The mass demonstrations that convulsed Brazil in June and July 2013 are more than a raw display of people power; they confirm that we are living in a new era of digitally enhanced protest. The storyline is by now well rehearsed. What started out as a modest protest by the little-known Movimento Passe Livre (Free Fare Movement)–a group calling for free public transport over the past decade–went viral.

The twelfth round of peace talks between the Colombian government and FARC rebels ended on Saturday in Havana, Cuba with both sides expressing optimism despite a lack of recent concrete actions and agreements in the past week. Current negotiations, which began in October 2012, have been more successful than previous attempts, with difficult obstacles like land reform having reportedly been cleared.

When it comes to corruption, Venezuela has long languished near the bottom of the international league table. According to the latest index of perceptions of corruption compiled each year by Transparency International, a Berlin-based watchdog, only eight out of the list of 176 countries were seen as more graft-ridden. Even places like Haiti and Zimbabwe ranked higher. The organisation’s Venezuela chapter found that 65% of respondents in a recent survey thought corruption had worsened in the previous two years. Well over half thought government measures to tackle it were ineffective.

Google search suggestions have transformed into a never-ending source of entertainment and a candid peek into what people look for in the world. We've seen insecurities change with age and stereotypes of states in the US. Noah Veltman banked on the locality of suggestions for a country-specific view of the world. He shows suggestions for the same query for the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.

In the last few weeks of July, the story of a young transgender couple who transitioned together, which had previously gone viral in the Western media, trended on Sina Weibo, China's popular microblogging platform. Although some Chinese people were puzzled by the story, many praised the couple for their bravery and the quality of their relationship. Chinese reactions to the story on Weibo were generally positive. Wrote queer news organization @淡蓝同志新闻: "Everyone has the right to love. Be yourself! Good luck! Others can learn from your experience as a #genderswapcouple."

It's not easy being Robert Ford. The U.S. ambassador to Syria braved attacks on the American embassy in Damascus by pro-Assad mobs, and even risked his life by traveling to the city of Hama and northern Syria. Now, he has reportedly been recommended as the next American envoy in Cairo -- but Egyptians have already organized a campaign against his nomination.

There are plenty of reasons to be cynical about U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's relaunch of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The personalities and the politics involved do not immediately inspire confidence. Nevertheless, I choose not to be negative, partly because it is always easy to sit on the sidelines and take potshots. The more important consideration is, because peace is so essential to the lives and futures of the peoples of the region and to American interests in the Middle East, that any good faith effort deserves support and a chance to succeed.

The young people who led Egypt’s revolution two and a half years ago have been suspicious of the US for the simple reason that it supported former President Hosni Mubarak’s regime for 30 years. From the US perspective, President Barack Obama pivoted quickly from Mubarak to the people; but it did not look that way on Cairo’s streets. When the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi was elected President in 2012, many Egyptians assumed that America must have supported him, because they could not imagine that the US would accept a result that it did not want.