The attack on Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq oil facility knocked out about 5 percent of total global oil supplies in one go. Saudi Arabia accounts for about 12 percent of global crude output in total, and has been at that level for years now. Here's a look at how today's other top producers, the US, Russia, Canada, and Iraq have fared over the past thirty years.
Following President Trump's last-minute decision to scuttle Afghanistan peace talks between the US and the Taliban, the country's political future is more uncertain than ever. The US-backed government in Kabul controls less than half of the country's districts. The rest are controlled or actively contested by Taliban fighters or warlords. Here is a map of who controls what in a country that is still very much up for grabs.
International Literacy Day, which falls on September 8, was designated by UNESCO to celebrate advancements made in global literacy rates, and to highlight the chasm that still exists between education standards in different parts of the world. While in recent decades huge strides have been made in reducing illiteracy in low-income countries, 30 percent of adults from these regions will still be illiterate by 2030, according to UNESCO. Here's a look at the change in adult literacy around the world from 1987-2016.
One reason for the recent jitters about the global economy is that several of the world's leading economic powers are locked in deepening trade disputes. In fact, add them all up and you'll find that three big spats alone involve countries that account for more than half of global economic output. Here's a closer look at who's arguing over what:
Over the past fifty years, the Amazon rainforest has shrunk by an area equal to the size of Turkey. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Brazilian government supported settlement of the sparsely populated region for security reasons. Since then, huge swaths of the forest -- which is crucial for limiting the world's greenhouse gasses -- have been cleared for farmland used to feed Brazil's population and support its massive agricultural exports. Greater awareness of the environmental impacts in the 1990s produced tighter conservation regulations, though plenty of illegal clearing continues. In recent years, the annual deforestation rate has begun to rise again, and Brazil's new president Jair Bolsonaro has pledged to weaken regulations further in order to support businesses.
US farmers have become a political hot potato in the US-China trade war, with President Donald Trump accusing China of failing to follow through on a recent pledge to buy more US agricultural goods as part of a deal to re-start stalled trade talks – and China instructing state-run companies to stop buying from US farms after the president's latest tariff threat. This map explains why farmers are so important to the US president, and why agricultural purchases are a key bargaining chip for Beijing.
