Wednesday World Blog Roundup

Central Asia:
Picture: “By The Kabul River” By Afghan Lord.

Waheed at Afghan Warrior weighs in on the recent anti-U.S. protests, in the wake of Newsweek's now-retracted story. He believes the Taliban tried but failed to take advantage of the situation.

Nathan of Registan.net was interviewed by the BBC about Uzbekistan, which he has been following closely on his blog. He has the full MP3 audio here. He also points us to his latest article on the Uzbekistan crisis at OpenDemocracy.

Africa:
Jewels in the Jungle has a roundup of blog-coverage of the Ethiopian Parliamentary election.

Black Looks reports that Spain is jumping on the “Africa bandwagon.”
She is also unimpressed with U.S. the latest U.S. counter-terrorism initiative in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Meskel Square on how news organizations (and enterprising people with photocopy machine access) are making money as all Ethiopia waits for results of Sunday's election.
Amber Henshaw has a firsthand account of the voting.

Kenyan Pundit links to a documentary on the rise of Kenyan hip-hop.

Middle East:
Aswantiba quips: “Who needs Newsweek when you got Al-Jazeera?”

“From Cairo, With Love” says people find his blog for the strangest reasons.

Farideh at Iran Scan notices that a professor at Rutgers University is one of the thousand-plus people who registered their candidacy to run for president of Iran.

Yasser at Under Underground describes the propaganda on Iranian TV.

Free Iraqi has some critical words for Spirit of America, which has democracy development-related projects in Iraq. SoA director Jim Hake responds in the comments section.

Israpundit has the scoop on the real Indiana Jones.

“Refugee” at Bethlehem Bloggers wonders whether the occupation will mess up his/her summer vacation.

Beiruit Spring gives high marks to the new U.S. ambassador so far.

South Asia:
Niraj says India's growing middle class is having trouble hiring domestic help these days… and that this is a bi-product of India's economic growth.

East Asia:
EastSouthWestNorth comments on issues of “media responsibility and ethics” in light of a series of photographs that have been spreading like a virus around Chinese cyberspace. The pictures are allegedly of a TV hostess from a local station in the Southern city of Shenzhen, in bed with a man purported to be a senior city official, but there's no way to tell for sure.

Andrea Leung recommends a report on the internet in China by Morgan Stanley's Mary Meeker.

Pacific:
There is a blog from the Cook Islands. Now you have no excuse not to know where that is…

Europe:
“Fistfull of Euros” on Dutch Euro-skepticism and the Dutch Finance Minister, who has a blog.

Gavin thinks its time for another Irish blog meeting, and gives us some links into the Irish blogosphere.
Meanwhile Twenty Major has some suggestions that would make fighting Ireland's organized crime more fun.

Ever heard of the Mari people? They're an ethnic group related to the Finns living deep inside Russia. Helsinkitimes.net claims they face discrimination and lack autonomy.

“Central Budapest” muses about Hungarian grumpiness.