Uruguay is on its way to legalize the production and consumption of cannabis, only waiting for the senate to pass the new bill. According to The Economist, more than 8% of Uruguay’s population ages 15 to 64 smoked cannabis in 2011, a higher percentage than in previous years.
Consumption of cannabis has also increased worldwide. Countries with the highest levels of consumption of cannabis in 2012, 10% or more of the population, include Italy, Nigeria, Australia, the United States, and Canada.
In 2012 China’s investment in renewable energy surpassed the investment by the United States for the previous year and for the same year. In fact, China’s is ahead every other nation including Germany, Japan, and Italy.
China’s investment in renewable energy exceeded $60 billion for 2012, compared to an estimated $36 billion in the United States, and $23 billion in Germany for the same year.
Source: Statista: China Leads the Way in Renewable Energy Investment
About 870 million people are still undernourished around the world, specially in developing countries. Undernourishment is defined as the lack of sufficient caloric intake.
The situation is specially serious in Africa. In countries like Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, etc. more than 35% of the population is undernourished. Other countries where a high percentage of the population is undernourished include North Korea, Laos, Paraguay, Haiti, to name a few.
Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: The FAO Hunger Map 2012
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977 was enacted for the purpose of making it illegal for individuals or entities to make payments to foreign government officials in order to obtain business in a particular country. So far about 200 FCPA violations have been covered in 80 countries.
The darker the color of a country on the map above, the larger the FCPA violations in that country. FCPA violations have been found in different economic sectors: energy, manufacturing, agriculture, consulting, health and pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, defense and aerospace, and infrastructure.
The country with the largest number of FCPA violations is Nigeria, with the majority of bribery cases in the energy sector. Nigeria is followed by Argentina, China, Russia, Iran, and Iraq.
For the interactive map and links to documentation for every FCPA violation, please visit: The Mintz Group: Where the Bribes Are – Penalties in U.S. Government FCPA Cases Since 1977
The number of deaths as a result of internal armed conflicts has increased dramatically from 37,300 back in 2007 to 178,300 in 2012. Internal conflict is defined as armed conflict between two parties, one of which is the government of that country.
For 2012, the largest number of deaths have occurred in Syria (40.9%), Libya (17.3%), Mexico (14.2%), and Pakistan (5.2%). The areas of major conflict have switched from Iraq and Afghanistan back in 2007 to Syria and Libya in 2012.
Source: The Economist: Syria v Libya v Iraq – A numerical evaluation of recent conflict
The year 2013 has been a good year, so far, for selected internet companies. In this chart by Statista we can see the percentage change since January 2013 to July 12, 2013 for the stock performance of companies like Yahoo, Google, Amazon, etc.
The best performer has been LinkedIn with a 77.5 percentage change since January 2013. LinkedIn is followed by Yahoo, Google, AOL, Amazon, and eBay. Facebook, on the other hand, has seen a decline in its stock performance in the same period of time.
When it comes to oil production and consumption, countries have a very close relationship of interdependence with each other. Some countries consume more oil than what they produce relying on imports to satisfy their internal demand. Others, consume less than what they produce, being able to export oil to nations that need it.
Oil consumption (yellow) for the United States, for example, was larger than its production (grey) for 2012, 18.55 mb/d (million barrels per day) compared to 8.9 mb/d, importing more than double its production to satisfy the gap in internal demand. Other nations with oil consumption higher that oil production include China, Brazil, Australia, India, UK, and Indonesia.
In contrast, oil consumption for Saudi Arabia for 2012 is estimated at 2.94 mb/d, while its production reached 11.53 md/d, exporting its oil surplus to the rest of the world. Other nations whose oil production exceeds its oil consumption include Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Norway, Russia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.
Source: Winston Smith Labs: Global Oil Production and Consumption since 1965 [Interactive Map/Graph]
Global Democracy Ranking released the Democracy Ranking for the year 2012, which shows the quality of democracy around the world.
Several indicators were used to calculate the Global Democracy Ranking. Those indicators were selected from a vast variety of dimensions such as politics, economy, environment, gender equality, education, health, and knowledge.
As seen in the map above, countries ranked at the top (dark green), those with the highest quality of democracy include Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Denmark, Netherlands, New Zealand, Germany, Ireland, and Austria. In contrast, we find countries where democracy is at serious risk or where it is no longer a viable system (brown). Among these countries we have Yemen, Syria, Libya, Togo, Guinea-Bissau, China, Pakistan, Egypt, Nigeria, and Haiti.
Source: Global Democracy Ranking: Democracy Ranking 2012
On average, U.S. mobile subscribers talk on the phone 356 minutes, or roughly 6 hours per month. That number is double that of the Turkey, and 4.5 times that of Germany. That estimate is the highest among selected OECD countries.
Canadians are not far behind. The outgoing traffic per mobile subscriber is an average 345 minutes (5 hours and 45 minutes) in a single month.
Source: Statista: Americans Talk on Their Mobile Phones More Than Anyone Else
Remittances, or money sent by migrant workers to their home countries, have increased since the year 2000. Although, they temporarily decreased after the economic crisis back in 2008, they recovered in 2010 and continued to rise. Remittances increased from $204 billion back in 2000 to $540 billion in 2012.
Countries with the highest remittance inflows include India ($71 billion), China ($62 billion), Mexico, the Philippines, Nigeria, Egypt, and France. Only nine countries saw a reduction in remittance inflows, among them Greece and Turkey which experienced the steepest decline.
For the interactive map, please visit: Tages Woche: The incredible rise of migrants’ remittances