Latvia attracts the most Chinese investment of any Baltic member of the European Union, but that does not always mean that Chinese migrants find it easy to settle here. Following a 2014 clampdown on visas, many have left. Chinese restaurateur and hotel owner Tao Ma, who came to Latvia more than 20 years ago, has integrated into Latvian society, but says that doing business is still a challenge.
Even in his 90s, Ukrainian Yakov Lomaka remembers the German for his ID number from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration-extermination camp. He has reason to. Those camp inmates who could not remember their ID numbers in German were denied food and hit, he says. Current Time spoke with Lomaka about his memories of Auschwitz ahead of the 75th anniversary of the camp's liberation on January 27, 1945.
Seventy-five years ago today, the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz concentration-extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. An estimated 1.1 million people had died there by the war’s end. For Soviet tank crewman David Dushman, the condition of the camp’s “unfortunate” inmates was a shock. Many of those prisoners, like Vera Kriegal Grossman, see their survival as a victory in itself.
Aleksandr Dolgopolov wasn't afraid to joke about Christianity or Vladimir Putin during his standup routine in Moscow. But when he became the subject of a criminal probe, he decided it was time to leave the country.
A Tajik guest worker in Russia spends most of his time there so he can send money back to Dushanbe, where he has two wives and seven children.
It started with an invitation to a birthday party. And reportedly ended with repeated rape and beatings in a Bishkek brothel. This 16-year-old Kyrgyz girl’s story as a sex-trafficking victim is tragically familiar in Central Asia, though investigations do not always occur rapidly. After Current Time’s January 22, 2020 report about her story, however, Kyrgyz police detained three suspects in the case. Her identity has been concealed.
Surgeon Andrei Pavlenko treated cancer patients in St. Petersburg, but his work took on a new dimension when he became a patient himself. In a widely viewed video diary, Pavlenko shared his experiences of going through treatment and encouraged others not to lose hope.
Yulia Tsvetkova, an artist and activist in Russia's Far East, runs social-media pages focusing on women's art and LGBT issues. Her posts prompted officials to charge her with “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations among minors” and distributing pornography, an offense for which she could face years in prison.
Valeria ran away from home, and now she's joined the circus. She's one of dozens of kids from tough backgrounds given a new start in life by a unique social project.
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.
Uzbekistan's president has warned citizens not to go into debt to pay for traditional weddings. One Uzbek man has spent 19 years working in Russia and saving for the marriages of his three children.
When a flier's overweight cat was refused by a Russian airline, he hatched what he thought would be a purr-fect plan using a feline double.
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