In these times, it's apt to project a Chinese global narrative through increasingly sophisticated media, and while China is promoting Mandarin in more than 300 Confucius Institutes all over the world, it is also increasingly attracting more foreign students to its universities.

Young adults helping to shape the future of the Middle East and North Africa will meet the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, at an event in London organised by the British Council. Their trip to the UK is part of the British Council’s work with young people around the world, and will help to inform the international response to the changing political landscape in the region.

Over the last seven days, a national drama unfolded on television, beginning with the arrest of anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare...as Hazare enters the eighth day of his anti-corruption hunger strike, media experts too are wondering if the Indian press has lost its sense of perspective. The non-stop coverage has led to a near blackout of other news events of importance.

The Law, Information and Technology Authority at Israel’s Justice Ministry finally sanctioned Google’s request to operate its “Street View” here. In Israel it took longer than everywhere else to grant this permission, in part because of a longstanding national aversion to anything that might reveal security installations to a prurient and not necessarily well-meaning world.

In its quest to map the entire planet, Google has started in on the world’s largest tropical rainforest. The tech giant plans to work with Amazonas Sustainable Foundation, a non-profit that works to conserve the forest and improve the livelihood of communities who live there. The hope is that it will help outsiders better understand the scope and the importance of the world’s largest tropical rainforest.

An spokesman for the African Union says final preparations are being made for the scheduled August 25 “pledge conference” in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Organized by the continental body, the meeting aims to raise funds to help relief efforts in hunger-stricken East Africa, which has created hundreds of thousands refugees and internally displaced.

Information, or rather truthful information, is often difficult to come by in any war zone. Disinformation is a powerful tool that can be used to mislead the enemy, hide tactics, instigate fear or win public support. There is also the fog of war, the confusion in communications and the chaos of the battlefield that can obscure any objective understanding.

Earth's least likely space-going nation reached further into the stars last week, when Nigeria shot its third and fourth satellites into orbit, including the first satellite built by Africans. From their exospheric perch, the two will map one of humanity's final frontiers: Lagos. The vast megalopolis, home to between nine and 17 million people, is a constantly-shifting phenomenon in urban non-planning.