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Finland Tops World Happiness Report, India's Ranking Is 126

HELSINKI, March 20: Finland has been named the happiest country in the world in the annual World Happiness Report. This is the sixth consecutive year that they have won the coveted prize due to high scores in factors the report uses to measure happiness: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and low corruption.

The report was released on Monday, which is celebrated as International Day of Happiness.

India is ranked 125 based on the various parametres of happiness.

India, one of the fast growing economies, was placed at number 126 in the report, below Nepal, China, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

The World Happiness Report is a publication of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and is based on global survey data from people in more than 150 countries

While Ukraine's ranking improved from 98 to 92 this year, despite the Russian invasion, its overall score fell from 5.084 to 5.071, on a scale of zero to 10.

Professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, an editor of the report, said there had been an "extraordinary rise in fellow feeling across Ukraine" despite what the report called a "magnitude of suffering and damage in Ukraine" since the 2022 invasion.

Last year "benevolence grew sharply in Ukraine but fell in Russia," the report found, referring to acts like helping strangers or making donations.

The report also cited a "much stronger sense of common purpose, benevolence and trust in Ukrainian leadership" than after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

Northern Europe once again dominated the top spots -- with Denmark in second place followed by Iceland.

Israel occupied fourth position, up five spots from last year.

While the same countries typically top the list each year, Baltic countries are rising rapidly towards Western European levels, the authors said.

Knocking France off the 20th spot, Lithuania became the only new country in the top 20 with Estonia in at number 31, up from 66 in 2017.

War-scarred Afghanistan, which has occupied the bottom spot on the table since 2020, saw its humanitarian crisis deepen since the Taliban government took power in 2021 following the US-led military pullout.

The World Happiness Report, first published in 2012, is based on people's own assessment of their happiness, as well as economic and social data.

The report considers six key factors: social support, income, health, freedom, generosity, and absence of corruption.

It assigns a happiness score based on an average of data over a three-year period.

DLF's KP Singh Finds Love At The Age Of 91

NEW DELHI, Feb 26: Kushal Pal Singh, the chairman emeritus of real estate group DLF, has found love again. The 91-year-old opened up about finding a partner again in life, after the death of his wife in 2018, in an interview to CNBC-TV18.

Singh also talked about his humble beginnings, his days as sportsperson and what led him to enter the manufacturing business during his early days. Called a visionary developer, Singh has been among the most influential names in India of recent decades as the man who built "boom city" Gurugram.

Singh told CNBC-TV18 that he was very lonely for a year or two. "I was very lucky that I met a very charming person who is my partner now. Her name is Sheena. She's one of the best persons in my life, I've met now. She's energetic. She keeps me on my toes. And she has a wonderful set of friends all over the world," he said in the interview.

Singh said it was Sheena who told him not to give up in life, just months before his wife died.

The real estate tycoon added he had an amazing married life and described his wife as his friend. "My wife was not only my partner but also a friend. Our compatibility was good. We tried our best, but nothing could be done. You land in a situation of a lonely man," said Singh.

His wife died in 2018 due to cancer, after which Singh turned away from active management duties. ''if you lose a partner of 65 years, you can't be the same. You're thinking differently. So I'm trying to restructure myself,'' he told the outlet.

Singh added that for a company to work, it is important to be positive and active.

According to Forbes, Singh has a net worth of $8.81 billion. The property baron left an army posting in 1961 to join DLF, a company started by his father-in-law in 1946.

He later built DLF City in Gurgaon, his showpiece township on the outskirts of Delhi, by acquiring land from farmers. The firm is now run by his son Rajiv as chairman.

Singh stepped down as chairman after more than five decades in that position, in June 2020.

Seeking 'Healthy' Debate Of Ideas, Elon Musk Nears Twitter Deal Finish Line

NEW YORK, Oct 27: Closing in on his Twitter megadeal, Elon Musk said Thursday his goal is to enable "healthy" debate of ideas and counter the tendency of social media to splinter into partisan "echo chambers."

The billionaire entrepreneur pursued the deal "because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence," Musk tweeted on the eve of a court-imposed deadline to finalize the $44 billion purchase.

The Tesla boss's on-again, off-again acquisition of the influential website appeared to be entering its final phase after Delaware Judge Kathaleen McCormick paused litigation on October 6 on a Twitter suit against Musk after he previously walked away from the deal.

Since then Musk has reportedly been lining up financing.

While there is always the chance of a last-minute curveball, more signs pointed to the deal's likely closure.

The New York Stock Exchange posted a pending order to suspend trading in Twitter before Friday's session.

Shares of Twitter -- which vaulted higher after McCormick's October 6 move -- climbed 1.2 percent to $53.97 by 1500 GMT Thursday, not far below the $54.20 purchase price in Musk's deal.

"We expect Musk and Twitter to officially close the deal by Friday morning with Cinderella finally getting the glass slipper that fits," said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.

"We also believe the overhang on Tesla is now removed with Musk having likely sold stock this week to fund the rest of the Twitter deal."

"I think on Friday, we'll get an announcement that says that Elon Musk has purchased Twitter," University of California, said Berkeley law professor Adam Badawi.

But if the buyout fails to close by the end of the business day, the judge will likely "bring the hammer down" and head quickly to trial, Badawi added.

Musk originally agreed to the Twitter acquisition in April, but soon pulled back, saying in July he was canceling the contract because he was misled by Twitter over the number of fake "bot" accounts -- allegations rejected by the company.

Twitter in turn sought to prove Musk, who also heads aerospace firm SpaceX, was contriving excuses to walk away simply because he changed his mind.

A trial on Twitter's suit was scheduled for mid-October, but McCormick's order gave the parties until 5:00 pm on October 28, 2022 to close the transaction.

Fresh questions about the combination surfaced last week following reports Musk planned deep staff cuts at Twitter and that US President Joe Biden's administration was weighing a national security review.

But on Wednesday, Musk changed his Twitter profile to "Chief Twit" and posted a video of himself walking into the company's California headquarters carrying a sink.

The South African-born serial entrepreneur cuts a polarizing figure in American business, with supporters cheering his disruptive spirit and execution prowess at Tesla and detractors criticizing him as a megalomaniac with a potentially dangerous tendency to wade into geopolitical topics in which he lacks expertise, such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

In his latest statement Thursday, Musk said much of the public speculation about his intentions in the deal had been "wrong" as he insisted his goals were noble.

In pursuing Twitter, "I didn't do it because it would be easy. I didn't do it to make more money," Musk said.

"I did so with humility, recognizing that failure in pursuing this goal, despite our best efforts, is a very real possibility."

NASA Discovers Super-Earth That May Support Life

WASHINGTON, Aug 8: Scientists have discovered a Super-Earth that is four times the mass of our planet and takes just 10.8 days to complete a whole year.

According to the American space agency NASA, the exoplanet, called Ross 508 b, was discovered using a new infrared monitoring technique. It is located 37 light-years from us. The Super-Earth “skims in and out of its star's habitable zone”. And it revolves around a red dwarf star called Ross 508, just like our Earth orbits the Sun.

According to Space.com, the proximity of this Super-Earth to our planet means that it is ripe for atmospheric investigation which could help researchers determine whether life could exist around low-mass stars.

Astronomers in Japan had first spotted the Super-Earth earlier this year in May. The findings were a part of the study titled “A Super-Earth Orbiting Near the Inner Edge of the Habitable Zone around the M4.5-dwarf Ross 508”.

As per the research, the exoplanet orbits the star at a distance that offers temperatures conducive to the formation of water on the surface of the planet. This indicates that Ross 508 b is the habitable zone of the star.

Researchers spotted the planet near a dim star using the Subaru Telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) in Hawaii. As the star is smaller in size than the Sun, Ross 508 b orbits it every 10.8 days. Moreover, Ross 508 is significantly dim, thus, the Super Earth experiences 1.4 times the solar radiation that Earth witnesses.

According to the study, the Ross 508 is around 18% of the mass of the Sun which makes it the faintest and smallest star with an orbiting world.

The star was discovered using the radial velocity method. This technique used for locating exoplanets is more effective in finding giant worlds like gaseous planets that orbit at a distance that is too hot for liquid water.

 

 



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