Neil Bowdler is a multimedia editor at RFE/RL.
There have been fresh protests in Tehran more than three days after the Iranian authorities admitted they accidentally shot down a Ukrainian airliner on January 8, killing 176 people. Meanwhile, in a televised speech, Iranian President Hassan Rohani called for a special court to be set up to investigate the tragedy and promised that those responsible would pay. Social-media videos were vetted by RFE/RL's Radio Farda, but their authenticity could not be independently verified.
Protests have continued in Tehran after Iranian authorities admitted they accidentally shot down a Ukrainian airliner on January 8, killing 176 people. Protesters say video posted on social media shows police using live ammunition and tear gas. Tehran's police chief later denied his officers had opened fire. These social-media videos were vetted by AP and RFE/RL's Radio Farda, but their authenticity could not be independently verified.
Eight strongmen from across Russia have competed in the city of Ufa in Russia's Bashkortostan region in the Winter Strongman Games, in which competitors must lift, carry and slide massive weights hewn from ice.
Doctors who quit a Moscow cancer center for children in late September say they still have the support of parents. Twenty-one staff members resigned from the N.N. Blokhin Russian Cancer Research Center over poor conditions and low pay.
Temperatures of minus 40 degrees Celsius mean only the horse farmers and their families stay to endure the winter in the village of Tumul in the Far Eastern Russian region of Yakutia. But ancient traditions and crafts still survive there, despite a dwindling local population.
A new village of wooden historic replicas is being built in Nevsky Forest Park, near the Russian city of St. Petersburg. The village, called Ethnopark Bogoslovka, is centered around a reconstructed historic cathedral and will become a museum when completed.
Current Time asked people across Russia, from St. Petersburg to Yekaterinburg to Vladivostok, about their hopes for 2020.
An animal cruelty ban which comes into effect in Russia in January 2020 prohibits petting zoos and animal cafes that exhibit exotic animals. Animal rights activists believe immediate change is unlikely.
In September 1983, a Czechoslovak cycling champion made an audacious journey -- fleeing his country in a homemade balloon with his wife and two children across the Iron Curtain.
Newly qualified paramedic Myizambek Ishenbek Uulu is just 22, but he must care for over 400 people in a remote Kyrgyz village. He travels to many of his patients on horseback or on foot.
Afghans have been returning to their ruined homes in Nangarhar Province after officials claimed they had cleared it of remaining Islamic State fighters and showed captured militants to the media. RFE/RL met one family who returned to find their house destroyed, their crops stolen, and the land around them mined.
Elvira Kovtun made her first cheese four years ago in a pot in her kitchen after President Vladimir Putin banned Western imports in reaction to sanctions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Now, she and her husband have won Russia's first gold at the World Cheese Awards in Bergamo, Italy.
A Ukrainian filmmaker has used nonrecyclable toothbrushes, plastic bags, and other trash to build the set for a new cartoon in which a plastic Barbie doll faces an apocalyptic future. Visitors can also explore a human-sized version of the set built with yet more trash.
Saodat Khojaeva, 40, from southern Tajikistan, was born with only one deformed arm. She uses her legs to do house chores, including cooking, cleaning, and looking after her three children.
Fake uniforms and military accessories are being bought and sold at markets in the Afghan capital, Kabul. It's feared some such uniforms are being used by criminals and terrorists in Afghanistan to infiltrate targets.
Riot police in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, used water cannons to disperse protesters outside the country's parliament on November 26. It was the latest in a series of confrontations between the government and opposition over the country's electoral system.
Residents of a town in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad are demanding the reopening of a historic school. The building dates from the 1930s, when the area was part of Germany's East Prussia region, and was originally named after Adolf Hitler. It was shut down seven years ago amid budget cuts, and local children have had to commute 10 kilometers to a nearby town since it closed.
A village in northern Russia has avoided the school closures that have plagued rural areas and kept theirs open thanks to local teachers and families taking in foster children from orphanages.
In southern Kyrgyzstan, entire regions live off illegal coal mining. The work is dangerous. Six miners died in an accident in October. But locals say there is no other work for the region's men.
The sister of a convicted Belarusian murderer has told RFE/RL of her heartbreak after the country's Supreme Court upheld Viktar Paulau's death sentence for the killing of two elderly women. Paulau is one of three men sentenced to death this year in Belarus, which is the only European country still using capital punishment.
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