Blog Roundup

Pocketless trousers as a strategy to fight corruption in Nepal (h/t Judah Grunstein).

Lay off trashing the moon landings, okay? It was cool to walk on the moon.

Caterpillars taking over West Africa are nothing; the latest insectine invasion is of Argentine super ants, who've got their eyes (?) set on colonizing the entire world.

And...don't forget the food crisis in Africa.

The UN really needs to get some new reading material for its buildings in central Liberia...

Dresden chooses reducing traffic over remaining a UNESCO World Heritage Site

I'm not sure which would be my preferred means of emergency desert medical transportation: a donkey ambulance, or a camel ambulance.

A health problem you might not expect to find in Uganda: obesity.

The chairman of the (Nobel Prize-winning) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on why halting global warming is an environmental imperative -- and how it can bring other benefits as well.

Um, CO2 not a pollutant? "With all due respect, are you kidding me?"

Why we shouldn't be surprised that a kid in Africa in the 1980's grew up watching The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show.

Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi makes the worthwhile point that, while attention is focused on the Iranian elections, the country's human rights record remains far below par.

Conserving trees for money can be a messy business.

Again from The Economist, a pretty even-handed report card marking the halfway point of Ban Ki-moon's tenure.

(image from flickr user Steve Rhodes under a Creative Commons license)

A morbid topic, but...

A terrorist leader in Somalia? That's what "the mood" around his brother's house seems like.

A teenage Minnesotan who traveled to the same country last year and was under watch by the FBI. Reportedly.

18 people in Acapulco, Mexico, in a drug-related shooting? Yes, but "no tourists."

The president of Gabon? No. Yes. Definitely.

(image of President Omar Bongo at the UN, 2005)

In Africa, cell phones cum banks?

If Cuba is like Palestine, and Belarus is "the Cuba of the East," does that mean Palestine=Belarus?

North Korea as an headache-inducing elephant holding a gun in a room with several hostages in a house surrounded by police.

And yes, Somali pirates are still popular with local women.

The Guardian smartly editorializes about the need to fund the World Food Program. Money concluding sentence: "Overseas development aid is about the last thing the developed world should be cutting back on."

Michael Kleinman summarizes the back-and-forth between Jeff Sachs, Bill Easterly, and Dambisa Moyo on the merits of global development. To only dip a toe in, I'll agree that the ad hominem attacks -- or, of course, the "baby-killer" strategy -- should have no place in this debate.

Joe Cirincione says there may be reason to suspect that this round of North Korean bravado may go awry from the usual pattern -- but that nonproliferation is in much better shape this time.

And with much talk (including some out of this here typing machine) of China's influence on Pyongyang, Fred Weir wonders whether Russia could play a role in halting North Korea's nuclear program -- or whether Moscow is too "perplexed and even scared" of the impoverished and desperate Hermit Kingdom.

Max Bergmann relays the possibility of the United States engaging in "soccer diplomacy" by scheduling a match with Iran in October or November. Improving relations with Iran would be a plus, but my money is on the Americans taking the game.

Was Hezbollah behind the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri? So asks FP's David Kenner, but he is skeptical of the Der Spiegel report that makes the provocative suggestion -- conveniently just two weeks before Lebanese elections.

Erin Weir, writing from "the most remote place" she has ever visited, explores why humanitarian assistance is so hard to deliver -- and why it will never be enough.

Juliet Lapidos explains for Slate why, technically, we're still at war with North Korea. Well, except, technically, we never really were in the first place.

(image from flickr user TauSo under a Creative Commons license)

Forget the "prophet of doom." Gideon Rachman suggests that a short story about goat prices in Somalia could have been the best predictor of the economic meltdown. And to his question of who could play the goat in the movie -- might I suggest Betty, the erstwhile companion of jailed former Congolese warlord Laurent Nkunda?

Reuben Brigety and Sabina Dewan of the Center for American Progress have authored a new report proposing a "National Strategy for Global Development" to go along with the customary National Security Strategy. The report urges using the Millennium Development Goals as the basis for the United States' development strategy -- now that's progress I can believe in.

The Wall Street Journal makes the supremely trenchant point that Cuba -- Cuba! -- is on the Human Rights Council. Well, sheesh, somebody should have just told the Obama Administration before they joined the Council. There's no telling how American presence could help improve the body...

(image from flickr user CharlesFred under a Creative Commons license)