News you can use

Want to live longer? Here's one practical thing you can do: Go out and win a Nobel Prize. Sounds too simple, we know, but let's be clear, because we don't want any finger-pointing from people who try this advice and die anyway: A nomination for a Nobel won't do any good; in fact, it could lead to an earlier demise. You have to actually win the prize to gain some longevity.

But don't thank us. Credit goes to British researchers at Warwick University. They studied 524 men -- 135 winners and 389 nominees -- who competed for the physics and chemistry prizes between 1901 and 1950 -- the cut-off point because the full list of nominees are kept secret for 50 years, according to Agence France-Presse. Nobel winners lived nearly two years longer -- to age 77.2 -- than those who were merely nominated, the study found, suggesting -- and this is the news -- that social status confers "health-giving magic," as the researchers put it, making it sound like something sold on TV at 3 a.m.

Happy New Year from Canada

More stuff to cheer you up: Your chances of dying in January are better than in any other month, even with a Nobel Prize. Dr. Frank Trovato, a demographer at the University of Alberta, attributes January's deserved reputation as a killer to harsh weather, the flu and people unconsciously postponing death until after Christmas or --The Morning File research team nominee -- people keeling over from the effects of intense family gatherings during the holidays. An average of 621 Canadians die every day. But in January, it jumps to 703 a day, the National Post reported. December is a close second. Don't think you can escape a highly likely January death by being a non-Canadian. This pattern holds for the United States, too.

Don't they dislike each other?

Here's another shocker from England: Britain and France talked about a "union" in the 1950s, according to declassified papers obtained by the BBC. On Sept. 10, 1956, French Prime Minister Guy Mollet went to London to discuss a merger with British P.M. Anthony Eden, including the possibility of the queen becoming the French head of state. It sounds like a joke today. But the two countries were allies in two world wars, and back then, France was coping with an escalating Suez crisis and a mess of an economy, and saw Britain as a social and economic role model.

When anglophile Mollet's request went nowhere, he suggested that France be allowed to join the British commonwealth. That idea was supposedly greeted more warmly, but it, too, was rejected. A year later, France signed the Treaty of Rome with Germany and the other founding nations of the European common market. It's unclear whether there were any proposals for a name of the new union. Le United Kingdom? Les Miserables? Disneyland?

What about that merger with France?

While Americans are busy pursuing happiness on their own, the British are looking for government help. Prime Minister Tony Blair has set up a team, dubbed the "Department of Happiness," to study how to make people happier, The Christian Science Monitor reports. Four in five Britons said government's prime objective should be the "greatest happiness" not the "greatest wealth." Surveys consistently show that the British are less happy than they were 50 years ago, even though incomes have tripled since then. The proportion of people saying they are "very happy" has fallen from 52 percent in 1957 to 36 percent today. (Has anyone else noticed that the downturn in the British mood coincided with that rejection of the merger with France?)

Can money buy happiness? Up to a point. A Pew Research poll done in the United States in 2005 notes that 50 percent of families with incomes of $150,000 or more say they're "very happy." By comparison, only 23 percent of families making $20,000 or less report being "very happy." But there is a diminishing return the higher the income. Britain's Happiness Team says more people are spending more time working and commuting -- activities that make money but don't necessarily give pleasure. This is particularly true in Britain -- which has the longest working week of any European Union country and some of the worst commuter conditions. We wonder if the British blame it all on UKDOT.

The ranked nations

According to happiness rankings by the United Nations -- this is not a joke -- the 10 most cheerful nations are Norway, Iceland, Australia, Ireland, Sweden, Canada, Japan, the United States, Switzerland and the Netherlands. You'll notice the list is strangely loaded with heavily suicidal, cold-weather nations, where January is just one of many lethal months. Europe's richest countries languish in comparison -- France (16), Britain (18) and Germany (21). Known formally as the Human Development Index (HDI) of the United Nations, the rankings take into account three indicators: lifespan, educational attainment and adjusted real income, but not Super Bowl trophies.