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July 2024 saw an incredibly close assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump while he was on the campaign trail for the 2024 presidential election. While speaking to his audience, a bullet whizzed past Trump's head, nicking him on the ear and drawing blood in the process, before the Secret Service escorted him to safety. One spectator was killed while shielding family members from the gunfire, and two more were shot but survived, before the perpetrator was shot and killed by security services.
Throughout U.S. history, there have been countless plots and attempts to assassinate U.S. presidents. The first known case was a failed attempt on Andrew Jackson's life in 1835, where both the assassin's guns misfired due to moisture in the air, and Jackson then beat the culprit into submission with his cane. More recent attempts include separate, high-profile cases in October 2018, where sixteen bombs were sent via mail to prominent Democrats (including presidents Obama and Clinton), Trump critics, and news outlets; while another culprit sent letters laced with ricin to President Trump and senior U.S. military figures. Throughout history, the majority of these plots have been uncovered or prevented, however several have come close to achieving their aims, and four have resulted in the successful assassination of a sitting president.
Successful attemptsThe first successful assassination occurred in 1865, when Confederate sympathizers and spies plotted to kill the three highest-ranking figures in the Union, in an effort to re-ignite the American Civil War. Of the three targets, only Lincoln was assassinated, after being shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln died within twelve hours of being shot, which was much sooner than the second presidential assassination, where James Garfield took almost four months to eventually die from his wounds, after being shot in a train station in 1881. The third U.S. president to be assassinated was William McKinley, who was shot twice while meeting members of the public, just six months into his second term. The attempt was not immediately fatal, and McKinley was even able to stop bystanders from killing his attacker; however one of the bullets was never found and McKinley passed away one week after the attack. The most recent U.S. president to have been assassinated was John F. Kennedy, who was shot by former marine and defector to the Soviet Union, Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald shot Kennedy from the sixth floor of a nearby warehouse during a public motorcade in Dallas, Texas in 1963, and Kennedy died almost immediately. Although official investigations, forensic tests and eyewitness accounts corroborate the official story that Oswald acted alone, a high number of conspiracy theories surround the event, and a large share of the US population believes that the assassination is part of a larger plot or cover-up, orchestrated by either the CIA, mafia or foreign entities (among other theories).
While on the 1912 campaign trail, former president Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest before giving a speech; Roosevelt knew that the injury was not fatal, and then proceeded to deliver an 84 minute speech before seeking medical attention. In 1981, a gunman shot six bullets at Ronald Reagan as he was meeting a crowd outside a Washington hotel, injuring the president and three others in the attack. One bullet had ricocheted off the side of a car, punctured the president's lung and caused severe internal bleeding. The president almost died en route to the hospital, but doctors were able to stabilize him and remove the bullet; Reagan returned to the White House less than two weeks later. Another close call was where a gunman fired shots at President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt's car in 1933, missing the President but killing the Mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak, in the attack.
Coincidentally, the only female culprits in these attempts both tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford, in two unrelated attacks in California in September, 1975. The first (who was a member of the Manson Family) was stopped before she could get a shot off at the president, while the second was restrained after shooting twice and injuring one bystander; Ford was unharmed in both attacks. Another near miss was an unsuccessful attempt on Abraham Lincoln's life, nine months before his successful assassination; the bullet went through his distinctive, stovepipe hat as he was riding to his summer cottage one evening. The only attempt included here that did not involve a firearm and did not take place in the United States was when a grenade was thrown on stage in Tbilisi, Georgia, as George W. Bush was making a speech there in 2005. Although the pin had been removed, the handkerchief used to conceal the grenade was wrapped too tightly around it for the lever for it to detach; nobody was injured in this attempt, however the culprit did kill one agent as he was being arrested two months later.
As of July 2024, Elon Musk had a net worth valued at 242.6 billion U.S. dollars, making him the richest man in the world. Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos followed in third, with owner of the luxury goods producer LVMH, Bernard Arnault and his family, in third. The list is dominated by Americans, and Francoise Bettencourt Meyers is the only woman among the 20 richest people worldwide.
As of July 2024, TikTok creator and comedian Khabane Lame was the most followed content creator on the platform. Lame, who is based in Italy, reached 162.6 million subscribers. Influencer Charlie D'Amelio followed closely in second position with 155.4 million followers. Jimmy Donaldson - operating on YouTube as MrBeast, ranked third, with a total of 97.6 million followers.
TikTok global usersPopular video-sharing platform TikTok has gained immense popularity globally. As of January 2023, TikTok had over one billion monthly active users, making it one of the most widely used social media platforms worldwide. Around 54 percent of the total user base on TikTok were women, while approximately 46 percent of the popular social video platform users were men. In addition, TikTok has become a go-to platform for young people. As of the beginning of 2023, most of TikTok's global user base consisted of younger age groups, with 21.5 percent of TikTok's users being women aged between 18 and 24 years.
Since its launch in 2016, TikTok’s audience has increased significantly. As of January 2023, the United States and Indonesia were the countries with the largest TikTok audiences. The United States led with 113 million users, followed by Indonesia with 109 million users. The app has managed to catch users’ attention and keep its base entertained. So much so that, as of the second quarter of 2022, global users were spending around 95 minutes daily on TikTok, making it the most engaging among social media apps. Additionally, TikTok has quickly become one of the most popular platforms across different app stores. In September 2022, the video app had almost 24 million downloads on Google Play Store, making it the most downloaded app for Android users worldwide. In contrast, TikTok was the second most downloaded app on Apple App Store, with approximately 7.5 million global users downloads in the same month.
Container freight rates oscillated dramatically between January 2023 and March 2024. Freight rates slumped to their lowest level on the 26th of October 2023, when the going rate for a 40-foot container was only 1,342 U.S. dollars. Since then, the global freight rate has generally increased, hitting over 5,800 U.S. dollars in June 2024, the highest value on record.
How did we get here?The global supply chain is a fragile system consisting of numerous links. Disruption to one can send cascading effects down a chain that needs to function properly for the whole system to work. The COVID-19 pandemic turned out to be an event of such a magnitude to either bring to halt whole industries and supply chains, or severely reduce their efficiency. Due to its complexity and transcontinental nature, container shipping was hit especially hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the start of the pandemic, the shipping industry has had to struggle with port closures and congestions, labor shortages, difficulties with capacity utilization, as well as a lack of new shipping containers. These challenges continue to have repercussions on the industry to this day.
While costs of operating a container fleet have increased, the surge in freight rates has not served just to cover rising expenses. Container ship operators had been reporting record-high operating profit margins since the beginning of the pandemic. However, despite these high profit margins, the freight rate increase has had some repercussions. In the second quarter of 2023, main container shipping companies had an average profit margin of 8.9 percent, a decrease of almost 50 percent compared to the peak EBIT in the first quarter of 2022. Despite this decrease, some of the carriers are combating this trend by using their previous profits to increase their carrying capacity by buying new containers and ordering new container ships. However, the delivery of these newly ordered ships is still years away.
The office supply retailer Staples generated annual sales of around 7.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2023. In 2017, the sales revenue of Staples amounted to about ten billion U.S. dollars.
Staples carries a wide range of products, such as business technology, ink and toner, paper, and office furniture. The product segment that generates the highest share of sales for the company is core office supplies, followed by ink and toner. Though Staples operates in five countries, the vast majority of its retail stores are located in the United States. In 2016, there were 1,255 Staples stores operating across the United States.
The revenue generated by office supply and stationary stores in the United States has decreased steadily each year since 2007. In 2017, U.S. office supplies and stationery store sales came to about 12.55 billion U.S. dollars. However, the average annual expenditure on stationary, stationary supplies and gift wrap per consumer unit was around 86.17 U.S. dollars, which is the highest it has been since at least 2007.
In the second quarter of 2024, the growth of the real gross domestic product (GDP) in China ranged at 4.7 percent compared to the same quarter of the previous year. GDP refers to the total market value of all goods and services that are produced within a country per year. It is an important indicator of the economic strength of a country. Real GDP is adjusted for price changes and is therefore regarded as a key indicator for economic growth.
In 2022, China ranged second among countries with the largest gross domestic product worldwide. Since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978, the country has experienced rapid social and economic development. In 2013, it became the world’s largest trading nation, overtaking the United States. However, per capita GDP in China was still much lower than that of industrialized countries. Until 2011, the annual growth rate of China’s GDP had constantly been above nine percent. However, economic growth has cooled down since and is projected to further slow down gradually in the future. Rising domestic wages and the competitive edge of other Asian and African countries are seen as main reasons for the stuttering in China’s economic engine. One strategy of the Chinese government to overcome this transition is a gradual shift of economic focus from industrial production to services.
Another major challenge lies in the massive environmental pollution that China’s reckless economic growth has caused over the past decades. China’s development has been powered mostly by coal consumption, which resulted in high air pollution. To counteract industrial pollution, further investments in waste management and clean technologies are necessary. In 2017, about 1.15 percent of GDP was spent on pollution control. Surging environmental costs aside, environmental issues could also be a key to industrial transition as China placed major investments in renewable energy and clean tech projects. The consumption of green energy skyrocketed from 0.52 exajoules in 2005 to 13.3 million in 2022.
In 2023, the median age of the population in Thailand was 39.7 years, which was the oldest median age across Southeast Asia. Comparatively, the median age of Timor-Leste's population was 21 years in 2023.
On July 14, 2024, Argentina got its 16th Copa América trophy, placing itself in the ranking of countries with the most titles won. Uruguay follows second with 15 trophies in total.
In 2024, there were approximately 138,120 active personnel in the armed forces of the United Kingdom, 75,320 of which were in the British Army, 30,800 in the Royal Air Force and 32,000 in the Royal Navy.
As of July 08, 2024, the price of gasoline in Ghana stood at 15.94 Ghanaian cedis (GHS) per liter, corresponding to roughly one U.S. dollar. This represented an increase of 0.34 cedis from the prices in the preceding week.
Increasing petroleum consumptionIn November 2023, about 155.000 metric tons of gasoline were consumed in Ghana, which represented an increase in consumption compared to the preceding month. Furthermore, in 2022, over 4.2 million metric tons of petroleum products were consumed in the country, of which around 1.6 million metric tons were Automotive Gas Oil (AGO).
In 2020, 173 thousand barrels of crude oil per day were produced in Ghana. In 2022, at the company level, Ghana Oil Company Limited (GOIL), one of the leading petroleum product marketing companies in Ghana, accumulated revenue from sales amounting to 12.44 billion Ghanaian cedis (GHS), roughly 1.03 billion U.S. dollars. Comparatively, in the same year, Total Petroleum Ghana, also a major petroleum company in the country, registered a revenue that amounted to 4.63 billion GHS, some 385.8 million U.S. dollars.
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