Canada the 7th most giving country

The UAE has been voted one of the ten most generous countries in the world in the latest global study that tracks giving trends. The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) has recently polled individuals living in 139 countries and asked them if they had helped a stranger, donated money or volunteered their time to an organisation. The UAE emerged as the ninth most giving country in the World Giving Index for 2017, with an overall score of 71, beating a number of wealthy nations including Germany, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Singapore and Hong Kong.

The “most generous” crown went to Myanmar, followed by Indonesia, Kenya, New Zealand and United States in the top five. Other countries ahead of the UAE are Australia, occupying the sixth spot, Canada (7th) and Ireland in the eighth position.

The UAE’s peers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region didn’t make it to the top 30, with Kuwait taking the 31st position and  Saudi Arabia in the 48th spot. Australia has fallen out of the top five most generous countries for the first time – falling three places to sixth, behind Myanmar, Indonesia, Kenya, New Zealand and the USA, according to the latest global giving index.

The countries included in the study were also ranked separately according to three main categories. The UAE earned the most votes for helping a stranger, ranking 11th globally.

In terms of donating money, the UAE was ranked the 17 most generous, but it didn’t score as good in terms of volunteering time to an organization, taking only the 35th position in the said category.

“Syria government behind sarin gas attack,” UN

United Nations war crimes investigators said that they had evidence that Syrian government forces were behind the chemical attack that killed dozens of people in Khan Sheikhun in April.

In the first UN report to officially blame Damascus, the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Syria said it had gathered an “extensive body of information” showing the Syrian airforce was behind the horrific sarin gas attack on April 4.

“All evidence available leads the Commission to conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe Syrian forces dropped an aerial bomb dispersing sarin in Khan Sheikhun,” the report said.

At least 83 persons, a third of them children, were killed and nearly 300 wounded in the attack on Khan Sheikhun, a town in the opposition-held northern province of Idlib, it said. Other sources have given a death toll of at least 87. Syria’s government has denied involvement and claims it no longer possesses chemical weapons after a 2013 agreement under which it pledged to surrender its chemical arsenal.

A fact-finding mission by the UN’s chemical watchdog, the OPCW, concluded earlier this year that sarin gas was used in the attack, but did not assign blame