Features
Check Out The World’s Happiest Country
Scandinavian country surges from fourth place in last year’s UN assessment all the way to top spot.
A chilly climate is not keeping Norway from basking in the glow of being named the world’s happiest country on Monday.
The Scandinavian country surged from fourth place in last year’s UN assessment all the way to the top spot, according to the World Happiness Report 2017.
Other top countries on the list included Nordic neighbours Denmark and Iceland, as well as Switzerland.
Among the 20 nations at the bottom of the rankings, five were in the Middle East and North Africa and five were in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Central African Republic, which returned to the surveyed group, came in dead last at 155, with Burundi and Tanzania doing only slightly better.
Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, who is facing a tough re-election battle in September, welcomed the report as “a nice validation on a Monday morning”.
“For many years, Norway has been behind Denmark in this ranking. I’ve made a point of it in many dinner speeches in the Nordics. Now I must find something new!” she said in a message on Facebook in Norwegian.
“But even if we top this statistic now we [must] continue to prioritise mental healthcare, to improve follow-up of children and young people because many are still struggling.”
The report found that “all of the top four countries rank highly on all the main factors found to support happiness: caring, freedom, generosity, honesty, health, income and good governance”.
Rounding out the top 10 were Finland, in fifth place, the Netherlands (6), Canada (7), New Zealand (8) and Australia and Sweden tied for 9th.
All in the top 10 were affluent, developed nations, though the report said that money was not the only ingredient for happiness.
In fact, among the wealthier countries the differences in happiness levels had a lot to do with “differences in mental health, physical health and personal relationships: the biggest single source of misery is mental illness”, the report said.
“Income differences matter more in poorer countries, but even their mental illness is a major source of misery,” it added.
Another major country, China, has made major economic strides in recent years. But its people are not happier than 25 years ago, the report found. China ranked 79th in the study of 155 countries.
The United States slipped to number 14 because of less social support and greater corruption – the very factors explaining why Nordic countries fare better on the happiness scale.
The World Happiness Report was released by the United Nations on the International Day of Happiness. It is the fifth such report since the first was published in 2012.
“Since then we have come a long way. Happiness is increasingly considered the proper measure of social progress and the goal of public policy,” the report said.
Kosi’s emergence on the Afrobeat scene feels both familiar and fresh. Rooted in a childhood shaped by gospel music and choir rehearsals, his sound carries the discipline and soul of his church background. But, there’s also a raw edge, drawn from the streets of Festac, Lagos, that gives his music a grittier, lived-in texture. The blend is strikingly obvious as you’d hear a voice trained in harmony and a message born of hustle.
The artist’s approach to songwriting is intentional, pulling from personal experiences and everyday realities rather than chasing empty trends. It’s this mix of vulnerability and confidence that has quickly earned him attention within Lagos‘s music circles, even though he has just a few releases. Kosi is already making a case for himself as a voice that can stand out in the crowd, honest, grounded, and undeniably Afrobeat.
A man places a Russian national flag on a balcony of a residential building in Lysychansk, eastern Ukraine, which is now territory under the control of the self-described Luhansk People’s Republic
As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its 132nd day, we take a look at the main developments.
Here are the key events so far on Tuesday, July 5.
Fighting
- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his troops have “no alternative” but to “push back and destroy the offensive potential” of Russian forces, as the battle moves from Luhansk to nearby Donetsk.
- Ukrainian forces that retreated from Lysychansk are now holding the line between Bakhmut and Sloviansk, preparing to fend off a further Russian advance, Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said.
- President Vladimir Putin congratulated Russian troops on “liberating” the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk.
- At least 345 children have died in Ukraine as a result of Russia’s invasion and 644 have been wounded, the prosecutor general’s office reported.
Diplomacy
- Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson met Ukraine’s president in Kyiv, with the two parties signing a joint statement on defence and energy cooperation.
- Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov will fly to Hanoi on Tuesday for a two-day visit to Vietnam before heading to a G20 meeting later this week in Indonesia, the Vietnamese government said.
- Zelenskyy thanked the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for supporting a ban on Russian teams and athletes competing in most Olympic sports.
- Putin did not congratulate President Joe Biden on the United States’ Independence Day on July 4 due to “unfriendly” relations, the Kremlin said.
Economy
- Ukraine needs $750bn for a recovery plan, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told a Ukraine Recovery Conference hosted by Switzerland.
- Ukraine is holding talks with Turkey and the United Nations to secure guarantees for grain exports from Ukrainian ports, Zelenskyy said.
- Britain said it would on Tuesday introduce new economic, trade and transport sanctions on Belarus over its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and also sanctioned six Russians it said were spreading disinformation.
- Belarus said it was freezing foreign shareholdings in 190 Belarusian companies, including the software engineering company EPAM Systems and Lukoil Belarus, in response to Western sanctions.
Race plays key factor in a society where 10 percent of population owns more than 80 percent of wealth, World Bank says.
South Africa is the most unequal country in the world, with race playing a determining factor in a society where 10 percent of the population owns more than 80 percent of the wealth, a World Bank report has said.
“South Africa… is the most unequal country in the world, ranking first among 164 countries,” the Washington-based institution said Wednesday in a report, Inequality in Southern Africa.
Almost three decades after the end of apartheid, “race remains a key driver of high inequality in South Africa, due to its impact on education and the labor market,” it said.
When race is considered as a factor in income disparities, the report added, “its contribution to income inequality amounts to 41 percent, while contribution of education is reduced to 30 percent.
“The legacy of colonialism and apartheid, rooted in racial and spatial segregation, continues to reinforce inequality.”
The country’s neighbours that make up the rest of the Southern African Customs Union – Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho and Namibia – established in 1910, all finish higher on the list of the most unequal countries in the world.
In the region, women earn on average 30 percent less than men with the same level of education with the pay gap as wide as 38 percent in Namibia and South Africa.
The uneven distribution of agricultural land is also a factor driving inequality, especially in rural areas.
In Namibia, 70 percent of the 39.7 million hectares (98.1 million acres) of commercial agricultural land “still belong to Namibians of European descent”, the World Bank said.
The report was produced before the COVID-19 pandemic and its authors used the Gini coefficient – an indicator of income inequality – to rank countries.
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