We know that rferl.org isn't the only website you read, and it's possible that you may have missed some of our most interesting journalism from the past week. To make sure you're up-to-date, here are some of the highlights produced by RFE/RL's team of correspondents, multimedia editors, and visual journalists over the past seven days.
'They Served The Cheka': Provincial Russian Billboards Honor Stalin's Executioners
The local FSB museum in the city of Vladimir organized a billboard campaign celebrating the wartime records of Josef Stalin's notorious secret police -- just in time for Russia's Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repressions. By Ilya Kosygin and Robert Coalson
'Like Living In A Gas Chamber': Russia's Toxic Town
Karabash, in Russia's Ural Mountains, is home to a copper-smelting plant that belches toxic clouds and leaks arsenic and mercury. Some residents fear for their safety -- but leaving is not an easy option. By Current Time TV
The Gulag Hunters
A group of Czech friends is venturing into the wilderness of the former U.S.S.R. to capture what remains of Soviet forced-labor camps. By Amos Chapple
Interview: It May Not Seem Like It, But The World Is Getting Better
Canadian-American global thinker Steven Pinker uses statistics in his latest book to show how health, prosperity, peace, and happiness have vastly improved for most people in the world and living conditions continue to rise despite media headlines that make it seem as though life is getting worse. By Alex Znatkevich
Travels With Ivan: How The Soviet Secret Police Monitored U.S. Writer John Steinbeck
Newly declassified documents from the KGB archive in Ukraine shed light on how one leg of a 1947 journey to the Soviet Union by U.S. writer John Steinbeck and noted war photojournalist Robert Capa went down. By Eduard Andryushchenko and Robert Coalson
Physics Propels Ukrainian Teacher To YouTube Fame
Pavel Viktor, a science teacher in Odesa, Ukraine, started posting his lectures on YouTube for absent students. He never expected the videos to gain millions of views beyond his classroom. By Current Time TV
Odesa Teacher-Turned-YouTube Star Attacked
Ukrainian physics teacher Pavel Viktor became an unexpected celebrity after his online lectures went viral. Days after he was interviewed by Current Time, Viktor was assaulted and robbed on his way from work. Now hospitalized, he's already thinking of the work he has to do when he gets back to the classroom. By Current Time TV
After The Arrests: Russian Teens Tell Of Disrupted Lives Since Protests
Some of the teens who were among the hundreds of detained protesters at demonstrations in September talked to RFE/RL about how the authorities have handled their cases and how they and their parents have been threatened and harassed. By Darina Shevchenko and Robert Coalson
NATO Staging Biggest War Games Since Cold War
With more than 50,000 troops from 31 countries, NATO is holding its biggest war games since the end of the Cold War. By Stuart Greer
Taliban Floggings Hint At Crackdown On Smartphones
The Taliban’s flogging of two women in northern Afghanistan may have helped expose the militant group’s crackdown on the use of mobile phones. By Frud Bezhan
