The news at a glance...International

St. Petersburg, Russia

Mr. Trololo dies: Soviet-era crooner Eduard Khil, known to the Internet world as Mr. Trololo, died this week of a stroke at age 77. Khil was a star during the 1960s and ’70s in the USSR, but was largely forgotten thereafter until a video of his 1976 performance on Soviet television went viral two years ago. Khil wanted to sing a song about an American cowboy, but since Cold War censors wouldn’t approve the lyrics, he just tootled out the melody, singing “tro-lo-lo” in a kind of cheesy Russian scat. His robotic movements and frozen affect inspired hundreds of takeoffs and remixes. “I love it,” Khil told Russian TV in 2010. “People are doing parodies, having fun. It unites them.”

Beijing

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Shut up about the pollution: Chinese authorities this week deemed it illegal for foreign embassies to publicly put out their own readings on China’s air pollution. The roof of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing houses an air-pollution monitor that is much more sophisticated than the ones Chinese officials use, and its readings are posted hourly on Twitter. U.S. consulates in Shanghai and Guangzhou do the same. On one particularly smoggy day last fall, Chinese authorities were furious when their official rating was “slightly polluted,” while the U.S. reading was off the charts.

North Waziristan, Pakistan

Al Qaida’s No. 2 killed: A CIA drone strike killed Abu Yahya al-Libi, al Qaida’s second-in-command, U.S. officials said this week, without revealing how they’d confirmed he was dead. Villagers in Mir Ali, near the attack site, said al-Libi had been either killed or seriously wounded, and that 14 other people had been killed. After escaping from a U.S. military prison in Afghanistan in 2005, al-Libi became a leading propagandist for attacks on the U.S. Once Osama bin Laden was killed last year, Ayman al-Zawahiri became al Qaida’s leader and al-Libi its No. 2. Pakistani officials said that his death does not change their opposition to drone strikes, which they said create more terrorists than they kill.

Kabul

A new route home: Ending its reliance on Pakistani territory, NATO has signed a pact with former Soviet republics Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan to provide a new land route for troops and supplies to and from Afghanistan. “These agreements will give us a range of new options and the robust and flexible transport network we need,” said NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Pakistan closed its routes last year after an errant coalition airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, and says it won’t reopen them until it gets an apology and a lot of money. Land routes are needed for NATO to withdraw tens of thousands of troops and massive amounts of equipment by 2014, when the alliance’s mission ends.

Samarra, Iraq

Fight over shrine: The gold-domed Askariya shrine, whose 2006 bombing set off fierce sectarian warfare, is at the center of a new round of deadly conflict. The shrine—in Samarra, north of Baghdad—is holy to both Sunnis and Shiites, and the two Muslim endowments that administer religious sites are at odds over which one should have jurisdiction in the rebuilding. This week, a suicide bomber killed 25 people at the Shiite endowment office in Baghdad. Shortly after that, a bomb went off at the Sunni endowment, causing no casualties. “We call on the Iraqi people and especially on the sons of our religion to bury the strife,” Shiite endowment official Sami al-Massudi said, “because there is a plan to launch a civil war between the people, and between the Iraqi sects.”

Damascus, Syria

Diplomats booted: The regime of President Bashar al-Assad defied the West this week by declaring more than a dozen foreign diplomats, including the U.S. ambassador, persona non grata. The expulsion came after the U.S. and other Western countries last week expelled Syrian diplomats to express outrage over the massacre of women and children in Houla. China and Russia are blocking a more-forceful international response, saying that a U.N. cease-fire plan announced in April needs time to work. But this week the rebel Free Syrian Army said it would no longer respect the cease-fire, since the government has not done so.

Lagos, Nigeria

Plane plunges: A passenger jet crashed into a crowded neighborhood in Nigeria’s largest city this week, killing all 153 people on board and possibly scores on the ground. The plane, a 22-year-old McDonnell Douglas MD-83 from local Dana Air, had flown from the capital, Abuja, about an hour away, and was coming in to land at the Lagos airport when the pilot lost control and the plane slammed into buildings and exploded. President Goodluck Jonathan wept while visiting the crash site and vowed to make air travel, notoriously risky in Nigeria, safer. Dana Air’s entire fleet has been grounded until investigators determine the cause of the crash.