The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on professional musicians. With concerts, festivals, tours and award shows all around the world canceled or put on indefinite hold, many professional musicians and composers who had relied on performances for their income found themselves in a difficult situation. But some say that these challenges present the opportunities to grow
Afghan man is trying to educate street children in the city of Ghazni. Azizullah Qaderi offers free lessons in a city park each day and wants to build a school for his pupils
South African environmental activists are suing the government and mining companies to clean up toxic waste from gold mining, and to compensate people who have become sick from the contamination. An environmental group says the waste, including uranium, has released radiation on nearby communities and squatters
Ghada Fathy Ismail Waly, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), addresses the virtual event to mark the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons 2020
Gheni recently spoke with RFA’s Uyghur Service about his more than two-year campaign to locate his family members in the XUAR—which he and many other Uyghurs refer to as East Turkestan—how the Dutch government has assisted him, and his meeting with Ambassador Hoekstra, which he described as inspirational. RFA also spoke with Hoekstra, a former U.S. Representative for Michigan, who discussed U.S. support for the Uyghur diaspora in the Netherlands, thought to number 1,500, and for Uyghurs in their homeland
The Afghan government said Tuesday that over the past five months, more than 3,500 members of Afghan’s security force have been killed and 6,700 have been wounded in violence. Meanwhile, the Taliban and the Afghan government have announced a three-day cease-fire during Eid al-Adha. Rahim Gul Sarwan reports from Kabul
Botswana’s truck drivers, who deliver the majority of the landlocked country’s goods from COVID-hit South Africa, are also responsible for 80 percent of the country’s reported COVID-19 cases. Health authorities started testing all truckers for the virus in May, delaying them at the border for days at a time. Mqondisi Dube reports on their plight from Gaborone
Ukraine is one of the few countries in the world that allows commercial surrogacy. Biological parents, often from abroad, pay a company to organize a surrogate mother to carry their child. For some couples, it’s their only chance at longed-for parenthood. But when something goes wrong, human lives hang in the balance, and critics say the business should be stopped or at least regulated. The case of a baby named Brigit, born with disabilities and abandoned, highlights the risks involved
The Syrian “mini-Hagia Sophia”, according to the promoters of the project, will have to rise in the Hama region. This is what Syrian and Lebanese media reported, citing information released by sources close to the government of Damascus, who present the operation as a sort of Russian-Syrian response to the Turkish choice to reopen Hagia Sophia to Islamic worship.
The COVID-19 pandemic has struck all sectors of Russia’s economy, but with borders closed during the high summer season, the tourism sector is one of the most damaged, especially in Saint Petersburg, a favorite stop for many foreign tourists