The Backstreet Boys may Want It that Way,but China’s ministry of culture most certainly does not.

Read the rest of this article here. (via The Mail and Guardian)

Police on Sunday arrested a 28-year-old man on suspicion of attempted murder of two Metropolitan Police officers during the height of the London riots earlier in August.

Read the rest of this article here. (via Time Magazine)

Following the riots that engulfed England earlier this month, social media such as Twitter, Facebook and even BlackBerry messaging found itself being blamed for helping the unrest.

Even U.K. Prime Minister, David Cameron, asked “whether it would be right” to ban criminals from having access.

Read the full story here (via Time Magazine)

A spokesman for Libya’s ousted leader apparently sought talks on a transfer of power. Rebels offer only ‘safety and a fair trial.

The Associated Press reported that Musa Ibrahim, a spokesman for Kadafi’s all but toppled government, had called its New York office to offer talks on a “transfer of power,” saying the leader’s son Saadi would conduct the negotiations. He said Kadafi remained in Libya but did not specify where.

Read the full story here (via LA Times)

An Indian reform activist whose protest galvanized the nation’s anger against corruption ended his 12-day hunger strike Sunday after forcing Parliament to throw its weight behind his crusade.

Seventy-four-year-old Anna Hazare accepted a cup of coconut water and honey from two children as thousands of supporters cheered him on, waving Indian flags, chanting “long live India” and singing patriotic songs.

Read the full story here (via The Guardian)

Swat in north-west Pakistan is still recovering from a period of militancy several years ago.

Men and women deemed un-Islamic were killed by the Taliban and their bodies dumped on the street. Hundreds of girls schools were destroyed before the army ousted the militants in 2009. A local school girl and Swat’s first woman to train as a lawyer told Nosheen Abbas how life is changing.

Read the full story here (via BBC News)

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, has blamed the Government’s weak tax laws for the fact it pays just £8m of corporation tax in Britain despite making more than £6bn in revenues in this country.

However, Mr Schmidt told the Edinburgh Television Festival yesterday that Google “loves” Britain and would pay more tax if it were legally required to do so. He said the company’s hands were tied by Britain’s low tax demands.

Read the full story here (via The Telegraph)

The bodies of up to 150 Libyan civilians were found yesterday near Tripoli after allegedly being massacred by pro-Gaddafi forces.

Journalists said they counted as many as 53 executed bodies in a burnt-out farm warehouse near the Khamis military base where the murders are thought to have taken place last Tuesday and Wednesday.

Read the full story here (via Daily  Mail)

Stalemate had lasted for months, but within a week a stunned population found itself free at last.

The crucial blow came as Muammar Gaddafi and much of the world looked the wrong way. The Libyan revolutionaries who swept out of the western mountains and into Tripoli, turfing a hated tyrant from power in a matter of days, had been regarded as bit players: by Gaddafi as he concentrated his forces to fend off the threat from rebels in Benghazi and Misrata in the east and by European and American politicians as they questioned the point of Nato‘s daily bombing raids after months of military stalemate.

Read the full story here (via The Guardian)

The thieves who broke into the Natural History Museum in Tring during the early hours of Saturday morning probably thought it had been a good night’s work.

They took two rhino horns, weighing 2kg each and worth about £240,000 on the black market. Or so they thought.

Read the full story here (via BBC News)

Areas surrounding Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant could remain uninhabitable for decades due to high radiation, the government warned on Saturday as it struggles to clean up after the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Japan faces the daunting task of decontaminating large areas of land around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, which is still leaking low levels of radiation nearly six months after an earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear meltdown.

Read the full story here (via IOL)

Russia may fail to fulfill its obligations in delivering crews to the International Space Station after Wednesday’s accident with Russia’s Progress M-12M space freighter, a source in Russia’s space industry said.

The space freighter fell in South Siberia’s Altai Republic on Wednesday after failing to separate from the Soyuz-U carrier rocket, the first loss of the Progress freighter in the history of Russia’s space industry. A rocket engine failure is believed to have caused the accident.

Read the full story here (via RIA Novosti)

New York became a city without one of its trademarks — the nation’s largest subway system — on Saturday as Hurricane Irene charged northward and the city prepared to face powerhouse winds that could drive a wall of water over the beaches in the Rockaways and between the skyscrapers in Lower Manhattan.

The city worked to complete its evacuation of about 370,000 residents in low-lying areas where officials expected flooding to follow the storm.

Read the full story here (via The New York Times)

For a quarter of a century, Colonel Gaddafi claimed that his adopted baby daughter Hana was killed in a US airstrike.

On Friday, however, it appeared that it was all a ruse to whip up hatred against the West and win sympathy from ordinary Libyans.

Read the full story here (via IOL)

A bomb explosion followed by a suicide attack outside a military academy in Algeria killed at least 18 officers in training Friday, a hospital said.

With at least 20 wounded, the toll was expected to rise, according to the Sidi Ghilas hospital where the victims were taken.

Read the full story here (via NPR)

Syrian security forces have attacked protesters at a mosque in the capital, Damascus, activists say.

Security officials stormed the al-Rifai mosque in the Kafar Susseh district, the activists said, reportedly wounding the mosque’s imam.

Read the full story here (via BBC News)

After 10 days of subsisting on nothing but water, the Indian anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare said on Thursday evening he was ready to end his fast on the condition that the Indian government would promise, in writing, to include the main points of his agenda in its final draft of a new anti-corruption bill.

“I have sent a message to the prime minister,” Hazare told thousands of supporters in New Delhi on Thursday evening. “If you want to pass the Jan Lokpal (people’s ombudsman) bill then start the discussion Friday morning. I have three demands. If there is support, then I can consider ending the fast.” (The debate in Parliament will take place on Saturday with Hazare’s fast now entering the twelfth day.)

Read the full story here (via Time Magazine)

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) is “sad” that King Mswati III is demanding a quarter of the R2.4-billion loan from South Africa as commission, it said on Saturday.

“[CWU] noted that King Mswati III has behaved like a bull in a china shop for too long without being reprimanded by [the] Southern African Development Community,” national spokesperson Matankana Mothapo said in a statement.

Read the full story here (via The Mail & Guardian)

What happened this week? Libya’s rebels won. Steve Jobs quit. And America’s East Coast trembled.

See the 7 international stories that shook the world in the past 7 days. View the full list here (via The Week)