Just hours after Azerbaijan's bid to host the Olympic Games in Baku in 2020 was rejected by the International Olympic Committee, the head of Azerbaijan's soccer federation said his country had submitted a bid to co-host the European soccer championship with neighboring Georgia the same year.

Belarusian human rights activist Aleh Vouchak has been found guilty by a Minsk court of using vulgar words in public and sentenced to nine days in jail.

Swedish Eurovision favorite Loreen was asked by a Reuters journalist about her meeting with Azerbaijan's political opposition. But Azerbaijani TV decided even the question was too racy for its viewers and passed right over it.

As the Eurovision final draws near, the Internet is awash with "best of" and "worst of" lists featuring songs from the contest over the past seven decades.

EU lawmakers have adopted a resolution calling for an "immediate stop to all actions aimed at suppressing the freedom of expression and assembly" in Azerbaijan.

This week's appointments suggest Vladimir Putin wants to turn the clock back to 2007. A newly energized -- and creative -- civil society has other ideas.

There are few places in Central Asia where moviegoers can watch "The Dictator," Sacha Baron Cohen's new comedy about a fictional autocratic ruler. But surprisingly, in authoritarian Uzbekistan, the movie is being shown -- albeit in heavily censored form.

Police in the Azerbaijani capital have detained dozens of demonstrators amid scuffles at an opposition protest calling for greater media freedom in authoritarian-ruled Azerbaijan.

The May 20 public beating of a gay rights activist in Ukraine shocked many people around the world and brought condemnation from Amnesty International. But the victim, Svyatoslav Sheremet, wasn't surprised. He was prepared. And the incident hasn't dimmed his commitment to opening people's minds to the fact that gay rights are first and foremost human rights.

Fans of exploitation cinema might be happy, but support groups for victims of the world's worst civilian nuclear disaster are not.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has given British actor Ben Kingsley the green light to play him on-screen.

Azerbaijani rocker Jamal Ali fled his native Azerbaijan last week, claiming that he feared for his safety after the spotlight of this week's Eurovision Song Contest moved on from host city Baku. Now, he's come out with a video jab at the homeland whose officials jailed him for playing an opposition gig.

If you want to buy spirits between the hours of 8 p.m. and 2 p.m. in the Russian republic of Yakutia, you're out of luck.

After two days of cabinet and Kremlin appointments, very little has actually changed. Can Vladimir Putin turn the clock back in today's hypercharged political environment?

Brash protesters from the famously bare-breasted Ukrainian feminist group Femen staged another assault on the Euro 2012 soccer championships that Ukraine is co-hosting along with Poland.

Did the Russian state buy a lemon when it piled $200 million into an entrepreneurial e-reader project?

Police in the Iranian city of Orumieh have cracked down on protesters demonstrating against the continued environmental deterioration of neighboring Lake Orumieh, according to BBC Persian reports.

Female students in Ukraine are up in arms after the country's education minister said they weren't as attractive as other women.

They were comments apparently too hot even for his own country's state-controlled media to handle. During a visit to Moscow last week, Uzbek President Islam Karimov met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, during which the topic of population growth and family planning came up.

The Week Ahead is a detailed listing of key events of the coming week affecting RFE/RL's broadcast region.

The head of Tajikistan's leading film-distribution company says "The Dictator," the new satire from comedian and actor Sacha Baron Cohen, won't be shown in Tajik cinemas.

"Borat" and "The Dictator" star Sacha Baron Cohen has told BBC that the United Nations refused to let him film scenes from his most recent movie on its premises for fear the move could upset dictators.

The U.S. State Department has named jailed Belarusian rights activist Ales Byalyatski a recipient of its annual Human Rights Defenders Award.

In this week's Power Vertical podcast we discuss the politics of the street and the machinations in the Kremlin -- and how they intersect.

British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has earned worldwide notoriety for his edgy brand of humor. The star of the blockbuster hits "Borat" and "Bruno" is back on the screen, this time as an eccentric dictator hell-bent on maintaining an iron grip over his subjects. But does "The Dictator" deliver? RFE/RL went along to find out.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari not to sign a bill creating a national human rights commission until changes are made to the legislation that would authorize investigations of the military and the intelligence agencies for alleged abuses.

One of the suspects in the attempted murder of Kazakh journalist Lukpan Akhmedyarov has reportedly confessed his guilt.

A Russian man had to be rescued by emergency workers from a trash chute after he jumped in to escape his girlfriend.

En route to the NATO summit in Chicago, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili stopped over in Slovakia to take in a football match between the under-17 clubs from Georgia and The Netherlands. From there, it was on to Milan for what was perhaps an ill-timed shopping spree.

A Belarusian opposition activist has been sentenced to 15 days in jail for using a placard to mock a plainclothes security officer.

Vladislav Surkov and Aleksei Kudrin are about as different as Russian officials can be. But each played a key role in maintaining Vladimir Putin's political system -- and each understands it needs to reform.

Seeking a superhero, officials in Kazakhstan are calling for entries for an unusual creative contest -- to conceptualize a mythic national man of action reflecting the Central Asian republic's nobler qualities.

Nature lovers in Minsk got a surprise this week when a moose cow and a juvenile visited Chelyuskinites Park in the Belarusian capital.

A race row has erupted in Britain in recent days after a gang of mostly Pakistani men were convicted in a high-profile "sexual grooming" case.

Eyebrows have been raised in both Washington and Moscow with the announcement that U.S. President Barack Obama will not attend this year's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in September.

In an interview with Igor Tsikhanenka of Voice of America's Russian Service, U.S. Senator John McCain talks about what it might take for Ukraine to reverse its backsliding on democratic reforms, including learning "the lessons of their failures."

For anyone apart from the most ardent movie buff, the enduring cinematic image of Kazakhstan is probably what was presented in Sacha Baron Cohen's movie "Borat," which lampooned Kazakhs as ridiculously backward and ignorant. But this may change thanks to a new blockbuster movie from the state-administered Kazakhfilm studio.

Officials in the Russian republic of Tatarstan say another man has died in police custody.

Human Rights Watch is reporting that Iraqis are still being illegally detained at a Baghdad prison that the Iraq government claimed was shut down last year.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has declared his income for 2011. According to official documents, Kadyrov earned 4,105,876 rubles, or around $135,000, in 2011. As in previous years, the only piece of real estate he admits to owning is a 36-square-meter flat in the capital, Grozny. His palatial mansion in his home village of Tsentoroi, near Chechnya's second city of Gudermes, officially belongs to his mother.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have urged the European Union and the United States to revise their relationships with the Uzbek government in light of Tashkent's enduring poor record on human rights.

On top of an EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels to consider a blocwide boycott of the European soccer championship to be held in Ukraine, a topless protester from the infamous Femen women's rights group slightly damaged UEFA's famous Henri Delaunay Trophy as it went on public display over the weekend in the Ukrainian capital.

Azerbaijani opposition parties have held an unsanctioned demonstration in Baku to demand that authorities permit them to hold public gatherings in the center of the capital.

It's the highest-resolution image of our planet that has ever been taken -- 121 megapixels (that's one kilometer per pixel, if you're counting) -- and the fact that it's one single shot, not a series of individual photographs glued together to form a whole.

The Week Ahead is a detailed listing of key events of the coming week affecting RFE/RL's broadcast region.

An Azerbaijani freelance reporter for RFE/RL will become one of 70 journalists killed in action last year to be commemorated at a U.S. news and journalism museum.

Protesters camped out in central Moscow were briefly left without toilets after authorities removed their portable cubicles overnight. The anti-Kremlin protesters quickly organized new toilets, enabling the round-the-clock rally to continue.

Britain has added its condemnation to the unprecedented lashing sentence against Iranian cartoonist Mahmud Shokraye.

Several videos showing riot police viciously beating protesters have sparked outrage in Russia, where a wave of opposition rallies against the reelection of Vladimir Putin is being harshly repressed. One of the videos released on YouTube has led to an investigation into the beating of a young woman.

The Representative on Freedom of the Media from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has expressed concern over the "indiscriminate detention" of journalists reporting on street protests in Moscow and recent cyber attacks on Russian media websites.

Proxy companies are nothing new, but they have become part of an "unseen global offshore financial platform," linking companies and banks in Russia, Moldova, and Eastern Europe to others in Asia and around the world, OCCRP notes in a series of reports under the rubric "The Proxy Platform."

If you've been following the story of Ukraine's ailing former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the international furor over her treatment in prison, then this cartoon by the artist known as Zhenya for RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service won't need much explanation.

A court in Kazakhstan’s western city of Oral has approved the 10-day detention of two men to investigation their possible involvement in an attack that left a well-known journalist hospitalized.

Tajik authorities said they are investigating the severe beating of a Tajik journalist and political activist.

Does Putin have a plan? Or is it all about survival?

The Week Ahead is a detailed listing of key events of the coming week affecting RFE/RL's broadcast region.

Two leading human rights groups have condemned a nine-year prison sentence upheld by a Tehran court for prominent Iranian human rights lawyer Mohammad Ali Dadkhah.

The London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International has called on Tajik authorities to put an end to torture.

The countdown to Putin 2.0 is underway. In the run-up to the May 7 inauguration, the Power Vertical podcast looks at how Vladimir Putin will govern a changed society.

Brussels is often keen to portray itself as a champion of media freedom, but this week it came under severe criticism from its own press corps -- and on World Press Freedom Day, to boot.

A ritual press conference at the UN produced some unexpected hilarity as journalists grilling the Azerbaijani ambassador on press censorship found out he didn't know that it was World Press Freedom Day.

Serbians go to the polls on May 6 for local, parliamentary, and presidential elections on the same day. Reason enough for voters to be confused. But as Serbian political cartoonist Corax suggests in the picture above, Serbian voters have a bigger problem than that -- they have two frontrunners offering similar choices

Europe's largest association of national broadcasters says a top Azerbaijani official has pledged that his government will probe accusations of abuses against journalists.

Six sets of Tajik parents have gone on trial for forcing their underage daughters into marriage.

An activist opposed to Vladimir Putin's continued rule says authorities have offered no official explanation for why he was detained after he attempted to pray for Russia's liberation from president-elect at Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow.

The Week Ahead is a detailed listing of key events of the coming week affecting RFE/RL's broadcast region.

Vladimir Putin has plucked several role models from Russian history. Do any of them help us understand the man and his governing style?

A Kazakh journalist who sustained serious injuries in a recent assault went on trial in absentia on April 27 in a libel case.

“If you sign the association agreement, we’ll set Tymoshenko free.” That's Ukraine’s First Deputy Prime Minister Valeriy Khoroshkovskiy, as quoted by EurActiv, the specialized European Union affairs portal.