Nikhil Sonnad

Influential Russian bloggers have long been subject to Vladimir Putin’s distaste for online dissent. Popular writer and activist Alexei Navalny—one of the intellectual leaders of the 2011 protests that challenged Putin’s legitimacy—had his blog blocked earlier this year. But a law that came into force today applies even to writers of moderate influence. Any blog with more than 3,000 daily unique visitors will have to register with Roskomnadzor, Russia’s official media regulator, as a media organization and be held to the same standards.

The US economy added 209,000 jobs in July. The unemployment rate rose slightly, to 6.2%. Here’s the breakdown of employment status for all Americans age 16 and above:

If you mostly read English or other Romance or Germanic languages, you’ve been spoiled for choice with digital fonts. The Latin alphabet has long been the subject of intense typographical exploration, with thousands of fonts available in more styles and weights than most non-designers would ever think necessary. Readers of non-Latin scripts like Chinese, Hindi, or Hebrew have never enjoyed such diversity.

Microsoft is known for keeping its programming secrets to itself. But under CEO Satya Nadella, the maker of proprietary behemoths like Windows and Microsoft Office is starting to show up in the world of open-source software, whose code is public for anyone to see, borrow from and tinker with.

With Microsoft eliminating 14% of its workforce, or some 18,000 jobs, you have to expect that its global footprint will change. And according to executive vice president Stephen Elop’s memo to employees, it will.

The leaders of the BRICS emerging market countries are meeting in Brazil this week for their sixth summit. The meeting has already led to the establishment of a development bank that the bloc—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—thinks could rival the World Bank.

Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin famously renounced his US citizenship in favor of Singapore before the social network’s initial public offering made him a billionaire. Born in Brazil before immigrating to the US, Saverin is the second-richest Singaporean, with a net worth of $4.2 billion—and he is joined by three other expats on the list of the 10 wealthiest people in the city-state, released today by the research firm Wealth-X.

Like most governments, China is paranoid about its state secrets being exposed by pesky journalists. And like most governments, it has rules in place that make it difficult for reporters to publish such secrets, or for politicians to leak them. China has decided those rules aren’t strict enough, and is now broadening them so that journalists can be punished just for talking about or collecting secrets.

A penalty taker in soccer should always kick to their strong side, because that gives him or her an advantage, right? But wait, then the goalie would expect the ball to come from that direction, and move to stop the shot. So the kicker should go to the weak side? Wrong again.

The US economy added 288,000 jobs in June, meeting optimistic expectations. The unemployment rate fell to 6.1%. Here’s the breakdown of employment status for all Americans age 16 and above:

Journalistic earnings stories can feel robotic, even when written by a news organization as prestigious as the Associated Press. Acknowledging this fact, the AP has decided that it will just have robots produce stories on companies’ earning reports.

Internet users in China are rallying to retaliate against the United States Congress, which is threatening to rename part of the street in front of the Chinese embassy after the political dissident Liu Xiaobo. The most common Chinese counter-suggestion is to name the street where the US embassy in Beijing is located after the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, but there are many more.

Disney heroines are so popular that parents name their children after them. A report out of Britain found that since the release of last year’s Disney blockbuster Frozen, the name Elsa—the film’s empowered ice queen—has jumped 243 spots in girls’ name rankings there.

Earlier this year, Chile became the 38th country to join the United States’ visa waiver program. The program allows travelers from certain countries to visit the US for up to 90 days without going through the drawn-out process of applying for a visa. With Taiwan joining the program last year, it might seem like the US is set to expand the list.

Players in this year’s World Cup might be diverse when it comes to nationality, but there is something all the soccer players have in common: Each and every one is male. At Wimbledon, however, male and female tennis players are given equal screen time and equal pay.

Everybody knows Chinese reporters have it rough. There are 32 of them in jail, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists’ most recent figures. But they’ve usually been arrested only for stories that are published, well after research has uncovered the dirty secrets. Now, thanks to new rules (link in Chinese) from the main media regulator, the government can pre-empt them.

The United States is probably the most soccer-indifferent of all nations that regularly field World Cup teams. While the tournament is by far the biggest sporting event in soccer-obsessed nations like Ghana—which the US team will face in its first match later today—in America the most-watched World Cup games garner about as many viewers as the average NBA basketball final.

The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, known for his unabashed use of social media that is banned in his home country, has started collecting photos of “hand-held guns” on his instagram feed. Users both inside and outside of China are sharing photos of themselves that look something like this:

Computers still can’t compete with humans when it comes to creativity. Not now, and maybe not ever. But with the right human touch, computers can do beautiful things.

Africa’s population of internet users is growing at a faster rate (pdf, p. 6) than anywhere else. So emerging areas of the world are the major internet growth areas of the future, right? Not exactly. Many developing regions are adding users an impressive clip, but the rich world is likely to continue dominating the growth of the web thanks to its next-level internet, on which most traffic will occur between machines.

The World Cup is about people from all over the world coming together to battle over the superiority of their respective nations. Amongst the patriotic chest-beating, it’s worth remembering that during the four years in between each cup, most of the players are loyal to clubs far from home.

Data collected from the World Trade Organization

The US economy added 217,000 jobs in May. The unemployment rate held steady at 6.3%, a five-and-a-half year low.

Blocked on Weibo is one of the most interesting websites on the internet: It lists and explains the search terms that are censored on China’s massive microblogging site Weibo. Last year, the site released a list of blocked terms related to the June 4th Tiananmen Square massacre.