Several shadowy Western election-observation groups are in Azerbaijan this week to monitor the presidential vote. Just who are they and where do they get their funding?
President Vladimir Putin has sent constitutional amendments to the State Duma that would merge two of Russia's most important courts and create a "super" Supreme Court. But the move appears driven more by politics than legal reasoning.
A new mobile-phone application unveiled in Azerbaijan appears to have released presidential election results one day before the actual vote. Voters who downloaded the application on October 8 found out that incumbent President Ilham Aliyev had won the October 9 election in a landslide.
A Tajik soccer star has accused officials in the southern city of Qurgonteppa of cutting off the water and electricity to his house after he scored two goals against their local team.
The Red Cross says the absence of rules of war in military-style games creates "the impression that prohibited acts, such as torture and extrajudicial killing, are standard behavior."
Residents in the Georgian village of Dvani are up in arms over efforts to put up a barbed-wire fence along the administrative boundary with breakaway South Ossetia, one of Georgia's two Moscow-backed separatist regions. Work on the fence appears to have been halted amid international criticism. But officials in Tbilisi remain prepared for a further escalation of the territorial dispute.
Iran's culture minister has publicly criticized the censorship under former President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, saying those in charge of banning books would have "rejected the Koran" if they could have.
Iranian President Hassan Rohani was quoted last week as saying he has ordered an opinion poll to determine whether Iranians favor talks with the United States. But the last time such a poll was conducted the results did not sit well with authorities.
One of Afghanistan's most feared former warlords, Abdul Rashid Dostum, has apologized for his role in the country's devastating civil war. Dostum's apology, the first from a former warlord, accompanies his emergence as a vice presidential candidate in the upcoming election.
Child-rights icon Malala Yousafzai has called on conspiracy theorists and critics in Pakistan to think about her message before condemning her. In an exclusive interview with RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal correspondent Abdul Hai Kakar, Malala says her intentions in promoting the rights of girls and women are pure.
UN Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown says Malala Yousafzai has become a symbol of how much one person can do when she believes in a principle.
The end of the registration period for candidates in Afghanistan's crucial 2014 presidential election sets the stage for a race expected to be dominated by old and current powerbrokers. RFE/RL looks at some of the more interesting names to have emerged.
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