Neil Bowdler is a multimedia editor at RFE/RL.
Medical staff in the Afghan capital, Kabul, have been caring for newborn babies left motherless in a deadly attack on a maternity hospital by gunmen on May 12. Volunteers have come forward to breastfeed the children. It's still unclear who was behind the atrocity.
Russian funeral homes and undertakers have been adapting to new regulations governing the burial or cremation of COVID-19 victims. Meanwhile, mourners are being offered the chance to attend funeral services online.
Two British climate campaigners have been stranded in Kosovo for over a month after authorities closed all land and air borders to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Rosie Watson was running and Mike Elm was cycling from Europe to Mongolia to try to help raise awareness about climate change.
Residents of dilapidated, Soviet-era, communal apartments in the Russian city of St. Petersburg are stuck in lockdown without a room for bathing or showering. They usually use bathhouses to wash, but those have been closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A Pakistani lawyer who set up a cyberharassment help line for women in the predominantly Muslim country says she continues to receive calls from women who face threats and abuse for going online, including from women who fear being killed by male relatives for using the Internet. Nighat Dad established the help line in 2016 with prize money from a Dutch human rights award.
Health-care workers are receiving widespread praise in Iran as the outbreak of the coronavirus continues. At least one nurse has died after contracting the virus and many are reportedly working under difficult conditions. But several videos have emerged on social media of health-care workers dancing to improve morale and telling people to stay positive.
Legendary Uzbek gymnast Oksana Chusovitina will compete in her eighth and final Olympic Games this summer in Tokyo. Chusovitina, who is now 44 years old, has competed for four different teams, winning a gold in 1992.
Thousands of people have marched in Moscow to mark the anniversary of the killing of Boris Nemtsov, a vocal Kremlin critic and former deputy prime minister who was gunned down five years ago near the Kremlin. Smaller events took place in St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, and other Russian cities.
When Ukrainian soldiers found a stray dog during their war with Russia-backed separatists, they took him in and called him Corporal. He's since become a wounded war veteran after surviving a land-mine explosion.
Iranian authorities now say at least 16 people have died in the country from the coronavirus, the highest number outside China. Iran's deputy health minister, Iraj Harirchi, is among those infected. Meanwhile, Iranians have taken to social media to vent their fears and their anger at authorities. (Social-media videos vetted by VOA, which could not independently verify their authenticity.)
Plans for a new highway in Russia's capital have led to protests. Locals say the project cuts straight through an industrial site contaminated with radioactive waste. A state-owned company has blamed high radioactive readings in the area on faulty equipment.
The Russian government hopes assisted in vitro fertilization (IVF) can help boost the country's falling population. The procedure is covered by Russians' state health insurance and, since last year, the state will now reimburse patients for IVF undergone at private clinics to cut waiting times.
In the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, about 200 people work in shifts to search through the ash dump of a heating plant. Desperately poor, they are looking for unburned pieces of coal to sell. It's hard work, but the only way to make a living for many of them during the winter.
Ukraine's troubled railway company Ukrzaliznytsia and Deutsche Bahn have signed a 10-year memorandum of cooperation under which the German operator will plan a way forward for the state operator. Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk says it could lead to Deutsche Bahn jointly managing Ukrainian railways. Current Time sent two reporters to compare and contrast regional rail services in both countries.
Gold prospectors in a village on the Naryn River in central Kyrgyzstan must wade through icy water in the middle of winter in the hope of finding a few shiny flakes of gold to help feed and clothe their families.
A settlement in western Afghanistan has become known as the "village of widows." Some 50 women in the village of Mir Ali in Herat Province's Adraskan district have lost their husbands, with many killed or executed after smuggling drugs across the Iranian border.
An unknown assailant has set fire to a car belonging to RFE/RL correspondent Halyna Tereshchuk on a street in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. According to witnesses, a masked individual approached the car, placed something on the windshield of the vehicle, set fire to it, and then fled. Local police have begun an investigation.
A baby girl, just 1 month old, has lost both legs in an attack by an unknown gunman in Afghanistan's Faryab Province that also killed six members of the girl's family. Afghan authorities said the Taliban was to blame, but the militant group has denied responsibility. Warning: Disturbing images.
It's been 75 years since Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination and concentration camp in Poland, but work to name more than 1 million victims is still ongoing.
While millions of Jews were being exterminated across Europe during World War II, many Jewish families found refuge and safety in Albania, despite German occupation. The local Jewish population increased from a few hundred to 2,000. Two Albanians recall how their families sheltered Jews and how a centuries-old tradition called Besa kept them alive.
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