I knew Colombia was one of the top flower exporters in the world, but a couple of days ago with all the flowers going around for St. Valentin's day I wondered who was the top exporter overall. Not surprisingly, it's the Netherlands with a whooping ~40% market share of the world exports.

For many years now, Google News has been my main source for information because the algorithm stacks and orders headlines quite nicely from multiple news sources. Since Trump was inaugurated, I had the subjective impression that his name is overtaking most of the headlines (He is newsworthy, of course, but still). I was making a quick n-grams check on the headline anchors; his name is indeed taking many of the headline spots.

Data from the World Bank shows that the percentage of arable land per person has been steadily decreasing since the 1960s.

The Global Peace Index (GPI) is an attempt to measure the relative peacefulness of the countries around the world. The latest publication considers Syria, South Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan as the least peaceful places in the world. On the other hand, Iceland, Denmark, Austria, New Zealand, and Portugal are considered the most peaceful.

A year ago I published the 2015 update on the Corruption Perceptions Index, and the data for 2016 is already available at the Transparency International (transparency.org) website. As a recap, this organization fights for a a world in which government, business, civil society, and the daily lives of people are free of corruption. This year, the least corrupt countries on the list are New Zealand and Finland, and the most corrupt are Somalia and South Sudan.

In Europe, the trend is similar to last year: the most northern and western countries are least corrupt, and vice versa.

In South America, Venezuela is again this year at the bottom of the list.

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