大象传媒

Many Russian athletes have been banned from taking part in the 2016 Rio Olympics because of a doping scandal. This was partly the result of evidence provided by a married couple, Yuliya and Vitaly Stepanov. Yuliya is a Russian athlete; Vitaly worked for the country's anti-doping agency. It was on their first date that Vitaly heard about corruption within his own agency. Together they decided to reveal the full extent of performance-enhancing drug-taking in Russian athletics.

Lauand Omar is a Syrian-Kurdish filmmaker with a lifelong love of horror films. Inspired by an ancient Kurdish legend, he wrote a film called 'Curse of Mesopotamia'. In the summer of 2014, he assembled a cast and crew in Erbil in northern Iraq. However just a few days into filming, the whole project changed when so-called Islamic State entered the country.

Five years ago this week, a number of cities in England were engulfed by riots. They started in London, after a man was shot by police. In Birmingham people took to the streets to defend property and businesses and 20 year old called Haroon Jahan was among them. He was standing in a crowd guarding a petrol station in the early hours when a car drove into them, and Haroon and two other men were killed. His father, Tariq Jahan, was one of the first on the scene and what he did later that day led many people to say that he, more than anyone else, brought an end to the rioting.

In 1974 Giddes Chalamanda, a singer from Malawi, wrote a song called Buffalo Soldier about his wish to go to America. More than 40 years later, a group of people in his community paid for his trip there.

Image: Yuliya and Vitaly Stepanov
Credit: Yuliya and Vitaly Stepanov