History for January 29 - On-This-Day.com:
Thomas Paine 1737, William McKinley (U.S.) 1843, W.C. Fields 1880
Katherine Ross 1942, Tom Selleck 1945, Oprah Winfrey 1954
1845 - Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" was published for the first time in the "New York Evening Mirror."
1850 - Henry Clay introduced in the Senate a compromise bill on slavery that included the admission of California into the Union as a free state.
1856 - Britain's highest military decoration, the Victoria Cross, was founded by Queen Victoria.
1886 - The first successful petrol-driven motorcar, built by Karl Benz, was patented.
1940 - The W. Atlee Burpee Seed Company displayed the first tetraploid flowers at the New York City Flower Show.
1958 - Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were married.
1958 - Charles Starkweather was captured by police in Wyoming.
1999 - The U.S. Senate delivered subpoenas for Monica Lewinsky and two presidential advisers for private, videotaped testimony in the impeachment trial.
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.