Where is the world’s happiest place? For years we have been told it is the dark, cold, but seriously egalitarian Scandinavia – with Denmark heading the majority of lists of our most contented countries. But suddenly there is a new leader in the satisfaction stakes: Panama.

A poll by Gallup and Healthways Global reports that the Central American country now has the most positive population, after 133,000 people from 135 countries were asked to rate their wellbeing in five categories: purpose, social, financial, community and physical.

The Central American country topped four of the categories, with neighbour Costa Rica closely following as the second happiest country. Denmark, for once, came a mournful third. So what makes people in Panama so cheery?

Cultural attache for Panama, Laura Montenegro, thinks it is down to the fact the country has a thriving economy and has maintained its traditional values. “Family bonds are very strong here, and on Sundays everyone still gets together,” she says. “So even when people are struggling they don’t feel alone. We have a very beautiful landscape too and even in Panama city you never feel too far from nature. We have a booming economy and financial stability. When the global financial crisis hit, Panama came out of  it even better than before, because our banks had been very cautious.”

But what of the Danes? We have heard much about their society’s strengths – from state-subsidised childcare to having one of the smallest wealth gaps in the world. Yet despite this, younger Danes are less likely than their older countrymen to report themselves as “thriving”.

Guardian journalist and author of How to be Danish Patrick Kingsley thinks an increased sense of individuality among the young might be why the country is losing its happy crown.

“The Danes aren’t exactly all grinning from ear to ear ... but they’re more contented than most. When Danes leave home in the morning, they don’t see many people who are markedly better off than themselves – and this breeds a sense of social solidarity, and by extension, contentedness.

“But the reason why so many Danish brands – from The Killing to Noma to the architect Bjarke Ingels – have recently made it big outside Denmark is because a younger generation of Danes are doing things differently. Perhaps this increased individuality, coupled with uncertainty about the future of Denmark’s welfare state, has threatened the traditional Danish formula for contentedness.”

Of course, they are still ahead of glum Great Britain, which is 76th on the list – mostly because we don’t like our jobs. “Though Britons are strong in financial wellbeing, they are much weaker in purpose wellbeing, suggesting that many workers do not enjoy what they do each day,” the report says.

But the situation is not hopeless. Now the UK’s economy is improving, employers might be more inclined to ensure staff are happy at work. Phew!

An amateur video of a man being arrested while drinking an iced tea in a North Carolina parking lot kicked up a controversy after it went viral online, notching over a million views.

Posted to YouTube on April 29, the video shows Christopher Beatty, who also goes by his hip-hop moniker, Xstrav (short for Xtravagant), drinking an Arizona Iced Tea with his friend Tino Brown in the parking lot of a Fayetteville liquor store. They are approached by a man in plain clothes who says he is a police officer but does not produce a badge.

Later identified by the Fayetteville Observer as Cumberland County Alcoholic Beverage Control Law Enforcement officer Rick Libero, the man then asks Beatty if his iced tea contains alcohol. Beatty, who is black, tells him it does not, and the officer, who is white, tells Beatty to give him the can. Beatty refuses, and the officer tells him: "Leave the property. You have five seconds to leave."

When Beatty refuses to leave (in the video's description, Brown explains the two men were about to enter the liquor store to make a purchase), the officer pushes Beatty against the car and tells him to put his hands behind his back. When Beatty resists being handcuffed, the officer tackles him and handcuffs him on the parking lot's blacktop.

A second video, also with over a million views, shows Beatty being placed in the back seat of a Fayetteville Police car.

"The way Mr. Beatty carried the beverage appeared suspicious," Libero said, according to court records, the Observer notes.

Although the Cumberland County Alcoholic Beverage Control did not return a request for comment, the agency told local CBS affiliate WBWT-TV that Beatty is charged with trespassing, resisting arrest and delaying and obstructing a law enforcement officer.

Nuclear power in the UK has turned out much safer than environmentalists worried it would be.

Friends of the Earth, which feared the threat of a catastrophic Chernobyl-style meltdown in the UK, is now less concerned. Fear of nuclear armageddon was a driving force for the green movement in the UK – Greenpeace has its name for a reason.

But Friends of the Earth have revealed that their old ideological opposition to nuclear has crumbled, to be replaced by a new pragmatic opposition based on cost and build time.

In the old days nuclear was fought because of the health threat; now it’s opposed because it’s the wrong option in an energy system designed to tackle climate change.

The group denies that its position has shifted – but to me this looks a huge and significant shift – and especially controversial if you work for the UK nuclear industry and have been told for decades that your operations are a clear and present danger to the public.

The new position was expressed in an interview with Friends of the Earth’s campaigns director Craig Bennett on Radio 4’s Today Programme on Wednesday.

When the presenter asked him to explain the group’s opposition to nuclear power stations he got this reply: “The biggest risk of nuclear power is that it takes far too long to build, it’s far too costly, and distorts the national grid by creating an old model of centralised power generation.”

I sat up in bed. Friends of the Earth says the biggest risks of nuclear are that it’s too slow to build; it’s too dear, and would you believe it… it even distorts the grid!

The presenter Justin Rowlatt interrupted, sounding surprised: “You’re not worried about the risks from radiation?”

Bennett replied:

Of course, there are real concerns about radiation, particularly around nuclear waste… but I think it is important how this debate has shifted down the years.

The real concern now is how we get on fast with de-carbonising our electricity supply. It’s very clear that nuclear can’t deliver big changes fast.

That’s a huge risk if we’re trying to tackle climate change. With renewable technologies and with energy efficiency we could be making a difference within three or four years.

So, presented with a free hit against the risk of a nuclear accident, Friends of the Earth’s green warrior swiped at build-time, cost and grid disruption. Further prompted on safety he swiftly shifted to the intractable problem of waste, and did not mention accidents at all.

Does that mean if nuclear stations were cheap and quick to build and we could bury the waste somewhere, nuclear would become respectable? Well, the group told me later they were just as concerned about accidents as ever – but the cat was out of the green bag.

Friends of the Earth’s shift was signalled in a little-reported policy paper last year which included an independent assessment that coal and maybe even gas generation presented more health risks than nuclear. I have not heard the shift so strikingly articulated before this week.

The group’s phones started ringing after I broadcast a news item on their policy shift on Wednesday morning.

The matter is highly delicate: the group is locked in an internal battle: some members want it to accept nuclear’s role in the UK’s low-carbon energy mix, whilst others are as passionately anti-nuclear as in the old days of the cold war and nuclear armageddon.

Andy Atkins, its director, said on its website: “Friends of the Earth is certainly not now pro-nuclear, we have not changed our position.”

Now, I have been tracking the environment movement for 25 years, but to confirm my memory on Friends of the Earth’s historic position I phoned its former director, Tony Juniper. He told me: “In the UK the (nuclear) safety record has been pretty good, so the safety dimension has diminished - and the emphasis in Friends of the Earth has changed.”

He said in the early days of the green movement, campaigners opposed the nexus of civilian and military nuclear, but the cold war ended and old accidents at Dounreay in 1977 and Windscale in 1957 receded into memory.

Bennett later told me:

Perhaps in the past our opposition to nuclear was gut instinct.

Our position has now been “refreshed”. We don’t want to close down the UK nuclear industry right away – that would create far too many problems for energy supply over coming decades. But we still very much oppose nuclear new-build. The biggest issue is cost.

Bennett told me Friends of the Earth had always deployed a suite of arguments against nuclear power, with the emphasis shifting over time.

He was supported by Tom Burke, another former head of Friends of the Earth, who remains strongly anti-nuclear. He says the group’s fundamental opposition to nuclear through the decades has not changed - he says the main thrust of Friends of the Earth’s attack against the industry has fluctuated as different priorities emerged.

Other environmentalists, though, have been happy to credit the UK nuclear industry with its safety record – even in some cases to reluctantly embrace the previously hated industry as an ally in the fight against climate change.

Stephen Tindale, former Friends of the Earth campaigner and former head of Greenpeace, is a nuclear convert. He told me Friends of the Earth’s position had inarguably changed:

Friends of the Earth campaigned to get existing nuclear stations closed down, on safety grounds, as well as opposing new nuclear stations. So the current Friends of the Earth line is a change from the past. And the reason for opposing new nuclear is now cost rather than safety.

A change of emphasis, which Tony Juniper accepts has happened, is a change in the campaign. Refreshing a campaign, to use Craig’s word, is a change in the campaign - no point in “refreshing” but leaving it just the same. Friends of the Earth is not pro-nuclear now, but it is less strongly anti-nuclear and on different grounds.

I’m still nuke agnostic but for years I have considered nuclear economics more controversial than nuclear safety in the UK, so I’m happy to see the debate move to that ground. Friends of the Earth’s opposition is now less ideological and more functional and that marks a maturing of the green movement which should be celebrated by Friends of the Earth, not denied.

I suggest a new rallying cry: “No nuclear new-build – it distorts the National Grid!”