1.   His three-year-old organization issues an annual survey which ranks member countries by degree of corruption.

2.   That index ranks countries based on life expectancy, educational attainment and standard of living.

3.   These four countries are not now teetering on the brink of financial disaster, say financial analysts and economists who rank countries worldwide.

4.   Countries are ranked according to their openness, government, finance, infrastructure, technology, management, labor and institutions.

5.   Researchers ranked the countries based on road fatalities, accidents, the number of registered vehicles and drivers, speeding citations and drunk driving arrests, it said.

6.   The country was ranked second five years ago.

7.   The HDI ranks countries by a combination of factors such as life- expectancy and child mortality.

8.   The new system, which the bank still is refining, ranked countries such as oil-rich Trinidad and Tobago and Chile as less wealthy than previous indicators.

9.   The West African country is ranked by the United Nations as the second least developed country in the world.

10.   While the report did not rank the countries based on the degree to which they limit freedom, the excesses attributed to the Iraqi government stood out.