North Korea: One of the Happiest Places on Earth? (Time.com)

According to a global happiness index released in North Korea, the country and its allies are the most cheerful countries in the world. Naturally, the "American Empire" strikes Pyongyang as just plain sad.

Shanghaiist reports that North Korea's Chosun Central Television recently came out with a happiness index compiled by local researchers. Their findings? China is the happiest place on the planet, earning 100 points (a perfect score!). At number two is none other than North Korea itself. Cuba, Iran and Venezuela (in that order) round out the top five.

(VIDEO: How one man caught secret video inside North Korea.)

The United States places dead last, coming in 203rd. South Korea is nearly just as depressed a nation; it ranks 152nd on the list. Some spots, North Korea's research indicates, are just nowhere near as smiley as the Axis of Evil.

The Chinese net is ablaze with the results, screen grabs of which have been posted to popular sites. Implored one commenter on the Chinese online forum Mop: "Please send me to the U.S. so I can suffer, too." (via Shanghaiist)

(PHOTOS: Rare pictures inside North Korea.)

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Fresh iPhone Apps for May 31: AOL TV, Parkbud, To-Fu: The Trials of Chi, Tower Defense: Lost Earth (Appolicious)

The long weekend is over, but while returning to work after three days off can be a bit depressing, we have a few cool apps to kick off the week. Starting out is AOL TV, which integrates services like Hulu, Netflix and local TV stations to let users keep track of everything they can see on just about every service. After that is Parkbud, an app for finding your parking spaces and keeping track of parking meters to cut the stress of receiving tickets. We’ve also got a couple of quality games on tap – To-Fu: The Trials of Chi, a puzzle-platformer, and Tower Defense: Lost Earth, a robust and challenging TD strategy game.

Your conduit to everything TV is on your iPhone in AOL TV. The app keys you in to whatever’s on and allows you to check out schedules of all sorts, helping to stay up on what’s playing on your local stations, or even what’s available on Netflix and Hulu. All those services are funneled into one place in AOL TV, and the app allows you to bookmark shows, check out when they’ll be on, or track down missed episodes on Hulu, iTunes or Netflix.

AOL TV also has extra functionality for TiVo users. You can actually schedule your TiVo recordings from the app, or push DVDs and Instant videos to your Netflix queues. You can also check out information about various TV shows and actors on IMDb.

Don’t waste time and cause yourself frustration trying to remember where you left your car. Parkbud takes care of that information for you, keeping track of where you parked and giving you directions using Google Maps back to that location.

Parkbud also includes a lot of other handy features for your parking situation. It includes a meter alarm so you can get back and avoid a ticket, and a camera and photo-editing feature so you can keep track of rates and other information. Parkbud will show you where parking garages are near you, and lets you take notes about restrictions in an area to help you avoid any citations.

Puzzle-platformer To-Fu puts you in control of a sling-shot-capable block of tofu wearing a headband. In each of the game’s 100 side-scrolling levels, your job is to fling To-Fu from one patch of wall or floor to another. Using the game’s touch controls, you’ll stretch To-Fu in the direction you want to send him and then release, flinging him in a straight line until he hits a wall or platform to stick to.

Your primary goal in To-Fu is to reach a glowing pink fortune cookie at the end of each level, but each level includes a bunch of floating orbs called Chi that you can collect. Snagging all of them earns you a badge, as does making it to the end of the level using only a certain number of flings, and getting all the badges on each level will take some skill and probably multiple attempts. It’s a challenging game, but To-Fu is simple to learn and includes a lot of content for just a buck.

There are a whole lot of tower defense games in the iTunes App Store – but how many of them are actually called Tower Defense? The game follows the story of people fleeing a destroyed and polluted Earth for a new planet, where hostile aliens need to be shut down by powerful defenses. In Tower Defense’s campaign mode, players will work through 40 different levels on varying terrain, each with variable difficulty settings to give you exactly the challenge you’re looking for.

Tower Defense packs four different gameplay modes, each with different types of objectives. Developer Com2uS plans more downloadable content for the future, expanding on the nine available towers and number of maps available. The game also packs Game Center support for leaderboards and achievements.

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At Earth Day tire roundup, rubber hits the road to recycling

A truck loaded with tires found behind a vacant house is ready to head to the tire collection point in Atlanta. STORY HIGHLIGHTSSoutheast Atlanta neighborhoods mark Earth Day with a race to collect tiresRoundup gathers dumped tires from ditches, vacant houses, dead-end streetsVolunteers say roundup is a fun way to get rid of mosquito-breeding tiresRELATED TOPICSEarth DayAtlantaNature and the Environment Atlanta (CNN) -- It's like an Easter egg hunt for grownups.

Volunteers race the clock, scouring their neighborhood for junked used tires to be recycled for free. It's an Earth Day tradition in the Atlanta district of Council Member Natalyn Archibong. This year on April 16, more than 1,500 tires were collected. About 1,100 of those came from her East Atlanta neighborhood.

It's an in-town neighborhood that has more than its share of crime, graffiti and illegal dumping. It also has more than its share of dedicated residents -- this year about 20 -- willing to give up a Saturday to get wet and dirty tramping through poison ivy to pull tires out of ditches, from behind vacant homes and off the curbs of neighbors unable to dispose of them.

One hazard is "tire juice," the rainwater that collects in dumped tires and makes them mosquito-breeding menaces. Volunteers quickly learn to keep their mouths shut as they shake and twirl the tires to get the water out and make them easier to heave into a truck.

Volunteers have just four hours to drop the tires at Archibong's collection site. The rest of the year, it costs $1.25 to drop off a passenger tire at an Atlanta recycling facility. Archibong, who has been doing the roundup for 10 years on a Saturday close to Earth Day, usually pays for the event through her council office's expense budget. This year, she said, the recycling firm Liberty Tire became her "tire fairy" and picked up the tab.

Archibong started the roundup when the city stopped tire collection. She was concerned about the spread of mosquito-borne West Nile virus. The number of tires collected has gone down over the years, she said, from a high of more than 3,000. She said she thinks the roundup puts a public spotlight on tire dumping that helps prevent it.

Her assistant keeps count of the number of tires dropped off by each neighborhood in the council district. East Atlanta has won the past four years.

It's a dubious honor, one that volunteers like to think reflects their skill and organization at finding tires rather than a neighborhood that has more dumping than others. Tire recon starts weeks before Earth Day. Dead-end streets, ditches, vacant lots and foreclosed houses are all checked for tires. Piles of 50 or more tires are not uncommon. This year, one spot held about 400.

Perhaps amazingly, volunteers find this fun and rewarding. John Venneman, who collects tires in his Reynoldstown neighborhood and then helps friends in East Atlanta, said, "I pick up tires because I like living in the city, but only certain parts of it. The other parts will not change unless I change them."

Sheila Burau brought along a teenage neighbor. Burau said the roundup is a "positive way to build a sense of community spirit."

"The 15-year-old I was teamed up with had a blast and can't wait until we do it again next year," she said.

Kevin Spigener, who leads cleanup efforts for the neighborhood association, said he feels it's his civic duty to help "tackle a very serious and troubling issue."

The annual tire collection is hard to comprehend for friends and family who live in downtown condo districts or suburban subdivisions. "I am so confused as to where and why these tires show up. How does this happen?" asked one volunteer's brother.

Southeast Atlanta has many low-income residents, and the disposal fee paid to a tire store for a set of tires is generally $12. Some people choose to keep their old tires rather than paying the fee. Some are dumped. Others are stashed behind the house.

There also are many stores that sell used tires in Archibong's district. Volunteers suspect some of those shops collect the tire disposal fee but dump the tires. Volunteers pass the addresses of large piles on to Archibong for investigation, but law enforcement officials have said it is difficult to find the culprits. Resources aren't available to stake out multiple sites 24/7 to watch for tire dumpers. Other crimes take priority.

In the meantime, the volunteers will save their old clothes and work gloves for Earth Day 2012 and hope there won't be as many tires to round up then.

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