Corey Flintoff

The country's failed bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics disappointed LGBT activists. They'd hoped global attention would lead to greater tolerance in a country where they live in a "state of fear."

The software security company is big in the U.S. and around the globe, but tensions between Russia and the West have raised questions about the Moscow-based company.

Kazakhstan lost its bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics to Beijing, but a number of Kazakhs see this as an opportunity, not a loss.

The International Olympic Committee will decide Friday whether to accept the bid by Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, to stage the 2022 Winter Games, or instead offer it to rival contender Beijing.

Vladimir Vysotsky, who died 35 years ago this month, was never given any recognition by the Soviet government. He became popular through bootlegged cassettes passed from hand-to-hand.

The rules have been altered following cases where patients killed themselves, saying they couldn't bear the pain and couldn't get painkillers. But advocates say the changes haven't gone far enough.

Local journalists and volunteers in Odessa are working to make sense of dozens of recent bombings — and prevent future attacks. They say that Russians have infiltrated the security services.

Beyond the battlefront in the east, the Ukrainian government is fighting a war to reform a monumentally corrupt, dysfunctional economy. For now, Ukrainians seem willing to weather 60 percent inflation.

The U.S. won't give the Ukrainian army lethal weapons to fight separatists and their Russian allies, but it has sent 300 trainers to help the beleaguered, bedraggled Ukrainian military.

As president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili boldly took on much larger Russia in 2008. He promptly lost. Now he's a governor in Ukraine, which is also doing battle with Russia.