourist Loren Fantasia from Baltimore swings on the beach before the arrival of Hurricane Dorian, in Freeport, Bahamas, Aug. 30, 2019. The hurricane has strengthened to a Category 4 storm. The National Hurricane Center said that because Dorian is moving slowly, it could produce prolonged rains, winds and storm surges, leading to life-threatening flash floods. Dorian is moving with maximum sustained winds of 215 kilometers per hour. Forecasters predict that Dorian could slam into southeastern Florida on Monday, however the latest models also predict a chance that the storm could turn northward and hug the eastern coast of the United States. They say Dorian’s track is still highly uncertain. Category 4 storms are capable of what experts describe as catastrophic damage, destroying homes and buildings, ripping up roads, and knocking down trees and power lines. Hurricane Dorian’s predicted …

U.S. health officials are warning users of e-cigarettes to reconsider their habit of vaping, noting a rise in the number of respiratory illnesses linked to the practice. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Friday that they were investigating 215 cases of a serious lung disease possibly related to the use of e-cigarettes. Officials said the cause of the illnesses was not yet known, but noted that in some of the cases, patients used e-cigarette products that contained THC, the mind-altering substance in marijuana. Most of the patients have recovered from the mysterious illness, but last week, the first death from the disease was reported. CDC advice The CDC warned the public not to buy vaping products off the street and to avoid adding substances like THC. “CDC recommends that, while the investigation is ongoing, Americans who use e-cigarettes and are concerned about these specific, potential risks of illness should consider refraining from their use, and should not buy them off the street or modify them or add substances in ways not intended by the manufacturer,” the agency said. E-cigarettes have been available in the United States for more than a decade. They work, in general, by using …

As the world marks the International Day of Missing Persons, hundreds of Mosul families remain in agony over the whereabouts of their loved ones who went missing during the war against Islamic State (IS). Local officials say about 4,000 Mosul residents, mainly men and teenage boys, are still unaccounted for, more than two years after IS removal from the city. Many are feared dead, buried in hundreds of unexcavated mass graves across the country. For families who are waiting to hear news about their missing loved ones, the government bureaucracy and inefficiency is slowly dimming their hopes. Mosul Residents Urging Government to Find Missing Family Members After IS War video player. In this Nov. 11, 2017 photo, two Iraqi men walk near a sinkhole known as Khasfa, that is believed to contain the remains of thousands of people executed by Islamic State militants near Adhbah, south of Mosul, Iraq. “After the government freed us, it took them and released their pictures. In the picture, Mohamad was at the back and Saad was at the front. They looked thin and they were wearing thobes. There was also a solider behind them,” Salih told VOA, holding a picture allegedly from the Iraqi forces that …

A major protest planned for Saturday was called off by organizers after an appeals board denied permission for the demonstration. It is not clear whether some protesters would still demonstrate on their own. On Friday, two prominent pro-democracy activists were granted bail after being arrested and charged with inciting people to join an unauthorized protest in June. Joshua Wong, founder of the political party Demosisto, and Agnes Chow, also of Demosisto, were arrested Friday morning. Pro-democracy activists Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow leave the Eastern Court after being released on bail in Hong Kong, Aug. 30, 2019. Demosisto, which advocates for greater democracy in Hong Kong, said on its official Twitter account that Wong “was suddenly pushed into a private car on the street.” Chow was arrested at her home. Wong was a prominent figure of Hong Kong’s Umbrella movement for full democracy during protests in 2014 that paralyzed parts of the city for 79 days. In June, he was released from jail after serving a five-week term for contempt of court. On Thursday, police also arrested Andy Chan, a founder of the pro-independence Hong Kong National Party on suspicion of “participating in riots” and “attacking police” during a protest …