Commodities are raw materials essential for the production of more complex products. Commodities fall into three large categories: agricultural, energy, and metals.
According to this visualization, emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India Indonesia, China, South Africa, etc.) have the largest reserves of certain key energy and metal commodities such as oil, coal, copper, cobalt, iron ore, molybdenum, nickel, zinc, and aluminum.
Source: Business Insider: 36 Maps That Explain The Entire World
Mint.com tracked how much its users spend on gasoline in one month, and how many times they visit the pump in the same period across the United States.
On average, Americans spend $177 on gas in single month, making an average of 6 visits to the pump, and spending an average of $32 in each transaction.
San Jose (California) stands out as the city where Mint users spend the most on gas, an average of $216 in a single month. Other cities where Mint users spend a lot on gas include Birmingham (Alabama), Jacksonville (Florida), Phoenix (Arizona), and Charlotte (North Carolina) to name a few. In contrast, in cities like New York, Brooklyn (New York), and Washington D.C., which have a good public transportation system, the gas bill is between $102 and $112 per month.
Source: Mint: Gas Guzzlers
Every day finished goods and commodities are transported by sea in shipping containers from one port to another across the globe. Standard shipping containers measure 20 feet long by eight feet wide, hence they receive the name of “Twenty-foot Equivalent Units” or TEUs.
The largest port in the world is in Shanghai (China) which saw a volume of 31.74 million TEUs of cargo freight passing through its port in 2011. Shanghai is followed by Singapore (Singapore) which saw a volume of 29.94 million TEUs passing through its port for the same year. Singapore is followed by Hong Kong, Shenzhen (China), Busan (South Korea), Ningbo, Guangzhou, and Qingdao (China), Dubai Ports (United Arab Emirates), and Rotterdam (Netherlands), all in the top ten.
For the interactive map, that allows you to explore each one of the largest 50 ports in the world, visit: The Smithsonian: Interactive: The 50 Largest Ports in the World
MIT economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, conducted surveys in developing nations to see which countries survive on a few dollars per day. The cities or countries where people are known to live on meager dollar amounts on a daily bases are not that surprising, but the percentage of the population living under these conditions is.
In Udaipur and Hyderabad (India) a staggering 94% of the population survive on $2 or less per day. In Bangladesh, 69.4% go on $2 or less per day. In Ghana, 67.7% survive on $2 or less per day. In Guatemala, 64.8% of the population survive on $2 or less per day.
Source: GOOD: Living on Less
Oil reserves are the amount of oil that can be technically and economically recovered from the ground.
Nations with the world’s largest oil reserves include Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, and Libya. Saudi Arabia, holds an approximate 234.5 billion barrels of oil reserves, and it has the largest market share for oil production after Russia. Saudi Arabia is followed by Venezuela, with an estimated 211.0 billion barrels of oil reserves, although its current oil production market share is only 3.2%.
By comparison, the United States has an estimated 30.9 billion barrels in oil reserves, and 8.7% market share in oil production.
Source: Spiegel Online: A World without Oil: Companies Prepare for a Fossil-Free Future
This map shows drought severity, measured as the product of the average length of a drought occurrence and how dry it was the drought. This visualization is based on data collected for the period between 1901 and 2008.
The red areas in the map show the regions most severely affected by droughts. The northern region of the African continent stands out as the largest area being affected by severe droughts. Southwestern Africa (Namibia and Botswana) has also been severely affected by droughts in the same period.
Some areas in the Andean region in South America (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina) have also suffered the effects of severe droughts during the past century.
Parts of Australia and Russia have also been affected by extreme drought conditions.
Sources:
It has been said, that if women participated in the workforce more actively, like their male counterparts, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of those countries would be higher.
However, most countries, including some developed nations do not have policies in place that support women’s participation in the workforce, such as access to education, credit, employment, paid maternity leave or child care.
Countries with the highest economic success for women (measured in terms of equality of pay, degree of inclusion in the workforce, and career advancement), that offer the best policies for supporting women in the workforce include Norway, Australia, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Belgium, and Iceland.
Countries with the lowest degree of economic success that have few policies (or none) that support women in the workplace include Chad, Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, among others.
Some interesting facts about the success of women in the workplace and the policies in place to support them in certain countries can be seen in the graphic above.
Source: Harvard Business Review: Vision Statement: Women and the Economics of Equality
The Organization for the Proliferation of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was created to oversee the elimination of existing chemical weapons and monitor the chemical industry to prevent the production of additional chemical weapons. The OPCW was created in 1997 in The Hague, Netherlands, with support from the United Nations (UN).
The OPCW has 188 members states, signatories of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Nations that did not sign the CWC include Syria, Egypt, South Sudan, Somalia, Angola, and North Korea. Myanmar signed it, but it has not ratified it to date.
As of 2012, 71% of global stockpiles of chemical weapons have been destroyed, 46% of the total amount of chemical munitions have been eliminated, and 100% of the chemical plants producing chemical weapons have been decommissioned.
Source: Ria Novosti News Agency: Infographics – Elimination of Chemical Weapons in the World
Vast quantities of crude oil are exported and imported each year. Some countries are net exporters (their oil exports are larger than their oil imports), and some are net importers (their oil imports are larger than their exports).
In this visualization by Data Driven Consulting, we can see that the United States was the largest net importer of crude oil in 2009. Other net importer countries include China, India, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Belgium, Italy, UK, Spain, Singapore, and Australia.
Among the net exporters of crude oil we find Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Norway, Venezuela, Mexico, and Canada.
For the full-size interactive dashboard, visit: Tableau Public: Exporters and Importers
North Korea possesses a variety of missiles with different range capabilities. On one hand, there is the Scud-V with a range of less than 1,000 Km. that will easily reach South Korea, on the other there is the Taepodong-3 with a range of 10,000 Km. that could potentially reach the U.S. and Canada, as well as Europe.
In terms of balance in the conflict zone, North Korea outnumbers South Korea and the US forces combined in number of troops, tanks, aircraft and navy vessels.
Source: News Agency Ria Novosti
Suggested reading: The Brookings Institution: North Korea and Nuclear-Armed Missiles: Calming the Hyperbole
