Brian Fung's blog

Leaders of the Arab European League face time in the courtroom, and possibly prison, after the group published a cartoon on its Web site that appeared to denigrate Jews, reports the BBC:

The cartoon shows two men standing near a pile of bones at "Auswitch" (sic). One says "I don't think they're Jews".

The other replies: "We have to get to the six million somehow." [...]

AEL chairman Abdoulmouthalib Bouzerda said the charges proved "what Muslims have been saying for decades".

"Freedom of expression is only a pretext to make life bitter for Muslims... and if [they] try to bring this hypocrisy to light, that right is denied them."

The incident bears echoes of the 2005 cartoon crisis in Denmark, where caricatures of the prophet Muhammad printed in several newspapers sparked violent protests across Europe.

Sudan's president has allegedly replaced Salah Gosh, the veteran chief of the country's National Intelligence and Security Services, with the organization's deputy general manager.

It's not clear why the switch was made; the BBC reports only that Gosh has now been named President Omar al-Bashir's "adviser."

Gen. Mohamed Atta al-Mawla is in his early fifties and holds a degree in engineering, according to one Sudanese newspaper. In 1992, Mawla signed on with the country's national security bureau and has been working in government ever since, even serving a year-long stint at the Sudanese embassy in Kenya.

His most curious position? "Peace advisory secretary-general."

Officials from the International Olympic Committee have narrowed the list of sports they're considering adding to the 2016 Summer Games:

The board will submit golf and rugby sevens -- a faster-paced version of the standard 15-a-side game -- for ratification by the full 106-member IOC assembly in Copenhagen in October.

Among the rejected sports were baseball, softball, squash, karate and something called "roller sports."

Whatever the outcome of the IOC's final vote, one thing is clear: Hugo Chavez ain't gonna be too pleased about this one.

India's annual monsoons often lead to flooding. So why is the country now afraid it's going to run out of water?

A combination of water-intensive agriculture, population growth, and -- to a lesser extent -- a drought are to blame for the shortfall, the BBC reports:

Dr Raj Gupta, a scientist working for the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), said that the current drought would lead to more groundwater extraction.

"Farmers receive no rains so they are pumping a lot more water than the government expected, so the water table will fall further," he said.

"The farmers have to irrigate, and that's why they're pumping more water, mining more water. The situation has to stop today or tomorrow."

If the trend continues, we could potentially be looking at the first international security crisis due to climate change.

AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Political expression has grown up in Madagascar. After a coup deposed the government in March, previously dormant bloggers who once had little to talk about fired up their computers to comment on the instability. The BBC has the story:

Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Twitter have become popular forums for debate, and video and picture sharing.

"The crisis has triggered something like social-media activism here in Madagascar," says Tahina.

Lova Rakotomalala, who analyses Malagasy bloggers for Global Voices, a project promoting citizen media across the world, believes the political crisis has helped inspire political expression among young Malagasies.

He says he wants to see the Malagasy blogosphere evolve into an internet forum similar to Kenya's Mzalendo.

Mzalendo, meaning "patriot" in Swahili, is a volunteer-run website whose self-declared mission is to "keep and eye on the Kenyan parliament".

The emerging trend seems to be that social media can help legitimize public unrest in politically unstable countries. Recent protests in Iran and Moldova appear to prove the point. Does Madagascar's experience with Web 2.0 confirm anything?

AFP/GETTY IMAGES

And you thought you had it bad. Scammers in Nigera are having a tougher time than ever raking in the easy dough, reports the Washington Post:

"We are working harder. The financial crisis is not making it easy for them over there," said Banjo, 24, speaking about Americans, whose trust he has won and whose money he has fleeced, via his Dell laptop. "They don't have money. And the money they don't have, we want."

For the uninitiated, the "419" scam ("NIGERIAN PRINCE WANTS TO REWARD YOU $2 MILLION!") is a lucrative business. The practice has been incorporated into the country's pop culture -- Colin Powell was seen dancing to a song about 419 in London -- and is glorified among young children.

(Hat tip: Slashdot)

Afghanistan is the biggest opium supplier on the planet, responsible for over 90 percent of the world's supply. While Andrew Exum remains skeptical about including the fight against drugs as part of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, limiting the effects of the narcotics trade could be as easy as installing an irrigation ditch, some say.

From my good friend Bilal Sarwary, a longtime BBC correspondent from Afghanistan:

Sheen Goal was among the hundreds of farmers in Sherzad -- a mountainous district in Nangarhar, once counted among Afghanistan's biggest poppy producing provinces -- who gave up poppy cultivation more than two years ago and embraced other crops after they were promised a road, an irrigation channel and a clinic for their village.

The farmers did so despite a threat from the Taliban, who wanted them to continue with poppy cultivation.

The farmers have largely kept their part of the bargain.

But the government has failed, says Sheen Goal.

[...]

"I guarantee that no farmer will grow poppies if they were helped with irrigation and fertilisers," says Rashid, a farmer in Gandomak.

It may still be too early to tell, but what we're observing could represent a continuing trend; as many as 20 out of Afghanistan's 34 provinces were declared "poppy-free" last fall by the United Nations -- seven more than the year prior.

A police raid on a suspected terrorist safehouse that was broadcast live on telivision "captivated Indonesian audiences" this past weekend, giving Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono a boost in popularity. Among the dead could be Noordin Mohamed Top, one of Asia's terror masterminds:

Local news channel tvOne showed live pictures of black-clad antiterrorism police carefully entering the farmhouse near Temanggung, a town in central Java, a province on Indonesia's main island, after they had riddled the dwelling with a volley of shots and sent in robots to sweep for bombs. [...]

Around dawn on Saturday, a major explosion was heard in the house and later police snipers on a nearby wooded hill intensified their attack on the property, which is surrounded by rice paddies. The tvOne news channel reported that a man inside the building at one point called out "I am Noordin M. Top."

Noordin is connected to several high-profile bombings in the past decade, including a 2004 truck bombing outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta that killed nine, and a foiled plot to assassinate President Yudhoyono.

Certainly puts "The Wanted" to shame.

AFP/GETTY IMAGES