Iranian officials have upped the ante in their efforts to counter the "soft war" they believe is being waged against their country.
The price of cotton has soared to record levels on the international market in recent weeks. But in Uzbekistan -- one of the world's largest cotton exporters -- only a handful of elite overlords will benefit.
An independent scholar hired by the United Nations to report on human rights says the UN Security Council's counter-terrorism regime is operating outside the scope of its power.
The disclosure that Iran has been passing large sums of money in plastic bags to an aide of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has caused consternation in Washington, where it is seen as evidence of the Islamic republic's malign influence.
A recent survey of world prosperity finds that many of the countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia have relatively strong health and education programs but suffer from bad governance, and that, on a global scale, economic growth is not enough to keep a nation happy.
Controversy surrounding the arrest of a former Ukrainian minister in the Czech Republic last week is raising new questions about the new government, which says the charges against him and other allies of the former prime minister are part of a campaign against corruption.
Ilya Barabanov, a young investigative journalist for the magazine "The New Times," one of Russia's few opposition-minded publications, last week received Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) Peter Mackler Award For Courageous And Ethical Journalism. Barabanov talked about exposing corruption in the ranks of Russia's notorious riot police and standing firm with those same police demanding to know his sources.
Like thousands of Russians who in recent years have abandoned civic complacency in favor of civil engagement, some of the country's best-known musicians have changed.
Former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who currently leads the extraparliamentary People's Democratic Union, spoke with RFE/RL correspondent Nikola Krastev in New York about Moscow's rights record, its "national disaster" of corruption, and who he thinks will become president in 2012.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev says negotiations to resolve the frozen conflict in Moldova's breakaway Transdniester region could resume soon. The Kremlin leader also raised eyebrows by suggesting that Romania, which Moscow had previously tried to freeze out of negotiations, also has a role to play in the process. Are efforts to resolve one of Europe's most intractable conflicts about to get a fresh life?
"The Shahnameh," or “Book of Kings,” is regarded as a crowning achievement of Persian literature and art, combining history and myth, and crafting a national narrative in more than 100,000 lines.
The situation in Afghanistan is bad enough, but inaccurate reporting is adding to the problem. The main problem is that different interest groups, with different axes to grind, offer Western journalists lots of spin. But making sense of it all and arriving at the truth is something few reporters manage to achieve.
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