The United States has exhausted its annual supply of EB-5 immigrant investor visas for the first time in the program's history following a surge of applications from Chinese nationals.  The State Department's chief of visa control, Charles Oppenheimer, told lawyers at an industry conference earlier this week that no more spots will be available to Chinese for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

As the Brazil team has come spectacularly undone in the World Cup, the pain for the host country has been compounded by the prospect that its hated rival, Argentina, could still lift the championship trophy on Sunday in Rio de Janeiro’s fabled Estádio do Maracanã, after Argentina won a tense semifinal against the Netherlands in a penalty shootout on Wednesday afternoon. The tens of thousands of Argentine fans who have invaded Brazil to cheer for their team, and taunt their hosts, brought with them a song that predicts not just triumph for Argentina, but deep humiliation for Brazil. 

Frozen, the Disney cartoon-musical that swept the US in late 2013 and early 2014, only arrived in Japan in mid-March.  The film's popularity has coincided with public outcry over sexism in Japan, where unlike in America, Disney marketing played up the movie's empowerment message.

The event is part of a project, ID100, bringing together key academics, think tanks, NGOs, international bodies and the general public to address the world’s biggest environmental, political and socioeconomic problems. The project is being led by researchers from the University’s Sheffield Institute for International Development (SIID).

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has taken to Twitter to spread its message, trumpet bloody successes, and recruit potential jihadists, but its social-media campaign has come under attack from forces that range from the U.S. State Department to the mysterious group of hacker-activists who call themselves Anonymous.

The aid situation in Syria—which has been dire ever since the start of the civil war—reached a desperate new low in May, with reports of government forces starving the residents of Homs to force a ceasefire, and with the NGO Mercy Corps revealing last week that the Assad regime had kicked its workers out of Damascus in retaliation for the group’s work in rebel-controlled areas. The United Nations has also publicly admitted that it has been threatened with imminent expulsion from the capital if it seeks to deliver aid elsewhere in the war-torn country.

Women rule social media. They dominate Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram, and stand click-to-click with men on Twitter and Tumblr. It's not all pretty pictures. This is the breakout year for hashtag activism on issues around women and girls. 

Myanmar has been opening up slowly since reforms began in 2010, but as constitutional changes gather momentum so the rate of overseas investment appears to be speeding up.