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The world, as you've no doubt noticed, has its problems. But some folks seem to be dealing with them pretty well, according to poll results released Wednesday. Countries in Latin America dominated the top of Gallup's "positive experience index," while Syria set an all-time low.

"At least seven in 10 adults worldwide report experiencing lots of enjoyment, laughing or smiling a lot, feeling well-rested, and being treated with respect," Gallup reports, "while a slight majority (51 percent) report that they learned or did something interesting the day before."

Paraguay sat atop the list for the third year in a row, with 87 percent of people who participated in the poll saying they felt positive emotions about their lives. Denmark was the highest-rated nation outside of Latin America, in eighth place.

The U.S. was in 19th place, tied with several other countries such as Argentina and the Netherlands.

By contrast, Syria's results reflect the toll of a brutally destructive civil war. The country was more than 15 points lower than any other nation in the poll.

"Fewer than one in three Syrians report feeling well-rested (31 percent), feeling enjoyment (31 percent), or learning or doing something interesting (25 percent) the day before," Gallup says.

Globally, the poll found slightly more people had good things to say about their lives in 2013 than in the previous seven years.

Nigerians are asking themselves how far their government should go to bring almost 300 abducted schoolgirls back to their families.

The militants of Boko Haram, the Islamist extremist group that claimed responsibility for the kidnapping last month, have offered to swap the girls for some prisoners held by the government.

That offer was immediately rejected by the Nigerian government, but relatives of the girls say that firepower alone wont save them. They want the government to reconsider.

The hashtag "Bring back our girls" has more than 4 million tweets. At a daily vigil in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, activists and relatives have added two important words to their chant: "and alive."

After the rally, Peter Iliya, a local pharmacist says that two of his nieces were abducted, driven off by militants into the forest. One niece, named Mundi, age 18, managed to escape off the truck.

"The vehicle was moving and it passed under a fairly big tree," Iliya says. "She clung onto the branch and she hung there until the vehicle zoomed off and she jumped down."

She hung in the tree while trucks full of her classmates passed beneath her. Then she jumped down and walked back through the dark forest to her village. But Iliya's other niece was not so bold or so lucky. She disappeared with the others.

The government says it has dispatched 20,000 soldiers to rescue the girls. Iliya has very mixed feelings about that firepower.

"Because I will tell you, categorically, that no military action will bring back these girls," he says. "If you go on a military action, you are losing all the girls, absolutely. These people, they are erratic people. They are drug addicts. They should be handled with the utmost caution. And I think if I am to say, if I were to advise the government, negotiation is the way out."

He wants the government to negotiate. The U.S. offered to send hostage negotiators, but Nigeria refused.

Aliyu Gebi, an elected member of parliament, says it's because of the word "terrorist."

"Government will not negotiate with terrorists," Gebi says. "It is enshrined in the anti-terrorist act, just like your government will not negotiate with terrorists! And if you're branded a terrorist, tough luck for you. Nobody will negotiate well with you!"

Gebi represents Bauchi state, in northeast Nigeria. Like Borno state, home of the abducted girls, Bauchi is also frequently attacked by Boko Haram.

Boko Haram's purported leader, Abubakar Shekau, has said in a Youtube video that he would trade the girls for prisoners held by the government.

Chinedu Nwagu, a Nigerian security analyst who now works in police reform, is skeptical.

"Give us back your people we'll give you your girls — the state could weigh the cost of that. After that, then what next?" Nwagu says. "Negotiation is not a solution. It's not a long-term, permanent fix to the problem."

But Nwagu says in this particular case, the Nigerian army doesn't have the capacity to make a surgical strike and rescue the girls alive. He says the prisoners that Boko Haram wants to trade the girls for are not even clearly militants. They were rounded up in brutal and arbitrary military operations — mass sweeps highly criticized by human rights groups.

Also not clear is whether Nigeria's holding onto those so-called militants is preventing war or fueling it.

"How long can we hold out like this?" Nwagu says. "What are we willing to concede in this situation? And if we don't concede anything, how much damage does that do to our psyche and our well-being as a people.

Government officials have told NPR that some inside government are trying to open a dialogue.

Chinedu says he hasn't heard about any secret talks, and he doesn't want to know if there are. He just wants to hear one day soon that some prisoners have been released, and some girls have been returned to their families, alive.

If you're drinking a cup of coffee right now, treasure it. The global supply of coffee beans may soon shrink because of problems in coffee-growing areas of Brazil and Central America.

With supply threatened and demand strong, prices are taking flight. Wholesale coffee prices are up more than 60 percent since January — from $1.25 per pound of bulk Coffea arabica beans to $1.85 this week.

The biggest market-moving force is a drought in Brazil, the world's biggest coffee producer.

Coffee Week

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What some called the Super Tuesday of the 2014 mid-term election cycle, with six states holding nominating contests, began with a big win for the Republican establishment.

In Kentucky, Sen. Mitch McConnell's smack down of Tea Party-backed businessman Matt Bevin in the GOP primary was an emphatic victory for the five-term senator who made this bold prediction about Tea Party-backed Senate challengers earlier this year: "We're going to crush them everywhere."

In defeating Bevin 60 percent to 36 percent, McConnell's clear-cut win suggested he might have a unified Republican party with him in his race against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes who, as expected, also won her primary.

Recent polls have placed McConnell and Grimes in a statistical tie in a contest likely to be the most expensive Senate race in the 2014 election cycle. As this was being written, McConnell had a nearly 30-percentage point lead on Bevin. That suggested the Senate's Republican leader might not have a mostly unified party behind him come November.

McConnell's victory was, to some extent, a kind of delayed revenge for the Senate minority leader. In 2010, his preferred candidate for an open Senate seat lost to Sen. Rand Paul, the Tea Party favorite that year. Four years later, not only did McConnell beat aTea Party-backed challenger, he did it with Paul's support.

Polls in Georgia, like in Kentucky, closed at 7 pm but results weren't yet available in a race there that pit several Republicans against each other for the nomination to an open Senate seat. The Republicans would be facing Democratic primary winner Michelle Nunn, the daughter of a popular former senator from the state.

As in Kentucky, the Republican race found establishment Republicans, confronting candidates with Tea Party backing.

David Perdue, the former CEO of Dollar General and cousin of former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, and Rep. Jack Kingston, chair of a House Appropriations subcommittee represented the establishment. Going into primary day, the likeliest outcome seemed that they would face off against each other in a July runoff as the two top vote getters.

The GOP's Tea Party wing was represented by three candidates: Rep. Paul Broun, who attracted national attention for his infamous comment that evolution and the Big Bang were "lies straight from the pit of hell;" Rep. Phil Gingrey, a medical doctor, and Karen Handel, the former senior vice president for public policy at Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

The four other states with primaries were Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Idaho and Oregon.

Pennsylvania's primary to decide the Democratic nominee for governor resulted with businessman Tom Wolf winning going away as expected. At the time of this writing, he had more than 50 percent of the primary vote while the woman who at one time was thought to be the likeliest to win the nomination, Rep. Allyson Schwartz, was far behind in second place.

In Arkansas, Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor and Republican Rep. Tom Cotton were expected to easily win their parties' Senate nominations.

In Idaho, eight-term congressman Rep. Mike Simpson faced a challenge from Tea Party-backed Bryan Smith who drew early support from the Club for Growth but found that backing waning as the Chamber of Commerce and other establishment groups rallied behind the incumbent.

Oregon's Republican primary featured Dr. Monica Wehby who faced a Tea Party-backed challenger, Jason Conger, a state representative. Both wanted to be the party's choice to run against first-term Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley.

Wehby was thought to be the likely winner of the Republican primary though her candidacy was rocked by allegations that she had stalked an ex-boyfriend and that her ex-husband had complained of her post-divorce behavior as well.

The impact of that late-breaking controversy on the race could be minimal since many of the ballots in Oregon were already mailed in when that information became public.

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