Central Asia
OSH, Kyrgyzstan - Some 400,000 people have been displaced by ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, the United Nations announced Thursday, dramatically increasing the official estimate of a refugee crisis that has left throngs of desperate, fearful people without enough food and water in grim camps along the Uzbek border.
BAKU, Azerbaijan - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates tried on Sunday to soothe the put-off president of this former Soviet republic that helps move supplies and soldiers to the U.S.-led war in landlocked Afghanistan.
DUSHANBE, Tajikistan - Tajikistan's Supreme Court has sentenced dozens of people to prison terms for belonging to a banned Islamic organization.
LONDON - A British soldier who refused to serve in Afghanistan and spoke out against the war has been sentenced to nine months in jail.
MOSCOW - An Uzbek film director was convicted of slander on Wednesday for making a documentary on wedding rituals in the authoritarian ex-Soviet state, but released on amnesty, the artist and her lawyer said.
