Tag: finance

In 2025, the world’s busiest airport was not in Dubai, London, or Tokyo.

It was Atlanta.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport handled 106.3 million passengers, making it the only airport in the world to cross the 100 million mark.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, ranks the world’s busiest airports by total passengers boarded and deplaned in 2025, using new data from the Airports Council International. Transit passengers are counted once.

Why Atlanta Still Ranks #1

The Atlanta airport, which celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2026, has been the world’s busiest airport every year since 1998, except for 2020 during pandemic-era travel restrictions.

This table lists the world’s busiest airports by 2025 passenger count.

Named after two former mayors, Hartsfield-Jackson serves as the main hub and headquarters for Delta Air Lines, the world’s top airline by both revenue and brand value.

Smaller airlines like Frontier and Southwest also maintain operating bases at the airport. Consequently, more than 1,000 flights depart from Hartsfield-Jackson each day.

The U.S. Big Four Airports

Atlanta is not the only U.S. airport near the top. The U.S. accounts for four of the 10 busiest airports worldwide, more than any other country in the ranking.

Dallas Fort Worth (85.7 million), which anchors two of the country’s largest cities, ranks fourth worldwide in passenger traffic, while Denver’s sprawling airport lands in the 10th position with 82.4 million passengers in 2025.

Sixth-ranked Chicago O’Hare (84.8 million) held the title of world’s busiest airport for a quarter-century before losing it to Atlanta in 1998. It continues to be the airport with the most takeoffs and landings, recording more than 860,000 aircraft movements in 2025.

Eurasia’s Biggest Airports

No African or South American airport cracks the world’s 10 busiest airports, which are instead dominated by East Asian and Middle Eastern hubs like Tokyo Haneda (91.7 million), Shanghai Pudong (85 million), and Istanbul (84.4 million).

London Heathrow is Europe’s busiest airport, handling 84.5 million passengers in 2025.

Meanwhile, Dubai (95.2 million) has become the world’s second-busiest airport, while remaining the busiest for international passengers. This reflects the United Arab Emirates’ strategy of positioning Dubai as a global aviation hub connecting Asia, Europe, and the West.

Curious how size factors in? Check out World’s Busiest Single Runway Airports on Voronoi.

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged the government to urgently explore an increase in the use of alternative energy sources, including biogas as a substitute for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), as the Middle East crisis is choking oil and gas supply to the world’s third-largest crude importer.

Modi also urged ministers to move faster with implementing reforms to turn India into a developed nation by 2047, the goal for its 100th independence anniversary.

India has been grappling with the energy crisis that the Iran war created. Oil supply from the Middle East was severely constrained, forcing India to boost Russian oil imports – with a U.S. blessing in the form of waivers for Russian crude on tankers – and seek alternative crude and LPG supply from regions other than the Middle East.

Earlier this week, reports emerged that India plans to send empty tankers into the Strait of Hormuz to load oil supplies from the Gulf producers.

This would be a first such Indian move west of the chokepoint for loading crude and LPG since the Iran war began, sources with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg on Wednesday.

India has boosted imports of oil and LPG from places that don’t need the Strait of Hormuz, but costs are usually higher, and the journey times are much longer compared to the shorter routes from the Persian Gulf to India.

At any rate, India will likely need approval from the U.S. to move through the U.S. blockade in the Gulf of Oman first, and then from Iran for clearance in the Strait of Hormuz en route to the export ports in the Persian Gulf.  

Two and a half months after the Middle East conflict began, one of the highest-performing emerging markets in recent years is scrambling to contain the oil shock that is spreading to consumer prices, foreign exchange reserves, and economic growth.

The saga of woke comics is the saga of woke America.  Much like video games, comics and superhero movies were ignored by conservative movements as “meaningless kids stuff” until recently, which is part of the reason why those industries were so easily invaded by leftists and used to indoctrinate millions of children and teens a decade ago.

Culture is more important than politics.  This is obvious.  It’s a fact that leftists have understood for generations and one that conservatives have foolishly dismissed.  Only in the past few years has there been a shift; at least, the progressive rampage through America’s various media institutions has been stalled and slightly reversed. 

But, the most captured platforms are not going to change anytime soon, even in the face of financial decline and mass layoffs. 

Disney and Marvel have recently announced a shake-up of the comics division, with over a thousand layoffs this year (after moderate layoffs over the past few years), and new executive leadership.  Far-left DEI advocate Dan Buckley is on the way out.  This change is being presented as a retirement, though some skeptics argue he is being forced out as part of the company’s restructuring.  

Buckley replacement is not much better, however.  TV Chief Brad Winderbaum is taking over as Marvel President and his track record on Marvel TV series includes some of the biggest woke failures in streaming history – Ms. Marvel (Muslim Pakistani representation), She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (feminist/meta take, which he defends as a strong performer despite critical failure), Ironheart (feminism and BLM propaganda), Echo, Agatha All Along, Wonder Man (prominent LGBT elements).

In other words, superhero fans hoping that the company changes will result in a renewed respect for the source materials are probably going to be disappointed.  Marvel’s direction is unlikely to improve.  

Marvel Comics, a subsidiary of Disney, has been at the forefront of far-left propaganda in content for many years, and their woke concepts are usually ported directly into Disney’s movies and streaming series.  Everything from gay and trans X-Men to black Spider-Man, to female gender swaps of popular male characters have become the norm.  And, books sales have flatlined in response.

Marvel’s market share has plunged from highs of 40%-45% to around 29% today.  Direct market US comics make up around 15% of total sales in the medium, while Japanese Manga dominates with 50% of the market.  US comics continue to lose ground exactly because no one likes woke superheros.       

Only ten years ago the business of superheroes was big.  Theater goers could not get enough of the comic book genre.  Comic studios from industry titans to indies were scrambling to turn every property they had into a movie deal.  Nerd culture went fully mainstream and every kid and suburban wine-mom was geeking out in a way that used to get people beat up in middle school. 

The problem is that nerd culture became a platform that the woke movement lusted after.  And, as they do with everything they touch, their efforts to hijack comic book media and exploit it as a vehicle for DEI ended up destroying popular sentiment. 

Top companies like Marvel and DC no longer publish exact sales data and unit numbers are proprietary.  The reason was because sales collapsed according to evidence accumulating across bookstores and newsstands.  There are estimates of around 2500 comic stores closed since 2016, many of them were stores that had been open for decades.  Neighborhood favorites that used to do decent business folded.  

The stores that survived were those that diversified into video games, board games and other products.  Store owners reported that comic fans were buying older back issues and often avoided new woke books. 

In 2026, the superhero trend is dead.  The audience has dried up and no one cares.  It’s sad to see, but completely predictable.  Marvel’s pretentious obstinance led them to believe that the audience exists to serve their products, rather than their products existing to serve the audience.  The thing is, they can force woke cultism into any IP they like, but they can’t force people to pay for it. 

For now they a protected by Disney’s vast corporate umbrella.  But, this might not be the case for long if they continue to lose money.

Authored by Noel Williams via AmericanThinker.com,

If he had any, Bernie would be pulling his hair out at the prospect of Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire.

Socialist imbeciles spurn success, preferring downtrodden masses who wallow in government dependence rather than exerting individual independence. As is well known, socialists portray billionaires as a “policy mistake.”

Extrapolating from that, they must consider the potential coming of trillionaires as a policy catastrophe.

The first man likely to reach that lofty target — if his companies meet stringent performance objectives — is Elon Musk.

At first blush, that seems exorbitant, but let’s run some numbers.

Musk heads several remarkable companies, but for this exercise, we’ll focus on Tesla, which was founded in 2003. 

Tesla’s current headcount is about 125,000 (give or take). 

Average headcount (hard to calculate due to extreme scaling) over its lifespan is approximately 51,000. 

Average salary (excluding bonuses and benefits) is also approximate, at about $100,000 per annum.

So, 23 (years in existence) * 51000 (average headcount) * 100,000 (estimated avg. salary, per above link) equals $117,300,000,000.

That’s over 117 billion dollars paid to direct Tesla employees over its lifespan — again, that excludes all the other benefits that may accrue.

Remember, this is before ramping up production of Tesla’s Optimus robots that will become the predominant contributor to revenue (and productivity gains that will benefit society at large).

It is estimated that Tesla alone supports over 600,000 jobs (think supply chain and contractor jobs).

So let’s consider their larger impact on growing societal wealth.

It’s tricky to determine the average salary of such positions, but let’s go with a conservative $60,000 per annum.

Here’s the calculation: 23 (years in business) * 600,000 (jobs tied to Tesla) * 60,000 (approx. salary) equals $828,000,000,000.

That’s over eight hundred billion, by golly (combine that with the above, and you’re teetering on one trillion).

Admittedly, these are imprecise estimates (maybe underestimates), but the point is clear: Tesla alone has generated enormous payrolls for direct and indirect employees combined, and the future looks brighter still.

In fact, Tesla is inexorably becoming much more than a car company: there are all-important data repositories, AI, energy, autonomous driving, and robots. Indeed, if Musk hits the pay targets that may catapult him to trillionaire status, the estimated market cap of Tesla will be around 8.5 trillion dollars.

That’s Tesla, but there’s also Neuralink, the Boring Company (tunneling, etc.), X, and xAI. Oh yeah… then there is SpaceX, which currently employs thousands of dedicated full-time workers worldwide.

Its Initial Public Offering is gearing up, with an anticipated value of well over $1 trillion.

The socialist politicians propagating envy will have hysterical fits over that.

Speaking of whom, Obama once mused that at some point a businessman has “earned enough,” and that is well below a billion dollars. Well, given all the societal wealth (not to mention philanthropic aid and services to hapless victims of natural and man-made disasters throughout the world) that Musk has generated, maybe one trillion dollars is about enough.

Who would you rather have access to those resources: a creative, market-driven entrepreneur (albeit one who occasionally benefits from industrial policy), or a fuddy-duddy, central-planning socialist sequestered from the dynamism of consumer-oriented markets?

The Trump-Xi meeting is now history, so Beijing can go back to doing what it does best: squeezing US supply chains with its near chokehold on most strategic and rare-earth supply chains.

China plans to impose mining controls on certain strategic minerals to ensure supply security and protect the finite resources, Beijing revealed in a government notification published by the official Xinhua News Agency. 

The new rules will take effect from June 15 and allow Beijing to control total output, restrict mining entities and run security reviews on foreign investments in mining that could pose a risk to national security.

Xinhua didn’t specify which minerals will be impacted. Any adjustment to the list of strategic mineral resources will assess factors like economic importance, national security, domestic requirements and supply chain resilience, according to the regulation.

China currently has similar controls on production of rare earths, critical materials vital for high-tech manufacturing, through annual production quotas to a few licensed domestic companies. 

 

Via The Libertarian Institute

The US fired hundreds of its most advanced interceptors to protect Israel from Iranian missiles during the first five weeks of the war. 

According to a Department of War assessment described to The Washington Post, the US used 200 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors and over 100 SM-3 and SM-6 missiles in defense of Israel.

In comparison, Israel only used 100 Arrow interceptors and 90 David’s Sling missiles. 

Speaking about the imbalance, an administration official told The Post, “In total, the U.S. shot around 120 more interceptors and engaged twice as many Iranian missiles.” The official added that “The imbalance will likely be exacerbated if fighting restarts.“

The imbalance occurs because Washington and Tel Aviv developed a strategy for the defense of Israel, where the US advanced interceptors handled the bulk of the Iranian missiles. The official said that the policy resulted in a significant “drawdown” of the US interceptor stockpile. 

During the conflict, the US used about half of its stockpile of advanced interceptors, including Patriots, SM-3, SM-6, and THAAD interceptors. WaPo further quotes the following analyst who said—

“The numbers are striking,” said Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center. “The United States absorbed most of the missile defense mission while Israel conserved its own magazines. Even if the operational logic was sound, the United States is left with roughly 200 THAAD interceptors and a production line that can’t keep pace with demand.”

The US intelligence community says Iran has over 70% of its pre-war launchers and missiles. Additionally, Tehran has resumed drone production, and it’s rebuilding its military production at a surprising rate. 

A US official also told The Post that Israel’s offensive capabilities were slowing down. They explained that by the end of March, Israel was conducting 50% fewer strikes against Iran because its air force was exhausted by operations against Lebanon and Yemen. 

In recent days, President Donald Trump has threatened to restart the war against Iran if Tehran does not comply with his demands. However, the President had made similar threats throughout the six-week-long ceasefire and has always backed down. 

The Post reports that the US has positioned additional naval assets near Israel to assist with missile defense in the war restarts.

When Elon Musk purchased Twitter and took the company over in 2022, he proceeded to fire approximately 80% of the social media company’s bloated 7500 person workforce.  This included almost all HR related employees.  The company roster was pared down to a lean 1500 people.  Everyone in the establishment media claimed that Twitter (now called “X”) was going to collapse. 

The political left and their corporate allies did everything in their power to make this happen, including advertising cancellations and even government intervention, but they failed.  X’s monthly active user (MAU) count has grown over the past 5 years – rising from roughly 360 million in 2021 to over 550 million by early 2026.  Part of the reason for this success despite the constant attacks was Musk’s removal of internal saboteurs. 

The majority of corporations today have inflated their teams with people who do not add value – Rather, they create problems from thin air and drag the company down.  The primary vehicle that facilitates this sabotage is the Human Resources department. 

HR departments were originally created as a means of monitoring compliance with state and federal laws to avoid liability.  In many cases this revolved around “sexual harassment” or “discrimination” in the workplace, but it ended up becoming a progressive crusade to make women, LGBT and minority groups a protected class of workers that are difficult to fire because HR is more concerned with lawsuits. 

This lack of accountability based on gender and minority privilege reached its peak during the height of the woke era and DEI.  Companies were rife with useless employees who did little work while raking in six-figure salaries. 

Today, the situation is changing rapidly.  A wave of layoffs has hit the white collar sector since 2025.  The end of DEI is leading to mass cuts which are largely affecting women, with minority women making up the bulk of the job losses. 

One company CEO, Ryan Breslow of Bolt, saved his company from implosion by a simple change which allowed him to more easily make a number of other changes:  He fired his entire HR department. 

Breslow, who stepped down as CEO in 2022 but returned in 2025, cut 30% of the workforce in April and replaced HR with a smaller “people operations” team focused on training.  “They were creating problems that didn’t exist,” Breslow, 31, said at Fortune’s Workforce Innovation Summit. “Those problems disappeared when I let them go.”

Bolt was founded in 2014 and makes checkout payments technology. The company saw a whopping valuation collapse from $11 billion in 2022 to $300 million in 2025.

But HR wasn’t the only group to lose their jobs. Breslow said employees had grown complacent during the boom years. He gave workers 60 days to adapt to a leaner culture but said 99% couldn’t make the shift. “There’s a sense of entitlement that had festered across the company,” he said.

He fired nearly the entire leadership team and eliminated four-day workweeks and unlimited PTO.  Bolt now operates with about 100 employees, down from thousands. “We have a team a quarter of the size, who are much more junior, who work a lot harder, who have better energy,” Breslow says.

The CEO’s observations echo across the corporate world in the US and in Europe, and it’s the reason why many DEI related jobs are disappearing and why so many college graduates with psychology and communications related degrees can’t get hired to save their lives.

It makes sense; Human Resource employees are 75% to 80% women and 18% LGBT, far above the averages in most white collar fields.  These demographics commonly lead to a grievance-based work environment and an entitlement culture.  These are the groups who often create problems from thin air as a means to manipulate the policy courses of companies and they are difficult to eject because of liability fears. 

Placing them in a position of power with the ability to drum up internal conflicts is a detrimental mistake. 

Time, however, is healing.  The era of easy salaries for low value employees is quickly coming to an end.  Numerous tech companies and venture capital companies that expanded during the last decade are cutting the dead weight.  The viral TikToks of women spending most of their workday in corporate cafeterias and yoga rooms are disappearing.  The free ride is over, and soon there may not be any HR department’s left to protect the barnacles from being scraped off the ship.      

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

A supertanker carrying 2 million barrels of Saudi crude is set to arrive in Japan early next week after clearing the Strait of Hormuz in late April, in the first shipment of Middle East crude to Japan via the chokepoint since the Iran war began on February 28.

The very large crude carrier (VLCC) Idemitsu Maru, which had departed from Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura port in the Persian Gulf in mid-March, is expected to arrive in Nagoya on May 25, data on MarineTraffic showed. As of early Friday, the supertanker was close to the coasts of Japan.

The cargo is destined for the Aichi refinery of local refiner Idemitsu Kosan, according to a briefing document of Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry cited by Bloomberg.

The imminent shipment will mark the first cargo from the Middle East and the Strait of Hormuz to have made it to Japan since the conflict erupted at the end of February and halted most energy supplies via the strait, which is blocked by Iran and separately blockaded by the U.S. in the Gulf of Oman to prevent Iranian oil exports.

Another Japan-bound tanker, Eneos Endeavor, cleared the Strait of Hormuz last week. The Eneos Endeavor, currently in the Malacca Strait, is expected to arrive in Kiire, Japan, on May 30, per data on MarineTraffic. It departed from Mina Al Ahmadi in Kuwait on February 28, the day on which hostilities began.

Meanwhile, Japan in April imported the lowest volume of crude oil from the Middle East on record dating back to 1979 as the Iran war and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz choked supply from the region.

Japan’s crude imports from the Middle East plummeted by 67.2% in April compared to the same month of 2025, provisional trade data from Japan’s Finance Ministry showed on Thursday.

Since the war in the Middle East began, Japan has scrambled to secure crude oil supply from alternative sources and released stocks from reserves as its dependence on crude from the Middle East passing through Hormuz was more than 90% of all crude imports

One week after President Donald Trump’s China summit with President Xi Jinping, where the two superpower leaders focused on issues ranging from bilateral trade to the Hormuz chokepoint, there appears to be measurable progress on one key ‘MAGA’ issue: the flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals into North America.

Bloomberg reports Friday morning that China imposed new export controls on three chemical compounds shipped to the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, targeting key precursor ingredients used to make fentanyl.

Beijing’s announcement now requires special export licenses for the restricted chemicals and signals growing cooperation between Xi and Trump on narcotics enforcement.

“The Presidents also highlighted the need to build on progress in ending the flow of fentanyl precursors into the United States, as well as increasing Chinese purchases of American agricultural products,” the White House wrote in a readout of the summit last week.

The Trump team continues to maintain a 10% tariff on Chinese imports tied to Beijing’s years of failure to stop the flow of fentanyl precursor exports into North America.

Beijing has dismissed Washington’s accusations over the opioid epidemic that, at one point, was killing 100,000 Americans every year.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated early in Trump’s second term that Beijing may be “deliberately” flooding America with fentanyl in a “reverse” form of the mid-1800s Opium Wars that weakened China’s international standing.

Ahead of Trump’s trip last week, New York Post columnist Miranda Devine spoke with White House Counterterrorism Director Sebastian Gorka about how China weaponized fentanyl to weaken America from within.

“They see our ‘city on a hill’ as the newest version of the British Empire, and it is now payback time for the Opium Wars,” Gorka said. “Many have said that, and I think there is something to that.

Here’s the fentanyl supply chain: Chinese chemical suppliers → Mexican cartels → fentanyl production in Mexico → smuggling into the U.S.

Between 2015 and 2024, the U.S. recorded about 815,100 drug overdose deaths, a death toll larger than many U.S. wars combined. And, in fact, China didn’t even have to fire a shot.

Simultaneously, while the drug epidemic fueled by cartels and China-sourced precursor chemicals ravaged communities and cities nationwide, Democratic-led cities accelerated the crisis by pushing forward with nation-killing progressive policies that enabled open-air drug markets, weakened enforcement, and allowed the public-health emergency to spread. Why?

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

House Democrats unanimously voted this week against legislation to build a new women’s history museum on the National Mall.

The reason was an amendment that limited the exhibits to biological women to the exclusion of transgender figures.

The museum failed 204-216 as House Democrats hoped that they could still secure a museum including transgender figures once they retake power after the midterm elections.

The amendment drafted by Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., states in part, “The Museum shall be dedicated to preserving, researching, and presenting the history, achievements and lived experiences of biological women in the United States.”

It further mandated that the museum would not depict “any biological male as female.”

The vote was notable after the release of the DNC “autopsy” report that flagged how transgender and identity politics contributed to the defeat in the last election.

The report specifically noted the success of Trump’s “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you” ad.

The report noted that “If the Vice President would not change her position — and she did not — then there was nothing which would have worked as a response.”

The fact that this was a unanimous vote among Democratic members is particularly notable and suggests that transgender issues will remain a rallying point for the Democrats.

Democratic members called the exclusion a “poison pill” amendment.

In the meantime, transgender issues continue to occupy the courts with a major decision by the Colorado Supreme Court this week that ordered Colorado’s largest provider of gender-affirming care for young people to resume medical treatments like puberty blockers and hormone therapy.

That puts  Children’s Hospital Colorado in direct conflict with the Department of Health and Human Services, which has moved to block federal support for institutions providing such care.

Justice William Wood III wrote that “We conclude that the actual immediate and irreparable harm to petitioners outweighs the speculative harm CHC may face if the federal government further acts against it.”

In his dissent, Justice Brian Boatright said that this was hardly a speculative matter, but “a decision driven by the direct threat to the viability of the entire hospital.”

Here is the opinion: Boe v. Child.’s Hosp. Colo.