News - odds and ends

Sri Lanka has been ranked 93 among 178 countries in the international ranking of happiness. That puts the country far ahead of many of her South Asian neighbours namely India (125), Pakistan (166) Nepal (119) and Bangladesh (104). Denmark tops the list while the Burundi in Africa comes in last. The World Map of Happiness was created by Adrian White, an analytical social psychologist at the University of Leicester in England who based his study on data from 178 countries and 100 global studies from the likes of the World Health Organisation, other UN organsiations as well as several other institutions. A nation’s level of happiness was most closely associated with health levels (Sri Lanka Life Expectancy 74), followed by wealth (Sri Lanka GDP Per Capita 4.3) and provision of education, the study found.

Not to his liking

When the first batch of Sri Lankan employees from Lebanon arrived here, Labour Minister Athauda Seneviratne was at hand to receive them. While the minister was giving interviews to journalists who had gathered there stating that there was no real threat to the lives of the Sri Lankan workers, one of the returnees who had been living there for nine years was loudly saying that more than 15 Sri Lankans had already died in the fighting. On hearing this, the minister went over to the man and gave him an earful and asked him not to cause panic.

Guess what the man was saying rang too true for the minister’s liking.

There was another man who got an earful as well. It was the UNP Anuradhapura district MP W.B. Ekanayake who was been sworn in as a Deputy Minister on Friday afternoon.

The news reached his UNP colleagues only much after the event and not many of them were happy about it. So when he came to the bank at the Parliament complex after the swearing-in ceremony, he bumped into a lady MP from Ratnapura who gave him an earful for having ditched the UNP. The man made a quick exit fearing more confrontations.