Earlier this week, we told a fascinating story about an unprecedented, multi-year smuggling ring involving Turkey, Iran, and Dubai (as well as China, Russia and countless other nations) which saw corruption reaching to the very top of the political and financial establishment: from president Erdogan in Turkey, to one of Turkey's richest people, Iran-born Riza Sarraf, to Sheikh Sultan Bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, the son of the ruler of Abu Dhabi and one of the world's richest people. The smuggled object in question was gold, billions of dollars worth of gold.

ISIL chief Al-Baghdadi warns Israel: “We did not forget Palestine.” The leader of the Islamic Caliphate in Iraq and Syria has made a new audio announcement, warning the “crusaders” of the West, telling them to keep away from his turf.

With the topic of global (im)migration getting increasingly more prominence as we get ever closer to the presidential elections, not to mention Europe's ongoing plight with the biggest refugee crisis since World War II, here is a handful of factual, and bias-free, charts summarizing the key aspects of global human mobility.

First, here is a summary tracker of global people flows since the start of the century. The countries in gray are sources of net people outflows, while those in blue have seen cumulative immigration over the past 15 years.

Authored by Eric Peters (h/t The Burning Platform),

When most people can’t afford to buy things outright, the cost of money – interest – becomes even more important than the cost of the things themselves.

Over the past five weeks, Turkey’s role in facilitating the trafficking of illicit Islamic State crude has been exposed for the world to see. Ankara’s move to shoot down a Russian Su-24 near the Syrian border prompted a media blitz from Moscow, which has variously accused the Erdogan government of being complicit in a business that nets Bakr al-Baghdadi between $500 million and $1 billion per year in revenue.