A Team of Hamas ‘Warriors’ Was Killed This Week. The Reason Has Israelis Worried. | TheBlaze.com:
“There were 11 resistance men inside. Three of them escaped in the first hour after the accident,” he said, using the “resistance” euphemism frequently invoked to describe what westerners would view as terrorism.
The Times of Israel noted that Hamas tried to “keep a lid on the disaster” by preventing local media from initially reporting on the incident and by at first accusing Israel of intentionally flooding the tunnel.
The Israeli military checked into the residents’ reports of overnight banging noises but determined that there were no underground tunnels in that area, Channel 10 reported.
During the 2014 fighting with Israel, Hamas sent heavily-armed fighters into Israel via attack tunnels."
Transparency International released its 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index, ranking the world’s countries by levels of corruption, in January 2016. Why a “perceptions” index? According to the institute, it’s the best way:
“Corruption generally comprises illegal activities, which are deliberately hidden and only come to light through scandals, investigations or prosecutions. There is no meaningful way to assess absolute levels of corruption in countries or territories on the basis of hard empirical data. Possible attempts to do so, such as by comparing bribes reported, the number of prosecutions brought or studying court cases directly linked to corruption, cannot be taken as definitive indicators of corruption levels. Instead, they show how effective prosecutors, the courts or the media are in investigating and exposing corruption. Capturing perceptions of corruption of those in a position to offer assessments of public sector corruption is the most reliable method of comparing relative corruption levels across countries.”
With that in mind, here’s the map of the perception of corruption globally:
The top ten, least-corrupt countries are the following:
- Denmark
- Finland
- Sweden
- New Zealand
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Switzerland
- Singapore
- Canada
- Germany, Luxembourg, United Kingdom (3-way tie)
Since you’re probably curious, the United States ranks sixteenth in the world for the lowest perceived levels of corruption.