Tehran's sprawling Grand Bazaar, a giant trading market and long a bastion of traditional conservatism, has erupted into open discontent against President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's government. Wary of the bazaar's symbolic importance, the government has backed down -- for now.
Former arms-control researcher Igor Sutyagin is one of the four Russian prisoners being exchanged for 10 suspected members of a Russian spy ring. Earlier this week, Sutyagin was transferred from a remote penal colony near the Arctic Circle to Moscow's Lefortovo prison before being exchanged for the Russian agents. RFE/RL asked Sutyagin's father, Vyacheslav, about his son.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed new legislation in April prohibiting the pretrial detention of suspects accused of economic crimes. But the move provides little relief to the country's entrepreneurs, who say racketeering and bribery by law enforcement are out of control.
Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, says that Islamabad sees the Taliban as a threat to its security, both in Afghanistan and, increasingly, in Pakistan itself.
On July 6, Kazakhstan celebrated two important anniversaries -- 12 years since the capital was moved to Astana, and President Nursultan Nazarbaev's 70th birthday. Bhavna Dave, a reader at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, shared her thoughts with RFE/RL about political processes in Kazakhstan and its "Leader of the Nation," Nazarbaev.
The UN Security Council held an emergency session to discuss the security situation in Kosovo, after a blast last week in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica left one person dead.
Well-known photographer Steve McCurry spoke to RFE/RL about his experiences in Afghanistan and how it has changed since he first visited the country over 30 years ago.
A U.S. sauna enthusiast explores the Russian tradition of the banya -- how it's changed in New York, and how New York's changed it.
With 124,000 civilian and military personnel deployed in all corners of the world, the UN's peacekeeping forces are the largest and most visible segment of the world's body global presence. Its significance has dramatically increased in the last decade and is expected to take on even larger role in the next.
Serbia's Muslim community is claiming its own cartoon controversy. And it's threatening to divide the country's Bosniaks and disrupt a historic experiment in political representation for national minorities.
While the government says blaming one side or another for the ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan will only prompt further strife, critics say that's because it's tacitly backing a wave of nationalism.
Kyrgyzstan's interim government has blamed supporters of ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiev for the recent unrest in the country's south. But a closer examination of the violence, and the events leading up to it, paint a more complicated picture.
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